His­to­ri­ans call for di­a­logue on stat­ues and street names

As a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee pre­pares to re­view the place­ment of stat­ues, mon­u­ments and sig­nage across T&T, two lo­cal his­to­ri­ans and a so­ci­ol­o­gist be­lieve that well-thought-out pub­lic re­flec­tions and con­ver­sa­tions should take place be­fore and af­ter any ac­tion is tak­en. They be­lieved that the is­sue is high­ly com­plex and re­quires deep ex­plo­ration to en­sure po­ten­tial out­comes are not re­duced to su­per­fi­cial changes in street names and re­moval of mon­u­ments.

On Au­gust 31, T&T cel­e­brates its di­a­mond ju­bilee—60 years of in­de­pen­dence. In an­tic­i­pa­tion of the an­niver­sary, there are re­newed calls from some ac­tivists to re­move the sur­names and mon­u­ments of colo­nial fig­ures from pub­lic spaces. Aware of the calls, Cab­i­net ap­point­ed a com­mit­tee on Ju­ly 21 to re­view the place­ment of stat­ues, mon­u­ments and sig­nage by year’s end.

Chaired by Emeri­ta Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry Brid­get Br­ere­ton, the com­mit­tee al­so in­cludes Dr East­lyn Kate McKen­zie, for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Zai­da Ra­j­nauth, UWI St Au­gus­tine Guild Pres­i­dent Kobe Sandy and First Peo­ple’s Chief Ri­car­do Bharath-Her­nan­dez.

Dur­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions in Port-of-Spain last Mon­day, founder of the Caribbean Free­dom Project Shaba­ka Kam­bon called on the gov­ern­ment to re­move the name and mon­u­ments of for­mer gov­er­nor Thomas Pic­ton and oth­er colo­nial fig­ures.

So­ci­ol­o­gist and part-time se­nior lec­tur­er at UWI St Au­gus­tine Dr Tye­him­ba Sa­landy be­lieved the work of ac­tivists like Shaba­ka Kam­bon, Cla­dius Fer­gus, Brins­ley Sama­roo and the Warao rep­re­sen­ta­tives has been very im­por­tant. He said the im­por­tance of their work is not lim­it­ed to their calls for the re­moval of colo­nial names and mon­u­ments but ex­tends to high­light­ing the his­to­ry of colo­nial per­son­al­i­ties who oc­cu­pied a ro­man­ti­cized place in the minds of many.

The so­ci­ol­o­gist said this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take the con­ver­sa­tion about the role of colo­nial­ism in the na­tion­al psy­che fur­ther.

“This is not just about the re­moval of colo­nial names and mon­u­ments, but it is al­so about a so­ci­ety that has nev­er come to terms with its colo­nial past and present. When you look at some of the ma­jor chal­lenges fac­ing us in Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day—the deep so­cial in­equal­i­ties, racism, eth­nic hos­til­i­ties, crime, the an­tag­o­nis­tic top-down mod­el of pol­i­tics and the in­abil­i­ty of our lead­ers to ap­pre­ci­ate the per­spec­tives of or­di­nary peo­ple—these is­sues are root­ed in our colo­nial his­to­ry, which we have not come to terms with in any se­ri­ous way,” Dr Sa­landy said.

“Sim­ply chang­ing colo­nial names and re­mov­ing colo­nial mon­u­ments is not go­ing to have a mag­i­cal im­pact on the psy­che of peo­ple, be­cause our psy­ches have been af­fect­ed in lay­ered and com­plex ways. The dom­i­na­tion of Eu­ro­peans has af­fect­ed not just place names and mon­u­ments, but laws, in­sti­tu­tions and gov­er­nance, ed­u­ca­tion, fam­i­lies, re­la­tion­ships, sex­u­al­i­ty and re­li­gion. It has af­fect­ed how di­verse peo­ples see them­selves and each oth­er. All this has cre­at­ed psy­ches that val­ue things for their prox­im­i­ty to white­ness and west­ern cul­ture and den­i­grate cul­tures and bod­ies that are non-Eu­ro­pean.”

Sa­landy, who called for wide­spread pub­lic di­a­logue on var­i­ous as­pects of T&T’s his­to­ry, said while the gov­ern­ment has set up a com­mit­tee to ad­dress the is­sue, there has not been a se­ri­ous move­ment, over the years, by ei­ther of the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties to use the state’s ma­chin­ery to cre­ate a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of our his­to­ry and di­ver­si­ty. In­stead, he claimed, they have used the state me­dia to fur­ther their po­lit­i­cal agen­das.

