{"id":60576,"date":"2020-06-30T12:11:06","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T12:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/?p=60576"},"modified":"2020-06-30T12:11:06","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T12:11:06","slug":"their-symbols-and-ours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/their-symbols-and-ours\/","title":{"rendered":"Their Symbols and Ours"},"content":{"rendered":"

The impressive wave of protests unleashed by the murder of George Floyd in the United States not only crossed the borders of that country \u2013 impacting on a new world reality \u2013 but it offers particularly exciting episodes, typical of hot periods of history.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Daniel Sugasti<\/p>\n

One of those moments occurred on 7 June when an ink-covered statue rolled through the streets of an English city, pushed by thousands of protesters until dumped into river Avon.<\/p>\n

The statue was none other than that of Edward Colston, \u201cillustrious son of Bristol.\u201d Colston [1636-1721] amassed a vast fortune by trafficking kidnapped human beings from Africa and then enslaving them in the Caribbean and other parts of America.<\/p>\n

An estimated 84,000 captives or more were taken by ship. The horrendous conditions of the crossing cost the life of between 10% and 20% of \u201cthe load\u201d\u00a0[1]<\/a>. The successful businessman became deputy director of the Royal African Company (RAC), which at that time monopolised the slave trade. The director was none other than the brother of King Charles II, later King James II. The power he accumulated through his business led him to become a member of the British Parliament in the 17th century. Such entrepreneurship is associated with Bristol\u2019s \u201cprosperity\u201d built on African flesh and blood. The local bourgeoisie, demonstrating a deep class consciousness and a commitment (no less profound) to their class, could not stop eternalising him, giving his name to roads, buildings and schools as well as monuments scattered throughout the city.<\/p>\n

Social activists have long fueled a campaign to remove the monument. Well, history grants revenge. To the horror of the English authorities \u2013 who saw the scene as an atrocity, a \u201ccriminal act\u201d, a damnable \u201cvandalism\u201d \u2013 those protesting in Bristol won a victory that undoubtedly raised the morale of millions of fighters all over the planet.<\/p>\n

The Bristol protesters stamped George Floyd\u2019s image on many posters. The symbol of racism and colonialism in the city is Colston. Result of the attack: the statue of the slaver was thrown in the river \u2026 a small great victory.<\/p>\n

Colston memory was celebrated during Queen Victoria\u2019s reign by building his statue in 1895. At that time Britain was the foremost imperialist nation, but the USA and Germany made powerful challenges to its domination of the world. It is as if Britain\u2019s rulers were saying \u201cwe are slave owners but more powerful than the world Colston. We own a world where the sun never sets.\u201d The 1840s chartist leader Ernest Jones, added to such boastfulness, \u201cAnd where the blood never dried\u201d. Colston\u2019s statue symbolically celebrated British imperialist power using an icon of slavery.<\/p>\n

Protests throughout Europe<\/strong><\/p>\n

Protests against statues of racist, colonialist, genocidal characters, tyrants of all kinds erupted throughout Europe. In London they demolished the statue of Scottish slaver Robert Milligan. Churchill\u2019s statue felt the outburst of popular fury: on the pedestal of his statue in the British capital, the protesters wrote correctly that \u201che was a racist\u201d, he was also a murderer of colonial people.<\/p>\n

This triggered an alarm. The government protected the monument with a metal box and ordered permanent police protection. On Saturday, 14 June, a far-right demonstration joined the London police, to \u201cdefend\u201d the memory of the British \u201chero\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Belgium, dozens of Leopold II statues, who reigned between 1865 and 1909, are being targeted by thousands of protesters. At the base of his equestrian monument in Brussels, graffiti says: \u201cThis man killed fifteen million people.\u201d In Antwerp, his statue was burnt down.<\/p>\n

