Columbus out!

After years of calls from activist groups for the removal of the Christopher Columbus Monument from Port-of-Spain, the statue is set to be removed.

The announcement was made by Port-of-Spain Mayor Chinua Alleyne before the African Emancipation Day Parade along Independence Square North.

“The council of the city of Port-of-Spain has taken the decision to remove the statue of Christopher Columbus from Independence Square and to make it available to the National Museum and Art Gallery for display.

“We have also taken the decision to establish a committee to recommend to the council a new name for the square for all the victims of the genocide of the first peoples, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism,” the Mayor said.

According to Alleyne, the council also decided to create a new monument to replace the Columbus statue.

He said, like the new name for the square, the new monument would pay tribute to the victims of Columbus’ genocide, as well as the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Reacting to the news, chairman of the Emancipation Support Committee Zakiya Uzoma-Wadada said, “I think it is a major step in our cry for the decolonisation of our spaces and I’m sure everyone with a level of consciousness and understanding would know that this is a major step. But it is just the beginning, alongside the commitment of the Mayor of Port-of-Spain, who I want to congratulate and thank, for having the courage to make such a major step.”

Minister of Culture and Community Development Michelle Benjamin declined to comment, saying that “Today is not a day for Columbus.”

Columbus Square was opened in 1881, while the Columbus Statue was gifted to the Port-of-Spain City Council by a cocoa planter a year earlier.

The removal of the statue was not the only major announcement made by Alleyne on African Emancipation Day.

He revealed that part of Oxford Street, from Argyle to Charlotte Streets, was to be renamed Kwame Ture Street.

Uzoma-Wadada praised the move but called for it to go a step further.

“It will open a pathway now for us to begin to decolonise our spaces, our street names and of course, we have always been calling for the renaming of Oxford Street to Kwame Ture Street, so we got a little piece—from Argyle Street to Charlotte Street—will be called Kwame Ture Way. But we see that as the beginning, because we do believe eventually the whole street should be named Kwame Ture Street,” she said.

Meanwhile, one of the most prominent advocates for the removal of the Columbus Monument, Shabaka Kambon, called the announcement a victory for all Trinbagonians.

The director of the Caribbean Freedom Project and the Cross Rhodes Campaign said the move, along with the recent removal of Columbus’ three ships from the Coat of Arms, has sent a strong message to the world that T&T has the capacity to understand its violent colonial past and the courage to confront it.

“The majority of our people will celebrate today, but there will be a significant part of the population that will be left scratching their heads. The onus will now be on the Government and the tertiary institutions and the libraries to make these changes meaningful for them to invest in the conversation to help all Trinidadians to understand the new global consensus about these monuments in this time of historical clarity.

“If the Government and the relevant institutions do not do their part, it will hollow out the great victory. This is something we should have learnt from how the previous administration handled the celebration of genocide on our Coat of Arms. We must also question the inability of the authorities to publicly acknowledge the work of the Freedom Project when they are making their announcements,” he said.

Kambon dedicated the monument’s removal to his father, Kafra Kambon, the black power generation and the Warrao community.

In 2020, there were renewed calls for the removal of the Columbus statue and other memorials that celebrated this country’s colonial and racist history.

In July 2022, the Dr Keith Rowley-administration appointed a committee to review and report on the placement of statues, monuments and other historical signage and recognition in T&T.

Public consultations were held in August and December 2024.

In August last year, the then prime minister announced that Columbus ships would be removed from the Coat of Arms as part of a national effort to remove colonial vestiges and promote a more culturally relevant national identity. The three ships, Santa Maria, Pinta, and Nina, were replaced with the steelpan, the national musical instrument. The new Coat of Arms was unveiled in January this year.

‘We must not forget’

Before the start of the parade, the Emancipation Support Committee chairman called for people to use African Emancipation Day to reconnect with their sense of self.

“Part of the journey of emancipation is a process of a journey back to self. We have to remember who we were before we were enslaved.

“We still have to deal with the issue of reparations. This year, our theme is shaping a sustainable future through reparations because the emancipation support committee of T&T believes there can be no sustainable development without reparatory justice, and we can have no reparations without decolonisation,” she said.

Meanwhile, Minister Michelle Benjamin called Emancipation Day a day to remember and reclaim.

“Those who sit among us and want us to forget, we cannot forget. If we forget, then we are the ones with the whip on our ancestors’ backs. The burden we carry is that we have to fly the flag that they dreamt of and that dream is freedom.

“Freedom is not just a word. It is that we call for justice and self-determination right here in T&T, and I say right here in T&T, I want the youths to know that while we are here to remember that we are emancipated and no longer enslaved, if we do not fly our family flags high, then we are failing in that regard. We have to remember that when we are in public, we are representing our bloodline, our grandmothers and grandfathers. As the youths, the young African youths of T&T, we have to break those chains,” she said.

African Emancipation Day was declared in T&T in 1985 to commemorate the day—August 1, 1834—that enslaved Africans in the British Empire were liberated from slavery.