“Po­lit­i­cal lead­ers al­so have not been re­cep­tive to per­sons who have been try­ing to ex­plain these is­sues for many years, so this move comes across as in­sin­cere, as lip ser­vice, as a way to paci­fy the de­mands of ac­tivists who are point­ing out the need for fun­da­men­tal change in the so­ci­ety,” he said.

“There are two op­tions that I would be in favour of. One would be the to­tal re­moval of colo­nial names and mon­u­ments. The sec­ond op­tion would be to move colo­nial mon­u­ments to some­where in the vicin­i­ty and re­frame the nar­ra­tive by giv­ing the rea­son why it was moved, and a bet­ter his­to­ry of the per­son­al­i­ties, so that it can be a learn­ing tool.”

As the coun­try ap­proach­es its 60th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, Sa­landy said T&T has a long way to go in over­turn­ing the in­ter­nal in­fra­struc­tures of colo­nial­i­ty that re­main alive, in­clud­ing names and mon­u­ments glo­ri­fy­ing Eu­ro­pean col­o­niz­ers. He in­sist­ed that chang­ing colo­nial names to lo­cal and in­dige­nous names is not enough to de­vel­op the minds of cit­i­zens and to ad­dress post-In­de­pen­dence un­der­de­vel­op­ment.

“It could be part of a process of a so­ci­ety com­ing to a bet­ter sense of it­self, thus I am scep­ti­cal about the ten­den­cy to sim­pli­fy the is­sues in­to sim­ply one of colo­nial names and mon­u­ments, if they re­move them, and who and what to re­place such with. The wider is­sue is that the type of so­ci­ety that was cre­at­ed post-In­de­pen­dence has failed to ad­dress the is­sues that were set in mo­tion dur­ing the colo­nial era. Post-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers from Dr Williams to Dr Row­ley have not moved with the ur­gency and un­der­stand­ing need­ed to trans­form the so­ci­ety,” Sa­landy lament­ed.

El­e­ment of dan­ger in

re­mov­ing colo­nial names

Se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh said calls for the names and mon­u­ments of colo­nial fig­ures to be re­moved from pub­lic spaces is con­tro­ver­sial and the gov­ern­ment and cit­i­zen­ry need to agree on the best method of chang­ing the ur­ban land­scape.

Like Sa­landy, he hoped the con­ver­sa­tion and cor­re­spond­ing ac­tion doesn’t stop at re­nam­ing pub­lic spaces.

“If I dis­agree with the calls, I will be la­belled as a racist or as a sup­port­er of racists. Re­mov­ing phys­i­cal re­minders of colo­nial­ism and im­pe­ri­al­ism has oc­curred across the globe. Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the change in the names of streets, high­ways, build­ings and parks could be in­ter­pret­ed as cos­met­ic ef­forts to es­tab­lish a Caribbean iden­ti­ty. It would be won­der­ful if chang­ing the street names al­so meant safer dri­ving, an ab­sence of pot­holes and no lit­ter­ing,” Teelucks­ingh said.

“The names cer­tain­ly will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the psy­che of Afro Trinida­di­ans. How­ev­er, we must re­mem­ber that the pub­lic spaces are al­so be­ing shared by de­scen­dants of the First Peo­ples and per­sons of Syr­i­an, Chi­nese, In­di­an, Por­tuguese, and Jew­ish de­scent. How many street names are named in ho­n­our of the per­son­al­i­ties of these eth­nic groups? The re­moval of names re­flects a fierce­ly con­test­ed space that is al­so linked to pow­er re­la­tions in our so­ci­ety.”

Teelucks­ingh be­lieves there is an el­e­ment of dan­ger in re­mov­ing the names of all colo­nial fig­ures from pub­lic spaces. He said if the coun­try con­tin­ues along that path, it could con­tribute to si­lenc­ing the past and en­sur­ing con­tin­ued dis­ap­pear­ance of the coun­try’s his­to­ry.

“Some of us ad­mire, praise and wor­ship Dr Er­ic Williams, as a fa­ther of the na­tion. Why did the fa­ther of the na­tion de­cide to leave these colo­nial names and stat­ues?” he asked.

