The vision that anti-colonial activists, scholars, and even citizens in Trinidad and Tobago have fought for has finally come to fruition.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, the controversial statue of Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus was removed.
According to Port of Spain Mayor Chinua Alleyne, the decision was made in consultation with various stakeholders, including representatives of the First Peoples and the Emancipation Support Committee, marking a monumental shift, both literally and spiritually.
The Grand Chief of the First Peoples of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Lewis, visited the site for a cleansing ceremony on Thursday.
“Today I’m here. We are here to celebrate the removal of this atrocity of the criminal. Of the invader Columbus, which served previously as a symbol of dominance over indigenous people, over all of the other cultures that would have come after, and it also served as a monument. You know, so we are here today to celebrate that and we’re also here today to do our smoke ceremony that is going to cleanse this space and remove the impurities that were here.”
Founder and Executive Director of the Freedom Project Caribbean, Shabaka Kambon, one of the advocates for the removal of the statue, remembers the long fight.
“We started the project with the idea that we would wake up people’s memory in this country in such a way that they wouldn’t just want to contemplate history, but to make it. And so, you know, we’re still looking forward to see, you know, all the different possibilities that could come out of this historic change.”
He says it’s now more than a local story, as he has already written to the Prime Minister of The Bahamas to tear down the statues there.
“As we became independent, we should clinically detect these germs of rot and remove them not just from our lands but from our minds as well.”
According to the Port of Spain City Corporation, the statue was safely removed under the careful guidance of Heritage Architect Rudylynn DeFour-Roberts and is now in the care of the National Trust. As announced by Mayor Alleyne on 1st August 2025, the statue will be made available to the National Museum and Art Gallery.
Names like Chief Hyarima and Chief Baucunar have already been suggested as replacement monuments.