Dr. Hamid Ghany is on solid ground with his observation that many symbols of T&T’s independence are compromised by Columbian symbolisms. Although his column in the Sunday Guardian (21 June 2020) betrays his late arrival in the debate, his is a welcome voice. T&T’s neocolonial Coat of Arms and countless other vestiges of colonialism that we often take for granted, testify to the systemic embedding of white supremacy in the psyche of colonised peoples. The artistes entrusted with creating symbols of independence were products of unadulterated colonial systems of education and religion, which limited their vision to entrenched values of their adopted “Motherland”.
The State instituted important reforms after the Black Power uprising in 1970 but, ultimately, the neocolonial system remained intact.
That is all the more reason why the Columbus statue must go, and the soil on which it currently stands, sanitised by a monument to the Indigenous Peoples that reminds all of us of our heroic struggles against colonialism, enslavement, indentureship and neocolonialism.
Trinidad is not unique in confronting such contradictions, as identified by Ghany and others. More and more Americans are conceding that Confederate monuments have no place in “the land of the free”. Nevertheless, advocates for their removal have to confront the pre-eminence of monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other “Founding Fathers”, who were some of the largest slave owners, and who embarked on independence, unwilling or unable to allow Africans the fundamental rights promised to “all men” in the Constitution.
This fundamental contradiction in America’s ongoing “Third Reconstruction” is not slowing down the pace of dismantling other symbols of white supremacy. As they keep discovering more, they add them to the pile.
The citizenry of T&T had no meaningful say in shaping independence. At least, Jamaicans had their referendum. We in T&T were left with Dr. Williams’ hocus-pocus arithmetic: “one from ten leaves nought”.
Many countries in the former colonial world understood that symbolisms, including naming, were intrinsic to the colonisers’ acclaimed right to rule. Many nationalists, therefore, sought to change those fundamentals. The first model was the change from San Domingue to Haiti in 1804; after the Rebellion of 1857, Indian nationalists aggressively promoted the concept Bharat Mata (Mother India), repudiating the notion of England as Motherland; in 1957, nationalists in the Gold Coast adopted Ghana as the name of the new nation, influencing many other African nations to do the same; Indochina broke into several states that reverted to pre-colonial identities. These nationalists were conscious of their proud past before colonialism.
Trinidad also had a name (Kairi) and a proud past before Columbus, but the architects of independence failed to see beyond slavery and indentureship.
Dr. Ghany actually agrees with the broader advocacy of the Cross Rhodes Freedom Project that the Columbus statue is just one of many colonial symbols that speak to “the national identity of T&T”. Case in point is the successful advocacy of the CRFP for renaming Milner Hall on the UWI campus at St. Augustine.
No one tried to delay the ditching of the Trinity Cross by lumping it with other vexatious neocolonial insignia, such as the Coat of Arms, to which Ghany has drawn our attention. Dr Ghany would do well to use his considerable influence to call on government to constitute a National Committee (like Jamaica) to look into these other colonial symbols and place names.
Columbus is the principal mascot of white supremacy. Its veneration, since the nineteenth century, is the reason for the convolution of our national emblems. The statue’s removal is therefore an issue apart from these emblems.
There are a few historical errors in Ghany’s article, but space allows for correcting just one. Local advocacy to remove Columbus did not begin, as he claims, “…after it was vandalised.” This advocacy goes back at least to the 1970s. In any case, the current advocacy is already three years old. In 2017 a petition to remove Columbus was delivered to the incumbent Mayor of Port of Spain.
Dr Claudius Fergus
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