Tobago CivilNET chair: Colonial relics damage the mind

RODNEY PIGGOTT, chair of Tobago CivilNET, believes relics and symbols of TT’s colonial past should be removed from public spaces.

He was speaking at a public consultation hosted by the Cabinet-appointed committee on statues, monuments and signage on December 10 at the Scarborough Library.

The committee invited members of the public to share their views on the criteria that should be established for erecting statues and monuments.

They also were asked to offer suggestions for the removal or retention of specific statues and monuments in public spaces, as well as suggestions for new statues, monuments and signage.

Noting TT’s painful history of enslavement, indentureship and servitude, Piggott said the focus should be on decolonisation.

He said the colonisers branded the space with symbols and monuments.

“For instance, when the French were here, one of our most beautiful sites was called Fort Castries. But when the British came here, they were not concerned with preserving that history – that was a brand of France. It’s now called Fort King George.

“So now that we as a people claim to be independent, claim to be free, claim to be no longer a colony, no longer enslaved, it is only fitting and right that we remove the brand of those who had us under their foot.”

Piggott continued, “When a gang member no longer wants to be in a gang and he or she successfully leaves the gang, those gang markings that they have on their face and their bodies, one of the things they want to do is to remove those brands, because they are no longer associated with this gang.

“So I think one of the angles that we have to look at is that it’s necessary that we remove the brands of those who had us under our foot from our public spaces where they are in our face every day.”

Piggott said while Tobagonians cannot eliminate their history because they were once under French and British rule, “What I think we would want to do is to take those symbols, like those thunderous-looking cannon that just seem to be everywhere.

“It represents that which was used to keep their property to themselves. We (Tobagonians) were their property and the cannon were pointed outwards. So it wasn’t us they were fighting, but the other dogs coming to take their bone.

“We were the bone. So why would we want to leave those bones all around the place to remind ourselves that we were once property fought over? It's a continuing psychological damage that takes place.”

Piggott recommended that symbols of the island’s colonial past be put in a designated area such as a park.

He said Italy had created what it called a “park of monsters” to showcase its symbols of oppression.

“This is where they put those statues, monuments and symbols, in a particular park, for a tourist attraction. Hannibal and his elephant are in that park. They don’t have a street called Hannibal Street and they don’t leave Hannibal and his elephant out in a public space where their children and everyone can see them every day and be psychologically reminded, down to the subconscious that this is a man that once dominated us.

Piggott also said the name of Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler was all over the world when he was in power.

“But once that war was over and Hitler was toppled, those people who were oppressed by Hitler, they had all his names removed from everywhere. You can’t go anywhere and find a Hitler Avenue, unless it is in a white supremacist’s home. Why? Because they know the psychological damage that this has.”

He said images and symbols are a constant reminder that Tobagonians were a conquered, enslaved people.