Calls for Columbus statue to be removed

Kambon made the remarks at the launch of the project at the National Library and Information Service in Port of Spain on Thursday.

He urged citizens and academics to engage in a more thorough revision of historically significant figures and landmarks such as the Lopinot estate.

“We are calling on all of our partners to join with us as we seek to correct this collective lie that has been repeated throughout history and throughout the entirety of the Americas that Christopher Columbus discovered anything.

The statue as it is, is absurd and perverse as it continues to represent the oppression and genocide that the first peoples faced from the Spanish colonisers.” In addition to the removal of the statue, Kambon said that the project also seeks to address the renaming of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus’ main hall from Milner Hall.

Kambon said the hall which is named after eighteenth century British statesman Alfred Milner, was contradictory to the UWI’s mandate to promote regional integration, as Milner was one of the major proponents of the apartheid system in South Africa. Kambon is instead in talks with the UWI’s administration to rename the hall after Trinidadian lawyer and Pan-Africanist, Henry Sylvester Williams.

“What we want is a change in name from the oldest hall of residence at the UWI St Augustine from Milner Hall to the Henry Sylvester Williams Hall.

Milner was one of the architects of the apartheid system in South Africa he participated in some of history’s most horrendous crimes.” Citing the work of West Indian historian and intellectual Frantz Fanon, Kambon said that greater introspection is needed on the part of academics and the general public in order to dispel neo-colonial myths and is calling on all stakeholders from different cultural backgrounds to lend their voices to the ongoing discussion on historical revision.

The project’s launch ended with a visit to Columbus square where activists staged a spirited demonstration calling for the statue’s removal.