THE Port of Spain City Council has confirmed the decision to remove the statue of Christopher Columbus from Independence Square and relocate it to the National Museum and Art Gallery.
This statue has become a focal point of public protest. In October 2020, the statue was desecrated. Its hands were severed and its sword removedacts interpreted as symbolic resistance. In the past, the statue has also been repeatedly defaced with graffiti, paint, and signs labelling Columbus a murderer.
Such acts reflect tensions around colonial symbolism in public spaces. Its relocation may be viewed as a practical measure to remove it from the direct line of protest while also preserving it for educational and historical discourse.
It is not difficult to imagine that there will remain strong detractors of this move, just as there will be ardent supporters. These voices speak to a society negotiating its complex past and its equally urgent future.
The city councils action, confirmed during African Emancipation Day celebrations, is signifying a larger need for a national self-inventory.
Who do we honour?
What stories do we elevate?
How do we weave together the strands of our social fabric in a way that reflects where we have been and where we want to go?
After all, the very symbols and institutions by which we govern todayour Parliament, our presidency, our justice systemstill exist under roofs once designed for colonial rule.
The Presidents House, a pristine colonial mansion in St Anns, once housed British governors. Whitehall, now the Prime Ministers Office, was originally a private residence of a plantation owner and merchant. The Red House, home to our Parliament, was commissioned in the early 1900s by the British colonial government following the destruction of the first government building in the Water Riots of 1903. It was designed to reflect imperial grandeur, an architecture of authority, not of local agency.
If, as in Animal Farm, we were once judged as unfit to lead ourselves, and told that others must rule until we could prove our worth, then we must now ask: what does it mean to be handed the keys?
Our collective past is not merely complicated; it is embattled. Every decision to rename, relocate, or reframe is not about erasing history but rather about interpre�ting it with greater honesty. The steps we take today to shape a more inclusive and informed national identity may seem small, but they are steps, nonetheless, laying the groundwork for a Trinidad and Tobago that a generation far beyond ours may inherit with pride.
May we be ever so guided by the actions we take and the values we uphold, so that our twin-island nation becomes the place we have always dreamt it could be.
Shahad Q Ali
