I have be­come in­creas­ing­ly alarmed at the calls for re­moval of stat­ues and re­nam­ing of places in Port-of-Spain and in T&T as a whole.

I am aware that his­tor­i­cal arte­facts re­veal phas­es in the de­vel­op­ment of a coun­try, and these pub­lic ed­i­fices serve to re­mind us of how peo­ple lived and what they val­ued in these dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods.

Fur­ther­more, it is my con­tention that no in­di­vid­ual is en­tire­ly per­fect when judged by his or her peers, or by pos­ter­i­ty. In ad­di­tion, we must ac­cept that val­ues change over gen­er­a­tions as peo­ple be­come more en­light­ened and so­phis­ti­cat­ed. Re­mem­ber that slav­ery was an in­te­gral part of so­ci­ety even from bib­li­cal times, and that in­dige­nous peo­ple warred among them­selves, even be­fore the ar­rival of the Spaniards.

Christo­pher Colum­bus was an out­stand­ing Ital­ian nav­i­ga­tor who risked every­thing to find a new route to the East. In so do­ing he was the first to find the West­ern hemi­sphere af­ter it was un­known over thou­sands of years.

Ac­cord­ing to the Collins dic­tio­nary, this qual­i­fies as an act of dis­cov­ery. Of sig­nal im­por­tance is the fact that Colum­bus land­ed here in Trinidad, and he even gave this coun­try its name. In my view we should be proud of this his­toric as­so­ci­a­tion, as our an­ces­tors have ex­pressed, by the erec­tion of stat­ues, and the nam­ing of places such as, Colum­bus Chan­nel and Colum­bus Bay.

If we were to per­sist with this Colum­bus witch-hunt, are we go­ing all the way and change the name of this is­land and its ge­o­graph­i­cal ti­tles as well?

Colum­bus’ ship La Vaque­nos lost an an­chor on that voy­age; it was re­cov­ered cen­turies lat­er, and dis­played at fairs in Rome, Paris and Chica­go. In our witch hunt are we go­ing to melt down this an­chor that now rests at the back of the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um?

It is quite true that Colum­bus’ dis­cov­ery opened the door to Span­ish colonis­ers and priests who en­slaved the in­dige­nous peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the En­comien­das. Are we now go­ing to out­law the Catholic Church?

Re­mem­ber that Colum­bus’ dis­cov­ery al­so paved the way for de­vel­op­ment of this is­land so that many of us can ex­pe­ri­ence a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life to­day. We must re­mem­ber al­so that there were slave own­ers in Trinidad, even among black peo­ple. Their de­scen­dants are now part of the pop­u­la­tion, are we go­ing to cast as­per­sions on their roots and ques­tion their moral­i­ty?

His­to­ri­ans Gertrude Carmichael and Antony De Ver­teuil have both re­ferred to the rebel slave, Daa­ga, as a for­mer slave trad­er. Are we go­ing to ask UWI to change the name of its con­fer­ence cen­tre?

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, there are for­eign mis­chief-mak­ers who wish to re­move the stat­ues of Lord Baden-Pow­ell (orig­i­na­tor of scout­ing), Win­ston Churchill and Mo­han­das Gand­hi. Where will this hate cam­paign end? Are the re­spon­si­ble lead­ers of this coun­try go­ing to im­port this ide­ol­o­gy of hate in­to T&T? Are we go­ing al­low the leader of the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project to pig­gy back on the no­ble cause of “Black Lives Mat­ter” with its mis­guid­ed agen­da to de­stroy all that is not black?

I ad­mire the spir­it of the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project, how­ev­er I take the lib­er­ty of point­ing them to do some­thing about the 40.3 mil­lions of mod­ern slaves that ex­ist to­day in North Ko­rea, Mau­ri­ta­nia, Pak­istan, In­dia, East­ern Eu­rope and the USA. But then that can be a more dif­fi­cult task, than tear­ing down stat­ues.

David Sub­ran, PhD

Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas