Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The con­tro­ver­sial stat­ue of Christo­pher Colum­bus, a mon­u­ment which has stood in the cap­i­tal city since 1881, has now been re­moved.

The Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion re­moved the stat­ue from In­de­pen­dence Square dur­ing an overnight op­er­a­tion that be­gan around 10 pm on Wednes­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the cor­po­ra­tion, the tim­ing aimed to min­imise traf­fic dis­rup­tions. The re­moval was over­seen by her­itage ar­chi­tect Rudy­lynn De­Four-Roberts and Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne.

It is now in the care of the Na­tion­al Trust and will even­tu­al­ly be made avail­able to the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery, which is cur­rent­ly be­ing ren­o­vat­ed.

The de­ci­sion to re­move it fol­lowed con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­er groups, in­clud­ing First Peo­ples and cul­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, Er­ic Lewis, of the San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples, held a smoke cer­e­mo­ny at the Colum­bus Square site to com­mem­o­rate the re­moval of the stat­ue. He said the stat­ue rep­re­sent­ed more than his­to­ry, call­ing it “a mon­stros­i­ty” that car­ried the sym­bol­ic weight of colo­nial vi­o­lence.

“We’re here to pu­ri­fy the space and ho­n­our our an­ces­tors,” Lewis said.

“We’re not say­ing erase his­to­ry, but teach it dif­fer­ent­ly. It doesn’t need to be glo­ri­fied in a pub­lic square.”

He al­so called for greater na­tion­al recog­ni­tion of in­dige­nous his­to­ry, in­clud­ing a First Peo­ples hol­i­day.

Free­dom Project Caribbean’s Shaba­ka Kam­bon de­scribed the stat­ue’s re­moval as an “his­toric vic­to­ry” af­ter near­ly a decade of ad­vo­ca­cy.

“We’ve been work­ing on this since 2016 with the idea that peo­ple wouldn’t just con­tem­plate his­to­ry but make it,” he said.

Kam­bon said the re­moval must now be fol­lowed by deep­er cul­tur­al change, in­clud­ing rewrit­ing colo­nial nar­ra­tives in school cur­ric­u­la.

Cit­ing Frantz Fanon, he said mon­u­ments to con­quest are “germs of rot” that should be re­moved not just from the land but from the na­tion­al con­scious­ness.

“As we re­move Colum­bus, the gen­er­al who be­gan the con­quest, we must al­so in­ter­ro­gate the nar­ra­tives em­bed­ded in our text­books and iden­ti­ty,” he said.