SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

As the pe­ti­tion call­ing for the re­moval of the stat­ue of Christo­pher Colum­bus grew to al­most 8,000 sig­na­tures in less than a week, some ea­ger ac­tivists took the call a step fur­ther, de­fac­ing the mon­u­ment in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day night.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Colum­bus Square, where the stat­ue is lo­cat­ed on the cor­ner of In­de­pen­dence Square and Dun­can Street. The stat­ue was cov­ered in red ‘Dan­ger’ tape, the bust was cov­ered with a black garbage bag and a sign with the word “Mur­der­er” was hung on it.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez called for cool­er heads to pre­vail un­til a for­mal de­ci­sion can be made on whether the stat­ue should be re­moved or not.

“This is one of the things we try to tell peo­ple, this is not the way to do it and we are cur­rent­ly hav­ing a dis­cus­sion if you have a view, we are lis­ten­ing to your view but you are not go­ing to force me to make a de­ci­sion by do­ing this. As a mat­ter of fact, this may even de­ter my de­ci­sion,” Mar­tinez said.

He said al­though the stat­ue is con­tro­ver­sial, it has been in that spot since 1881 and to van­dalise it is against the law.

“If the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion is in­ter­est­ed in mov­ing it, I have no prob­lem with that. How­ev­er, you can’t de­face, you should not be van­dal­is­ing it. This is pub­lic prop­er­ty and this is a free coun­try and a free square, do not do these things, it is not nec­es­sary.”

He said he is still look­ing at re­spons­es from the gen­er­al pub­lic on the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s Face­book ac­count, where a poll was cre­at­ed last week ask­ing whether the stat­ue should be re­moved. Some­time lat­er this week, Mar­tinez said he would take the ques­tion and re­spons­es to the City Cor­po­ra­tion Coun­cil for a de­ci­sion.

“Yes there is a ground move­ment to have it re­moved but at the same time we want to make sure that all the cit­i­zens and not one body of cit­i­zens are in­ter­est­ed in hav­ing it moved.”

Guardian Me­dia asked sev­er­al peo­ple who live close by to the stat­ue whether they sup­port­ed the call for its re­moval.

A con­struc­tion work­er, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Jas­son, said he ful­ly sup­ports the move­ment.

“I think it could come down. Num­ber one, I don’t re­al­ly en­dorse these fel­las be­cause they pro­mot­ed slav­ery and they did a lot of wrong­do­ing. Num­ber two, as Burn­ing Spear say, he is an old damn blast­ed liar,” Jas­son said.

Jas­son was ref­er­enc­ing a song by Ja­maican reg­gae singer-song­writer, Win­ston Rod­ney so­bri­quet Burn­ing Spear ti­tle ‘Christo­pher Colum­bus.’

How­ev­er, young Bre­an­na Thomas dis­agreed.

“I per­son­al­ly don’t think the stat­ue should be re­moved be­cause it serves as a re­minder of all the his­to­ry sur­round­ing it and even if you do re­move the stat­ue, it doesn’t de­stroy all the atroc­i­ties or the idea of it. I think it serves as a good re­minder of all the mis­takes made in his­to­ry and how we should not re­peat it,” Thomas said.