Christopher Columbus, as portrayed by Peter Johann Nepomuk Geiger. Credit: Getty
August 25, 2024 – 1:00pm
For the first time since gaining independence in 1962, the government of Trinidad and Tobago has announced plans to remove the images of Christopher Columbus’s three ships — the Santa María, the Pinta, and the Niña — from its coat of arms. This decision is part of an effort to “drive a dagger through the heart of colonialism.” Other Caribbean nations, such as Grenada and the Bahamas, are also reportedly considering removing all traces of Columbus from their heraldry.
This initiative to eliminate national symbols that “glorify slave owners, colonizers, and oppressors” is occurring within the broader context of a movement in these countries to seek reparations for the Atlantic slave trade. However, it is ironic that despite the radical nationalist rhetoric, this reparations campaign still relies on the subaltern Caribbean nations being dependent on the charity of more powerful Western countries. This approach contrasts sharply with former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah’s assertion that “the less developed world will not become more developed through the goodwill or generosity of the developed powers.” If reparations are granted, there is a concern that they might be misappropriated by national elites rather than being used for social development.
There is also a broader and more profound question about the significance of Columbus, who represents the European colonization of the Americas.
The prevailing narrative today suggests that Columbus’s journey to the Americas initiated 500 years of Euro-American racism, genocide, slavery, and oppression. After all, Columbus himself enslaved the indigenous Taino people of Santo Domingo. Moreover, the so-called “discovery” of the Americas is often linked to the development of the Atlantic slave trade, notable for its racialized nature, and the extinction of various indigenous tribes and civilizations that had long inhabited these lands.
However, these narratives often overlook the fact that such atrocities were not unique to Columbus’s era but were common throughout human history. Long before Columbus set sail, human communities across the world had been conquering, enslaving, and dominating others as a norm in the practice of civilization.
The creation of modern civilization, marked by the epochal bourgeois revolution, of which Columbus’s voyages and the “discovery” of the Americas were a part, did not so much ignite five centuries of oppression as it did five centuries of global emancipation. As Hegel described it, this was the “blush of dawn, which after long storms first betokens the return of a bright and glorious day.” It was through the world-changing consequences of Columbus’s exploration that the true potential to overcome generations of slavery, oppression, and racism in the name of universal freedom first emerged.
Furthermore, the defining aspect of Western civilization is not the existence of slavery—whether racialized or not—but its eventual abolition. While it may seem like a cruel irony, history is more of a tragedy than a morality tale, and as a global society, we must come to terms with this complex narrative in all its facets.
The fundamental issue with the movement to erase Columbus’s legacy, beyond the fixation on symbolic changes as a stand-in for real political and social transformation, is the futile effort to “correct” the past, which risks ignoring the potential of an uncharted future. Under this mindset, Caribbeans in 2024 are still seen as victims of history, burdened and traumatized by it, rather than as architects of their own destiny.
In 1962, the eminent Trinidadian intellectual C.L.R. James noted that West Indians, after gaining independence, were “determined to discover themselves, but without hatred or malice against the foreigner, even the bitter imperialist past.” However, if the process of national self-discovery continues to focus on seeking “justice” for the wrongs of the imperialist past, it might indicate that there is still a deeper dependency on the colonizer than is acknowledged.
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