“In­deed it is vi­tal to con­sis­tent­ly ex­am­ine the per­son­al­i­ties of the British era, but we have to re­mem­ber that there were oth­er Eu­ro­pean pow­ers that ruled both To­ba­go and Trinidad. If I cham­pi­on the need to se­lec­tive­ly pre­serve yet learn from our past, I would be ridiculed and my views mis­con­strued. We fo­cus on the racists of the past. Let us nev­er for­get that there are mod­ern-day racists who in 2022 ig­nore mer­it, qual­i­fi­ca­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence in pro­mo­tions and ap­point­ments.”

Teelucks­ingh, whose re­search in­ter­ests in­clude the his­to­ry of Afro-Caribbean ac­tivists and in­tel­lec­tu­als and Pan-African­ism, said the cru­cial ques­tion should be how chang­ing a street name or re­mov­ing a stat­ue cre­ates a more ma­te­ri­al­ly in­clu­sive so­ci­ety.

“Could the re­moval of a street name low­er the lev­els of pover­ty and un­em­ploy­ment, im­prove gen­der re­la­tions, elim­i­nate racism or re­duce il­lit­er­a­cy?” he asked.

“We have to care­ful­ly de­cide who will be the lo­cal and re­gion­al per­son­al­i­ties to be ho­n­oured for the 60th an­niver­sary. For in­stance, there would be a heat­ed de­bate to de­ter­mine if Machel Mon­tano or VS Naipaul is a na­tion­al hero. For the 60th an­niver­sary, we cer­tain­ly need some com­pre­hen­sive na­tion-build­ing projects. Our so­ci­ety does not ap­pear to be ma­ture and will­ing to de­vel­op the minds of all our cit­i­zens.”

The lega­cies of Pic­ton

His­to­ri­an and au­thor Dr Ger­ard Besson said care­ful, fact-based con­sid­er­a­tions are crit­i­cal in de­cid­ing to re­move the name and mon­u­ments of Thomas Pic­ton and oth­er his­tor­i­cal fig­ures from pub­lic spaces.

“Now, when peo­ple want to politi­cize or bring racist twists or class twists to his­to­ry, they for­get about that. They for­get that you can­not judge the past through the eyes of the present, and what they do for their pur­pose is that they use the present yard­stick to come to con­clu­sions about events or peo­ple from 200 years ago. That’s when they want to make a scene but for their own pur­pose,” he said.

“Some years ago, a fel­la by the name of Gus­tave Bor­de, a Trinida­di­an, wrote a his­to­ry of Trinidad and one of the things he said was that it’s not by eras­ing his­to­ry that you build uni­ty.”

The Hum­ming­bird Medal Gold re­cip­i­ent said de­spite what is be­ing claimed by some, Thomas Pic­ton was not a racist. He said Pic­ton was a sol­dier who came to Trinidad and had to deal with a small, but very vi­o­lent pop­u­la­tion.

Con­tin­ues on Page 9

Ac­cord­ing to Besson, at around that time there were around 6,000 to 7,000 African slaves; 800 to 1,000 whites; 1,000 to 1,500 free-coloured peo­ple. Most of the whites were French refugees, who were loy­al to the French king and fled rev­o­lu­tions tak­ing place in neigh­bour­ing is­lands like Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe and moved to Trinidad through the Cedu­la of Pop­u­la­tion. The coloured peo­ple were Re­pub­li­cans who op­posed the French Roy­al Monar­chy.

“A lot of them were vagabonds. Some of them killed the rel­a­tives of peo­ple liv­ing next door to them in Port-of-Spain, like near Nel­son Street. The coloured peo­ple—all of them had slaves. This is black peo­ple who owned oth­er black peo­ple. Some of them liv­ing in the south, Na­pari­ma, had big es­tates, Con­cord Es­tate, Corinth Es­tate,” Besson said.

“It was just like to­day. Dead bod­ies were ap­pear­ing in the pa­pers and all over the place. What Pic­ton did was that he en­forced mar­tial law, and Pic­ton be­haved in a very ar­bi­trary man­ner and sen­tenced to pub­lic death a lot of peo­ple—white peo­ple, black peo­ple, and peo­ple from with­in his own reg­i­ment—and he did this un­til he brought some de­gree of law and or­der.”

