GOVT LOOKING INTO RENAMING PLACES WITH NAMES OF SLAVE MASTERS
Minister of Finance Hon. Camillo Gonsalves said Government intends to rename a number of places , in a phased manner, a meaningful step in decolonizing the national landscape.
Speaking on radio recently, the Minister said that many places in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) have colonial and slave-owning legacies embedded in their names.
“I think we must have a serious reckoning, and we’ve discussed it, everybody says from time to time, ‘oh, we have so many roads and villages named after colonial powers and colonial people’…people from colonial times with some disreputable histories, but we really need to have a serious reckoning with some of the names that we have around this country,” Gonsalves said.
He made mention of Kingstown, Choppins, Coulls Hill, Redemption Sharpes, Murray’s Village, God Save the Queen Bridge and Victoria Park to name a few.
6 4. . .we can’t change the entire geography of the country and all the names immediately. But, you know, I’m sifting there in my office last week and learning how we’re fixing God Save the Queen Bridge and God Save the King, and it rankles…and this is something that we do every day,” Minister Gonsalves said.
He noted that a number of countries, in the process of their decolonization and independence struggle, changed all the names at once.
“We have not taken that path, but I think we’re at the stage in our consciousness where we do need to make a few changes…and it could be a gradual process. It could be a phased process,” the Minister said.
