Veciana's Game
During preparation of Part Three of my review of John Newman’s book Into the Storm , I spent a great deal of time thinking about Antonio Veciana’s motive for creating the Maurice Bishop story. Then, I had an epiphany. This article discusses that revelation and acts as a summary of all I have learned about the subject in the last two years. My thesis is that two factors came together to create the Bishop story. The first factor, which Newman references, is Veciana’s incarceration for cocaine smuggling and the effect it had on him. [1] After studying Veciana’s history, I realized that a second factor was his character. A charitable way to describe Veciana is to say that he was a man of action and not content to sit on his hands when a problem existed. To put it another way, he was something of a plotter who sought to manipulate others in furtherance of his own ends. I submit that Veciana’s incarceration was a watershed moment in his life which he believed required immediate action u...