The demands for racial justice reverberating across the United States after the police killing of George Floyd has reached the sweltering shores of the Caribbean, and is fueling new life into an old cause: the removal of monuments with colonial and racist legacies.
Thousands of citizens are demanding the toppling of a colonial-era statue of British naval commander and slavery sympathizer Horatio Nelson in Barbados, and monuments to Christopher Columbus in the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago.
Online petitions, launched on Change.org, by Caribbean nationals in the three countries are gaining momentum and have received thousands of signatures in just a few days. In each case, organizers have retraced the racist legacies of Nelson and Columbus, who are memorialized in Britain's former colonies.
"It bothers my brain why someone who was pro-slavery is in a place called National Heroes Square when you have national heroes who represent what we've been through," said Alex Downes, a 30-year-old Barbadian who launched the #NelsonMustGo campaign. "They are part of our history in more of a positive way than Nelson _ who never stepped foot in Barbados _ ever was."
Since the launch Sunday, the campaign has garnered more than 7,200 signatures. It has a goal of 7,500. Once he hits his goal, Downes plans to approach the country's Parliament in hopes that lawmakers and Prime Minister Mia Mottley will finally remove the monument.
The question of what to do about the remnants of colonialism and racism has been a contentious one in the Caribbean, where the calls for the removal of Columbus' statue, for example, date back to the 1970s in Trinidad.
Similar calls have been gaining traction in the U.S. in recent years. Protesters at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2018 pulled down a bronze Confederate statue known as Silent Sam, igniting a passionate debate about whether such monuments should go or remain as reminders of past errors.
Recent anti-racism demonstrations following Floyd's death and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests have only intensified the controversy of toppling the monuments. In recent days, protesters around the U.S. have intentionally gone after Columbus, launching petitions on Change.org to have his monuments dismantled in cities around the U.S. and now the Caribbean, and vandalizing his monuments elsewhere.
On Tuesday, a statue of the Italian explorer was tossed in a lake in Richmond, Va., and on Wednesday one in Boston was beheaded while protesters in Miami vandalized the Christopher Columbus statue at Bayside Marketplace.
In the Bahamas, Craig Woodside said he decided to target Columbus as the first step toward "going after a system that represents systematic racism."
"Seeing the atmosphere of what's going on around the world right now and realizing we have a few statues here that represent systematic racism and oppression that they imposed on us before we took independence of our country, I decided we needed to stop talking about it" and do something, he said.
Woodside, 31, also launched his petition on Sunday. He has a goal of 10,000 signatures. As of Wednesday, he had received more than 8,500. Woodside and his fellow organizers are also planning on presenting the petition to their Parliament for Columbus' removal.
Columbus first made landfall in the Americas on Oct. 12, 1492, and later established a colony in present-day Haiti. In 1986, Haitians dumped a statue of his in the sea.
Columbus remains one of history's most controversial figures, with historians now describing him as being guilty of genocide and opening the door to the brutal shipping of 10 million to 12 million enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas through the Middle Passage.
Despite that, his images can be found in the English-speaking nations of the Caribbean, where his statue overlooks downtown Nassau on the island of New Providence at the foot of Government House, the official residence of the governor general of the Bahamas.
Woodside wrote on his petition that "Columbus' use of torture and dismemberment while serving as governor of a Spanish colony in the Bahamas/Caribbean earned him a reputation for shocking sadism." Woodside included a link to a Sacramento Bee editorial, headlined "Murder, rape, slavery and genocide. Here's why California must ditch Columbus Day."
Late Wednesday, another petition was launched by Bahamians. The petition is demanding the removal of the marble statue of Queen Victoria, erected in 1905, in Parliament Square in front of the Parliament building. Earlier in the day, another statue of the monarch was defaced in Leeds, England with the words "racist" and "slave owner" scrawled on it. The words "educate," "justice" and "Black Lives Matter" were also spray-painted.
Like the monument in the Bahamas, the Leeds statue was also erected in 1905 but outside Leeds Town Hall. Today it is located at Woodhouse Moor in the Hyde Park area of the city. Victoria ruled the United Kingdom and Ireland between 1837 and 1901. She also served as empress of India.
In Trinidad, a petition launched on Monday by the CrossRhodes Freedom Project has attracted 4,500 signatures. The group says its mission is to have two statues of Columbus removed. One, erected in 1881 by former slaveholder Hippolyte Borde, sits in Port-of-Spain, the capital. A second statue is in Moruga, and was erected in 2010 by artist Eric Lewis.
"Trinidad and Tobago can take pride in the fact it pioneered the end of discovery day in 1984, a decade before most other countries in the hemisphere, started," the petition's organizers said. "We must face the fact, however, that we continue to publicly glorify the murderous colonizer who initiated two of the greatest crimes in human history: the genocide of the Indigenous people of the Caribbean and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, both of which are at the root of the racial injustice that our generation is protesting today."
Downes, the Barbados resident, said he didn't just want to "piggyback on the whole discussion of Black Lives Matter," but rather use what is happening around the world to look inward as a Barbadian at his country's own remnants of racism.
"I want us to understand that there is a global shift in mentality and ... Barbados cannot escape that global shift," Downes said.
A hero of the British Empire who defeated French forces in the naval Battle of Trafalgar during the Napoleonic wars, Nelson is revered in the United Kingdom for his protection of its colonies in the Caribbean. In addition to the statue in Bridgetown, he also has streets named after him.
A bronze statue of him was first erected in 1813 and placed in the square opposite the Parliament buildings, once called Trafalgar Square. In 1999 the square was renamed and dedicated to Barbados' national heroes. The statue was then moved to the square's west side, where it still stands today.
In recent years, history has come to show Nelson in a different light. Historians point to a letter Nelson wrote to a longtime friend, a cruel slave owner in Jamaica, while onboard the HMS Victory. In it Nelson revealed sympathy for the slave holder and his opposition to British abolitionist William Wilberforce's campaign to end the slave trade.
Britain finally banned the trading of enslaved Africans in its territories in 1807 with the Slave Trade Act _ three years after Haiti became the world's first black republic following enslaved Africans' defeat of Napoleon's forces.
Downes said he decided to launch the petition after participating in a Black Lives Matter protest in Barbados to show solidarity with African Americans in the U.S. Then, he said, he realized he needed to do more.
"While it's great to be talking about the major things we need to change, I just reckoned that this statue symbolizes so much and something that we can easily rectify," he said.
Downes said since his campaign launch he's been fielding inquiries from people in St. Lucia, Antigua and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, also citing monuments in their countries that need to be removed.
"I'm hoping this is a discussion we can have regionally because obviously we have a colonial history here, and sometimes that colonial history has become our identifier," he said.
But just as the push for racial justice has been fueling demands to remove remnants of racism, it has also triggered debate and division about whether such statues should stay and serve as a teaching moment.
Downes, who minored in history and recently returned home from Australia after earning a master's degree in international law, said he's not asking for Nelson's statue to be destroyed.
"You can't change your history per se," he said. "What I'm suggesting is that the statue be removed and placed in a museum or a space for that specific entity, and you allow people to see it but get the right history."
