(Trinidad Guardian) One hundred and forty-two years after scores of people were killed during the 1884 Muharram massacre, a permanent monument commemorating their sacrifice has been unveiled near the Mon Repos roundabout in San Fernando. The monument was unveiled during a ceremony on Saturday.
Iere Theatre founder and Chaconia Medal Silver awardee Victor Edwards, who spearheaded the project, said the monument was not intended simply to memorialise the massacre, but to symbolise courage, resistance and resilience.
“This monument therefore becomes a gift to the people of Trinidad and Tobago in remembrance of the 107 who were shot from as many as 29 estates and the 22 who were killed from nine of the 40-plus estates of the Naparimas,” Edwards said.
He said it had taken 142 years for the victims and their resistance to cultural suppression to receive a permanent place in the national landscape.
Edwards also criticised what he described as decades of silence surrounding the killings, arguing that colonial accounts shaped the historical narrative.
He credited historian Kelvin Singh’s 1988 book, Bloodstained Tombs: The Muharram Massacre of 1884, with challenging the longstanding description of the events as the “Hosay Riots”.
Singh, who was unable to attend the unveiling because of health reasons, said he was “gratified” that the sacrifice had finally received recognition.
“For decades this event was erased from historical memory until I brought it to light in 1988,” Singh said in comments shared by Edwards.
Edwards also acknowledged the work of Ravi-Ji, who between 2004 and 2009 led a Jahaji walk from Chaguanas to Mon Repos in an effort to bring the massacre back into public consciousness.
He said the Iere Theatre’s involvement reflected its wider mandate to promote history, heritage and cultural consciousness.
The monument bears the names of those who were shot and killed, although only 18 of the 22 victims killed are known by name. A plaque honours the unidentified dead.
Eight mounted sketches surrounding the monument depict the Hosay procession and the events leading to the massacre, while a colour-changing light atop the structure is intended to symbolise Trinidad and Tobago as a “rainbow nation”.
Edwards said the project was funded largely through contributions from citizens at home and abroad, with some government funding provided in 2022.
He said the committee hopes to install additional historical markers at Toll Gate, another site of the shootings, and near the extension of the San Fernando market, where bones were reportedly exhumed.
Edwards also revealed plans to stage his play, Massacre, in October next year, with October 30 falling on a Saturday.
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