Besson said in those days slaves were in­stead viewed as com­modi­ties by black, white and mixed peo­ple and were treat­ed very bad­ly, in­clud­ing be­ing worked un­til they fell apart. He said if any for­mer gov­er­nor should be con­sid­ered a racist, it should be Ralph Wood­ford who im­ple­ment­ed sys­tem­at­ic racism.

“The British had to change the laws that he in­sti­tut­ed in Trinidad be­cause of their racist man­ner. Wood­ford was racist was against the free black peo­ple, the ne­groes who were not slaves, who had owned slaves. Wood­ford was racist to them,” he said.

“These free black and mixed-race peo­ple came to Trinidad un­der the terms of the Span­ish le­gal doc­u­ment called the Cedu­la of Pop­u­la­tion. Un­der that Span­ish law, they were giv­en the same pro­tec­tion and rights un­der the law as the white peo­ple in that they could in­her­it prop­er­ty, they could pass on the prop­er­ty, some of them could serve as of­fi­cers in the mili­tia. How­ev­er, when Wood­ford came on the scene, he be­gan to change the law that these peo­ple had been giv­en these priv­i­leges un­der.”

Besson said it was not un­til around 1815 when a wealthy black Trinida­di­an from the south named Jean-Bap­tiste Phillip did a pe­ti­tion with oth­er black and mixed-race peo­ple to get rid of Wood­ford that the for­mer gov­er­nor’s racist rule end.

“He took it to Eng­land. They agreed with him. They saw his point be­cause Ralph Wood­ford had it in for these black peo­ple. What it (the pe­ti­tion) did was to free up these peo­ple from these racist laws that were dra­con­ian. It meant in the next five to ten years, when the 15,000 to 20,000 African slaves would be­come free, when they be­came eman­ci­pat­ed, they would not be un­der those laws,” he said.

Thomas Pic­ton, a dis­tin­guished Welsh of­fi­cer of the British army, was ap­point­ed com­man­dant and mil­i­tary gov­er­nor of Trinidad in 1797 by Sir Ralph Aber­crom­by, ac­cord­ing to the Mu­se­um of Wales.

Pic­ton di­rect­ly prof­it­ed from slave trade ac­tiv­i­ties and was renowned for his “ruth­less” treat­ment of slaves and oth­ers. In 1803, he faced tri­al in Lon­don for au­tho­riz­ing the tor­ture of a free 14-year-old ‘mu­lat­to’ girl ac­cused of theft. Louisa Calderon was hung from a scaf­fold by her wrist for an hour, with her weight sup­port­ed on­ly by an up­turned wood­en peg.

Ac­cord­ing to the Welsh Mu­se­um, dur­ing the tri­al, Pic­ton was in­ves­ti­gat­ed for de­cap­i­tat­ing, tor­tur­ing and burn­ing alive slaves ac­cused of necro­man­cy, witch­craft and sor­cery. The for­mer gov­er­nor was con­vict­ed but the ver­dict was over­turned. He died in com­bat in 1815 as the most se­nior of­fi­cer at the Bat­tle of Wa­ter­loo.

Last No­vem­ber, a por­trait of Pic­ton that had been on dis­play for more than a cen­tu­ry was re­moved from view at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um in Cardiff in the wake of Black Lives Mat­ter protests. Last Mon­day, the por­trait was re­turned to dis­play as part of an ex­hi­bi­tion called “Re­fram­ing Pic­ton.” It is sur­round­ed by de­scrip­tions of Pic­ton’s treat­ment of Trinida­di­ans while he was gov­er­nor.

Ralph Wood­ford was the longest-serv­ing gov­er­nor of Trinidad, serv­ing from 1813 to 1828. Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NALIS) web­site: “When Wood­ford came here (POS) in 1813 the town was hard­ly touched since the fire of 1808. It can be said that he re­built it, taste­ful­ly, hav­ing his gar­den­er plant or­na­men­tal trees in what is now Wood­ford Square, and along Ma­rine Square, to­day’s In­de­pen­dence Square. He re­placed the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions and brought in new ones, and was al­so re­spon­si­ble for the es­tab­lish­ment of the two big church­es - Trin­i­ty Church and the Church of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion, both of which be­came cathe­drals. On the oth­er hand, Wood­ford had a very poor record on slav­ery and sided with the sug­ar planters against any move to­wards abo­li­tion.”

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