Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

One hun­dred and forty-two years af­ter scores of peo­ple were killed dur­ing the 1884 Muhar­ram mas­sacre, a per­ma­nent mon­u­ment com­mem­o­rat­ing their sac­ri­fice has been un­veiled near the Mon Re­pos round­about in San Fer­nan­do. The mon­u­ment was un­veiled dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day.

Iere The­atre founder and Cha­co­nia Medal Sil­ver awardee Vic­tor Ed­wards, who spear­head­ed the project, said the mon­u­ment was not in­tend­ed sim­ply to memo­ri­alise the mas­sacre, but to sym­bol­ise courage, re­sis­tance and re­silience.

“This mon­u­ment there­fore be­comes a gift to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go in re­mem­brance of the 107 who were shot from as many as 29 es­tates and the 22 who were killed from nine of the 40-plus es­tates of the Na­pari­mas,” Ed­wards said.

He said it had tak­en 142 years for the vic­tims and their re­sis­tance to cul­tur­al sup­pres­sion to re­ceive a per­ma­nent place in the na­tion­al land­scape.

Ed­wards al­so crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as decades of si­lence sur­round­ing the killings, ar­gu­ing that colo­nial ac­counts shaped the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive.

He cred­it­ed his­to­ri­an Kelvin Singh’s 1988 book, Blood­stained Tombs: The Muhar­ram Mas­sacre of 1884, with chal­leng­ing the long­stand­ing de­scrip­tion of the events as the “Hosay Ri­ots”.

Singh, who was un­able to at­tend the un­veil­ing be­cause of health rea­sons, said he was “grat­i­fied” that the sac­ri­fice had fi­nal­ly re­ceived recog­ni­tion.

“For decades this event was erased from his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry un­til I brought it to light in 1988,” Singh said in com­ments shared by Ed­wards.

Ed­wards al­so ac­knowl­edged the work of Ravi-Ji, who be­tween 2004 and 2009 led a Ja­ha­ji walk from Ch­agua­nas to Mon Re­pos in an ef­fort to bring the mas­sacre back in­to pub­lic con­scious­ness.

He said the Iere The­atre’s in­volve­ment re­flect­ed its wider man­date to pro­mote his­to­ry, her­itage and cul­tur­al con­scious­ness.

The mon­u­ment bears the names of those who were shot and killed, al­though on­ly 18 of the 22 vic­tims killed are known by name. A plaque ho­n­ours the uniden­ti­fied dead.

Eight mount­ed sketch­es sur­round­ing the mon­u­ment de­pict the Hosay pro­ces­sion and the events lead­ing to the mas­sacre, while a colour-chang­ing light atop the struc­ture is in­tend­ed to sym­bol­ise Trinidad and To­ba­go as a “rain­bow na­tion”.

Ed­wards said the project was fund­ed large­ly through con­tri­bu­tions from cit­i­zens at home and abroad, with some gov­ern­ment fund­ing pro­vid­ed in 2022.

He said the com­mit­tee hopes to in­stall ad­di­tion­al his­tor­i­cal mark­ers at Toll Gate, an­oth­er site of the shoot­ings, and near the ex­ten­sion of the San Fer­nan­do mar­ket, where bones were re­port­ed­ly ex­humed.

Ed­wards al­so re­vealed plans to stage his play, Mas­sacre, in Oc­to­ber next year, with Oc­to­ber 30 falling on a Sat­ur­day.