The Queen of the Warao Na­tion, Don­na Bermudez-Bovell, is call­ing on May­or Joel Mar­tinez to con­vene an ur­gent meet­ing to dis­cuss the re­moval of Christo­pher Colum­bus from his place of pub­lic rev­er­ence in Port of Spain, fol­low­ing his pub­lic pro­nounce­ment to en­gage the mat­ter on Wednes­day.

The con­tentious stat­ue is lo­cat­ed on the cor­ner of In­de­pen­dence Square and Dun­can Street, in the cap­i­tal city.

In a news re­lease is­sued by the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project, the Warao Na­tion Queen lament­ed the fact that in­dige­nous peo­ple con­tin­ue to be un-rep­re­sent­ed in the built en­vi­ron­ment of the cap­i­tal city.

“Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ev­i­dence shows that the in­dige­nous peo­ple of this coun­try have been here for at least sev­en thou­sand five hun­dred years and that Port of Spain was an im­por­tant in­dige­nous set­tle­ment,” Bermudez-Bovell said. “It seems the city even now prefers to cel­e­brate the ar­chi­tect of na­tive geno­cide.”

She added: “We want one of our free­dom fight­ers to re­place Colum­bus to re­con­nect this coun­try with its whole past. Our his­to­ry did not start 500 years ago.”

“Two and a half years have passed. Char­lotte Street is now Chi­na­town, and in­dige­nous peo­ple still have to bear this in­sult to our an­ces­tors and our dig­ni­ty,” she said.

The re­lease notes that in 2017, the Di­rec­tor of the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project, Shaba­ka Kam­bon, an hon­orary mem­ber of the Warao com­mu­ni­ty, joined in­dige­nous el­ders at the may­or’s of­fice to pub­licly han­dover a let­ter ask­ing His Wor­ship to fa­cil­i­tate a na­tion­al di­a­logue.

At a sub­se­quent meet­ing in 2018, which in­clud­ed a wide cross sec­tion of civ­il so­ci­ety, a di­rect de­scen­dant of the slave mas­ter Hip­poly­te Bor­de, who erect­ed the stat­ue out of his own pock­et in 1881, joined the call for its re­moval.

“The la­dy plead­ed with the may­or say­ing that she want­ed him to re­move her grand­fa­ther’s stat­ue be­cause it did not re­flect the core val­ues of our coun­try and we thought that would be enough,” the Warao Queen re­calls.

“Re­gard­less of what any­one says, lo­cal­ly, our peo­ple have been call­ing for the end to the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Colum­bus since we first spoke at the Unit­ed Na­tions in 1977. We sin­cere­ly hope that the may­or is pay­ing at­ten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing around the world to­day, where sim­i­lar mon­u­ments to evil are be­ing torn down and that he is ready to look crit­i­cal­ly at the ones we have here. May­or Mar­tinez says he re­spects the First Peo­ple. We want him to show it.”

The re­lease says in­dige­nous peo­ple now await an of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment from May­or Mar­tinez.

Christo­pher Colum­bus, once con­sid­ered a hero, is now in­creas­ing­ly re­viled for his pri­ma­ry role in the ini­ti­a­tion of the bru­tal geno­cide of the in­dige­nous peo­ple of the Amer­i­c­as and the transat­lantic slave trade—two of the great­est crimes in hu­man his­to­ry.

On Tues­day in the Unit­ed States, a mon­u­ment to Colum­bus was top­pled, burned and dumped in a lake in Vir­ginia and an­oth­er was be­head­ed in Boston, as part of the on­go­ing reper­cus­sions of the killing of George Floyd.

Mean­while,

to­day on its Face­book page, the Port of Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion launched an on­line poll, so­lic­it­ing feed­back from cit­i­zens as to whether the con­tentious stat­ue should be re­moved.

More than 2000 pe­ti­tions signed to re­move Chriso­pher Colum­bus Stat­ue in Colum­bus Square, Port of Spain. Should it be re­moved?

An on­line pe­ti­tion has been signed by var­i­ous sec­tors of our na­tion's pub­lic, in­clud­ing some stake­hold­ers for the re­moval of a memo­r­i­al of Christo­pher Colum­bus at Colum­bus Square, POS, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the glob­al Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment.

The mon­u­ment, which is lo­cat­ed on the cor­ner of In­de­pen­dence Square and Dun­can Street was opened by Gov­er­nor Young in 1881and a bronze stat­ue of Christo­pher Colum­bus stands in the mid­dle of a foun­tain in the Square as a trib­ute to Christo­pher Colum­bus who was cred­it­ed with the re­dis­cov­ery of Trinidad & To­ba­go in 1498.

Stat­ues of fig­ures with links to slav­ery and mon­u­ments and memo­ri­als that cel­e­brate 'racist his­to­ry' have been top­pled in the US and UK in re­cent days. There­fore, calls are be­ing re-ig­nit­ed by cit­i­zens to re­move the Christo­pher Colum­bus mon­u­ment and the like.

POLL: Should the Christo­pher Colum­bus memo­r­i­al in Colum­bus Square be re­moved?
Yes  /  No  /  I'm not sure
YOU VOTE!