The debate about monuments and history rears its head periodically. This time around it has been started by Mr Rakesh Rampertab who has argued his position twice in our letter columns, and has received support from Mr Dave Martins. They would like Queen Victoria’s statue to be removed from the compound of the High Court because of its imperial associations.

Mr Rampertab, however, did not stop there, and in a letter published on August 20, he also put forward a case for renaming our streets and villages. We are free to shape our topography, he said, and asked why local names like ‘Uitvlugt’ had been discarded in the first place. He considered that our seeming penchant for foreign nomenclature, etc, had its origins in a lack of self-respect.

First, a word about our place names. Plantation names like ‘Uitvlugt’ did not displace ‘local’ ones. The Amerindians described the natural features of their terrain, but did not bother about arbitrary areas identified by colonial authorities as land grants for planters. And the indigenous designations for this country’s natural features have remained largely intact, including those for our major rivers. The name ‘Essequibo,’ for example, has its origins in an Arawak word for ‘hearth-stones,’ because the members of that nation used to collect stones from its banks for their firesides.

Most of our coastal names are Arawak, for the obvious reason that the Arawaks were the most numerous of the autochthonous groups living along our littoral. In addition, an eighteenth century Dutch ordinance embedded their topography in colonial cartography by requiring surveyors and planters to use only the Arawak designations for natural features in documents or on maps. The law had less to do with respect for the indigenous peoples, of course, than it had with consistency of public description in circumstances where planters were always trying to name creeks after themselves. Nevertheless, whatever the motive, the net result of the requirement is that we have inherited the “local” names of a pre-colonial world.

And as for the colonial names themselves, they too are part of our history. It is surely not a happy history, but it is ours. Those names tell a story which began, possibly in 1616, or if not in the early 1620s, and whose first phase lasted for more than two hundred years until 1838. It is not a lack of respect for ourselves which causes those names to be retained; quite the opposite, in fact. It is a recognition of the forebears who suffered on plantations bearing those names, who cultivated their gardens within them, and who finally were laid to rest in their soils. Some of the names of Dutch origin have been with us for over three hundred and fifty years, and a few of them have been subject to orthographic changes over the centuries; at what level, therefore, could it be said that these are foreign?

In the case of street and ward names, the principle is largely the same. They too tell the story of our past, although that does not mean that we are honouring any individuals whose names they happen to record. Some of those in Georgetown are plantation names, like ‘Ruimveldt’, ‘La Penitence’, or ‘Vlissengen’, and some of them are planter names like ‘Cummings,’ ‘Bourda’, or ‘Saffon.’ That is because the capital was created out of the front lands of estates, which is the reason it is laid out the way it is - making it, incidentally, the world’s only plantation city. Inevitably there are some governors among the complement, but they too had their part to play in our past.

Of course Mr Rampertab is correct in saying that we must start naming streets after the Martin Carters of our society. However, that does not require renaming. As our urban areas increase in size (which they are doing), there will be ample opportunity for recognizing those of talent and those who have given service in the community in all the new streets which are being created. In fact, this process has already begun.

And in the same vein, a word about Victoria’s statue. In general, statues of great antiquity generate no emotion at all from subsequent generations. They are preserved, mostly in situ, not for who they represent (and many of the world statues depict thugs and despots), and not for the times or ideology with which they are associated (these will often repel), but for the simple fact they are part of the heritage and part of history. In relation to very ancient statues too, there will be other considerations, such as artistic value, etc.

The problem comes with more modern statues, where there will still be an emotional response because the era when they were crafted is too close to us in time. And so it is with Victoria. Mr Muniram in his defence of leaving the statue where it is (SN, 12.8.03) regarded it as part of the Victorian architecture of its surroundings. In so thinking he is taking a long view of history which surely has merit. There certainly can be no one in this country who venerates Victoria, let alone the “racist ideology” with which her period was associated. And one cannot help but feel that for all those Guyanese born since Independence, the statue really is “lifeless.”

This is a very young society, and over the course of time it will generate statues or representations of those who have made their contribution. Interestingly, in Georgetown with the exception of the 1763 monument (which does not represent Coffy, per se) and Critchlow, we have seemed to favour outsiders. (There is the monument to Indian immigration, but that is a ship, not a person.) For the rest we have a statue of Gandhi - no one will quarrel with that - and the busts of the four founders of the Non-Aligned Movement. While the movement is effectively dead, and some of the four founders are not looked on quite so favourably as they once were, the principle is the same as in the case of Victoria. They were erected at a particular time in our history, and reflect an approach which was favoured at that stage, and they should be left where they are.