SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Over the last three days, a pe­ti­tion call­ing on Port-of-Spain may­or Joel Mar­tinez to re­move a stat­ue of Christo­pher Colum­bus from the cap­i­tal city has gath­ered al­most 7,000 sig­na­tures.

Now Mar­tinez is call­ing on the pub­lic to weigh in on whether they be­lieve the stat­ue should be re­moved.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Mar­tinez said he en­cour­ages con­ver­sa­tion about the mon­u­ment and is hop­ing to start a poll over the next few days to find out what the pop­u­la­tion thinks about the re­moval of the stat­ue. 

Mar­tinez said the poll has been pub­lished on the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s Face­book page. 

The man who start­ed the pe­ti­tion on Tues­day morn­ing, Shaba­ka Kam­bon told Guardian Me­dia that this is not the first time he has pe­ti­tioned the may­or for the re­moval of the stat­ue, lo­cat­ed al­most on the edge of the city at In­de­pen­dence and Dun­can Streets.

Kam­bon is the di­rec­tor of the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project. 

“When we first start­ed a pe­ti­tion in 2018, we got about 2,000 sig­na­tures in about three months,” Kam­bon said yes­ter­day.

“Now we have al­most 5,000 sig­na­tures in un­der two days time and I have con­fi­dence we will cross 6,000 by the end of to­day (Wednes­day.) We are quite con­fi­dent that the ma­jor­i­ty of Trinida­di­ans do not want to con­tin­ue to cel­e­brate geno­cide, rape, slav­ery, and these are all of the things that Colum­bus rep­re­sents.”

Kam­bon said when peo­ple like Colum­bus are revered, it eras­es from his­to­ry the ef­forts of the lo­cal he­roes who fought against the op­pres­sion.

He said Colum­bus’ stat­ue should not be kept in a promi­nent place in the city.

“We can have no equiv­o­ca­tion around the stat­ue of Christo­pher Colum­bus, this man is re­spon­si­ble for ini­ti­at­ing the geno­cide of in­dige­nous peo­ple of the en­tire con­ti­nent, one of the great­est acts of thefts, one of the great­est crimes of hu­man­i­ty but that’s not all, Christo­pher Colum­bus is al­so the ini­tia­tor of the trans-At­lantic slave trade.”

Ref­er­enc­ing in­ter­na­tion­al in­ci­dents where stat­ues of Colum­bus were torn down and de­stroyed in Boston and Vir­ginia, Kam­bon said it would be a shame if the same thing hap­pened to the lo­cal mon­u­ment.

He be­lieves it should be re­moved be­fore that hap­pens and placed in a mu­se­um.

“If the city does not re­spond in due time, it’s not go­ing to be me, but that stat­ue might not sur­vive prob­a­bly in­to the week­end,” Kam­bon said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta of His­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Brid­get Br­ere­ton for her thoughts on the pe­ti­tion.

Br­ere­ton said she be­lieves the time has come for the stat­ue to be re­moved.

And she agreed that it should be placed in a mu­se­um.

“I think there is a good case for re­mov­ing the stat­ue, re­mov­ing it re­spect­ful­ly and plac­ing it in the na­tion­al mu­se­um with ap­pro­pri­ate text be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly he is a man who had a great im­pact on Trinidad’s his­to­ry but we al­so know he sym­bol­is­es all the hor­rors that hap­pened with Eu­ro­pean con­quests and the geno­cide against the Na­tive peo­ple,” Br­ere­ton said.

“I think there is a good ar­gu­ment for it not be­ing in a promi­nent pub­lic space in the cap­i­tal city.”

Asked if she thought an­oth­er stat­ue should be erect­ed if Colum­bus’ is re­moved, Br­ere­ton said that may not be a good idea.

“I would not re­place it with a stat­ue of any­one at all, it would be im­pos­si­ble to find a fig­ure who would com­mand uni­ver­sal re­spect from the cit­i­zens.”