During the colonial division of Africa, the current Democratic Republic of the Congo had the distinction of being the personal property of the Belgian monarch. He enriched himself through exploiting ivory. But by 1890, the high demand for rubber raised colonial exploitation to barbaric levels. Endowed with a private army, he forced the Congolese to meet ever-higher rubber quotas. His cruelty generated exodus and drowned rebellion and workers in blood. Those who did not meet the goals dictated by Leopold II and his associates could be killed or, among other atrocities, have their hands amputated. Adam Hochschild, American historian, estimates that half the population disappeared between 1880 and 1920.<\/p>\n

In the UK and Belgium, the authorities removed some statues from public spaces for display in museums. A measure that was obviously taken to avoid repeating scenes like the one in Bristol.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the Atlantic, the murder of George Floyd not only sparked massive protests but also fueled the debate on historical memory in the United States. In the last two weeks, statues of Confederate leaders or generals and those of Christopher Columbus were attacked amid protests, in cities such as New York, Boston, or Richmond, precisely the capital of the former slave south. The statue of former Confederate President Jefferson Davies concentrated the anger of the anti-racist movement that is shaking the United States. The Richmond Governor was quick to decide the removal of the monument commemorating Confederate General Robert E. Lee. But a judge postponed the measure, appealing to jurisprudence that considers it \u201cperpetually sacred.\u201d<\/p>\n

The force of the movement caused Donald Trump to express, on a tweet, \u201che will not even consider\u201d changing place names or removing statues. However, the Republican-led Senate Armed Forces Committee urged the Pentagon to rename military bases named after Confederate leaders. This element of the political crisis among top officers of the US government became clearer when the US Navy announced the order to \u201cprohibit the use of the Confederate flag in all public spaces and work areas of the facilities of the Navy, as well as on ships, planes, and submarines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latin America is no stranger to the impact of the rebellion taking place in the US and other parts of the world. There is controversy about the monuments that honour dictators and genocidal figures. To cite an example, in S\u00e3o Paulo there are highways named after generals of the last military dictatorship. Not to mention the countless monuments or roads that exalt the \u201cglories\u201d of the commanders of the genocide committed against the Paraguayan people during the War of the Triple Alliance [1864-1870], such as the Duke of Caxias, patron of the Brazilian Army. But it is the statues of the controversial\u00a0Bandeirantes<\/em>\u00a0that have sparked a particularly heated debate. Not without reason. The\u00a0Bandeirantes<\/em>\u00a0were the armed vanguard of colonial penetration into the Brazilian inland during the 16th and 17th centuries. As the USP lecturer Rodrigo Ricupero explains, the territorial conquests attributed to those now considered \u201cnational heroes\u201d are inseparable from the capture and enslavement of tens of thousands of indigenous people, from the destruction of the \u201cquilombos\u201d (freed areas of runaway slaves who resisted the European coloniser and enslaver): \u201cthey were simply the most visible face of the fundamental violence that marked that society [\u2026] they were fundamental pieces for the formation and reproduction of the slave society [\u2026]\u201d. The\u00a0Bandeirantes<\/em>, Ricupero says, were the other side of the same coin of the sugar mill lords, the mine owners, the big merchants, and the Portuguese State in colonised Brazil.<\/p>\n

Erase history?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister, defended the permanence of monuments of racist and colonial figures, arguing that \u201cwe must attack the substance of the problem, not the symbols.\u201d\u00a0[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Many university historians and journalists from bourgeois media positioned themselves in the same direction: statues must be kept because, according to them, you cannot \u201cerase history\u201d. History is history, with its \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d sides, they say. If anything, the debate on the historical role of this or that individual or period could be deepened, but never \u201cviolating\u201d the symbols of the past.<\/p>\n

Thus, under the cloak of defending the \u201chistorical or urban heritage\u201d, or an appeal to \u201cstudy\u201d and \u201ccontextualise\u201d history, they hide a rejection \u2013\u00a0 now open, now veiled \u2013 and a fear (justified) by the explosive content of the huge Pandora\u2019s box opened by Floyd\u2019s murder. The problem for these politicians and professors is that this debate is taking place \u2026 in the streets.<\/p>\n

Some reflections on the above question.<\/p>\n