January 2022 - It’s so good to be back in Barbados after an 18-month hiatus! And the island has now been a republic since November 1, 2021. Strolling through Bridgetown feels strangely different. As I reach Independence Square, I suddenly notice an empty space in the middle – lo and behold, why is Admiral Nelson no longer towering over me from his pedestal? One might think Cancel culture has torn him down in its drive to rectify the past by erasing it; in fact, the statue has merely been moved to the Barbados National Museum. This decision was decades in the making and required some serious national soul-searching. I wanted to understand what Barbadians had against a Royal Navy hero who had defeated Napoleon’s troops in 1805. The answer came when I paid a visit to a rural hamlet in Barbados known as "Freedom Village".
All that remains of Freedom Village now is a tall, sleek statue in the middle of nowhere. For the first time in Barbadian history, those three painfully gaunt silhouettes – man, woman and child – no longer face the threat of being separated and sold to the highest bidder, as Admiral Nelson advocated.
Gazing at the statue, I can vividly imagine these people’s fate. In more ways than one, they were true heroes who survived all the tragic phases marking an enslaved person’s life.
In the early 19th century, the man and the woman, -let’s call them Kofi and Abena-, were each wrenched from their families in their respective African homelands and crammed into British ships. The barbarity of their harrowing journey, known as «The Middle Passage »*, is unimaginable. The first landing port in the slave trade was Barbados, where the human ‘cargo’ was unloaded and locked up in a dungeon – The Cage -- steps away from the square overlooked by the statue of Admiral Nelson, until the Africans would eventually be sold as slaves. After some time, the screaming and foul smells drove the British settlers living nearby to complain repeatedly to the authorities who finally caved in and moved the dungeon to a less residential neighborhood.
After being broken by the transatlantic crossing, Kofi and Abena still strangers-, endured moral and mental dehumanization at the hands of their new masters. It was deemed natural to treat them as objects or even beasts, thus breaking their souls. Their names and identities were confiscated. Not only were they renamed «Paul » and « Leslie »; they also had to take on the plantation owner’s patronym, as a token of possession rather than affection.
The dire conditions in which enslaved people lived and labored on Caribbean plantations is common knowledge nowadays. What few people know is that the enslavement system in Barbados surpassed any other in the region with its brutality. It was based on tyranny, torture, serial rape and ruthless exploitation at the hands of plantation owners.
On average, an enslaved person survived about 10 years. This is what drove colonial powers, after a few decades, and for reasons of profitability rather than compassion, to regulate the treatment of slaves. In the same vein as the Code Noir passed by France under Louis XIV, British laws aimed at organizing slaves’ living conditions for the sake of public order and, above all, productivity. The core tenet was that enslaved people were chattel, which motivated their owners, as one usually does with any business asset, to ensure they remained productive for as long as possible.
Paul and Leslie’s story continues. Upon arrival, after being separated from other members of their community, they craved any form of humanity. But communicating, singing, dancing and music, which could have fostered relationships between enslaved workers and encouraged them to rebel, were strictly forbidden. Survival instinct, however, prevailed among these enslaved human beings and inspired them to circumvent restrictions. The minute the supervisor had his back turned on the sugarcane field, Paul and Leslie managed to communicate by mixing some of their native vocabulary with their rudiments of English, thus starting the spread of creole languages in the region. In the evenings, to stretch their overworked bodies, Leslie and her workmates wined their waist in their cabins to the muffled sound of percussions discretely played by men on any surface -remember, drumming was prohibited-. Letting it all out was only allowed once a year, at the end of the sugarcane harvesting season, when the long-awaited «Crop-Over»** started. I can picture Paul approaching Leslie and swaying his hips in unison with hers, body-to-body, to the rhythm beaten by the other men. This celebration of life and coupling eventually evolved into « wukkup » the sensuous dance which never leaves spectators indifferent at Caribbean carnavals.
Did anyone ever defy the masters? In 1816, Paul and Leslie’s ancestors, emboldened by the decree outlawing the slave trade throughout the British Empire, attempted to claim their right to freedom alongside their fellow slave Bussa… to no avail. The new law banned the trade of African slaves, not slavery per se, and it took the British forces a mere three days to nip the rebellion in the bud.
Paul and Leslie’s hopes were crushed as well in 1833: as a result of the growing outcry from abolitionist movements in the United Kingdom -- but mostly because of a downward trend in the sugar trade – the abolition of slavery was finally promulgated. Yet enslavement persisted. In order to protect its business interests, the sugar plantocracy craftily devised an "apprenticeship" scheme. Under the guise of teaching Paul and Leslie a set of skills (which they practiced already) in preparation for their upcoming freedom, the master kept them working on his sugarcane plantation, but without pay.
Their only relief came from the fact that they were now a couple and no longer needed to worry that the family might be torn apart if one of them was sold off to a new master.
It wasn’t until 1838 that enslavement was truly abolished throughout the British Empire and ‘Emancipation’ became real. And guess who pocketed the 20 million pounds sterling (amounting to several billion nowadays) that the British Crown agreed to pay in damages? The former slaves, you might wonder? Think again. It all went to compensate the ‘unfortunate’ slave owners who had to give up their unpaid workforce.
Though Emancipation, which is celebrated nowadays in Barbados on August 1, was heralding a new era, this new-found freedom did not immediately bring about total deliverance. Many more years of suffering ensued while enslaved workers continued to toil under a master’s yoke and grappled with an impossible choice. They could keep being employed and exploited, or starve, or leave. And leaving implied losing one’s home and starting from scratch on another plantation with no guarantee of being treated more fairly. Faced with the risk of losing all their belongings every time they were uprooted – forcibly or willingly -- these newly ‘liberated’ men and women ended up building their own portable chattel houses which became one of the island’s most appreciated features. The walls of these houses were made with wooden slats which rested on a foundation of irregular stones a few feet high.
After years of grueling working conditions under different masters, Paul and Leslie made an incredibly bold move: they decided to build their own chattel house away from any plantation and earn a living as truly free individuals. This was a daunting endeavor as plantation owners had the monopoly on Barbadian economy. Our heroes had to overcome isolation and learn to address the challenges of freedom for which they had never been prepared. Their true reward came from being able to reclaim their full humanity and finally live as a family with their son, without worrying about being separated or sold off. Other families were inspired by their courage and followed suit. Together, they created the very first free village, Freedom Village in Rock Hall, St. Thomas Parish****.
As I gaze at the statue after this journey down memory lane, a shiver goes through my spine. I definitely believe the true heroes of Barbados are Paul and Leslie, not Admiral Nelson who relentlessly opposed the abolition of slavery. I also believe keeping the Admiral’s statue at the National Museum of Barbados after taking it down was the right thing to do for the sake of remembrance. Kofi and Abena’s descendants need us to see this reminder of the role the British settlers played in their ancestors’ tragic history
Translated by Edna Setton
April 22, 2022