Two Caribbean Community countries made significant steps in recent days to deal with offensive colonial era relics, with Trinidad announcing definitive plans to remove Columbus’ statue from its place of prominence and neighboring Grenada localizing its national oath of allegiance.
Authorities in both nations timed their announcements to coincide with annual emancipation observances marking the end of transatlantic slavery, observed across the 15-nation bloc and its associate members in the past week.
In Trinidad, Port of Spain City Mayor Chinua Alleyne told celebrants that a huge bronze statue of Christopher Columbus will soon be removed and placed at the national museum, from Independence Square, in the commercial section of the city. That bronze statue has been in place since the close of the 19th century and is seen as offensive to the modern sensibilities of citizens.
The city also moved to rename a portion of Oxford Street as Kwame Ture Way after the renowned and respected late Trinidadian/American civil rights leader. Originally Stokely Carmichael, Ture was involved in some epic civil rights battles alongside Martin Luther King Jr and others in the US south in the ‘60s and ‘70s. He was native to Trinidad.
Local African groups had demanded that the entire street be named after him, but accepted that its partial renaming was a start that could be improved upon in the coming months.
“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. “The renaming of spaces and places, the erection of public monuments and the artistic and architectural styles that were imposed, were used as effective tools of domination and subjugation. More than 140 years later, restoration and repair require that the yet-to-be-born revere our ancestors like Kwame Ture, we also ensure that they learn our colonial history in its most appropriate historical context,” Mayor Alleyne said.
The move by the city follows a growing clamor in Caricom for governments to take immediate steps to rid public sensibilities of colonial era symbols representing the harshness, brutality, and inhumanity of the transatlantic slave trade and the genocide that was also committed against indigenous peoples.
Neighboring Barbados, for example, removed the statute of British marine fighter Lord Nelson from its place of prominence in Trafalgar Square five years ago. Officials there also renamed the area as National Heroes Square. This was done in the lead up to the country becoming a republic in late 2021, dumping the British monarch as its head of state and replacing her with a local judge as the ceremonial president of the country.
Meanwhile, Grenada’s Governor-General Dame Cecile La Grenade signed into law two bills banning local elected and senior appointed officials from taking an oath of allegiance or affirmation to the King of England, his heirs and/or successors. The acts bearing the new mandate became effective at the beginning of August and now direct local officials to swear allegiance to the Eastern Caribbean island only. It even suggests that local officials must be re-sworn within seven days of August 1.
Trinidad in recent months had also removed Columbus’ original ships, the Niña, The Pinta and the Santa Maria, from its national coat of arms, replacing them with its world-famous indigenous steelpan that was invented in the federation with Tobago nearly a century ago.