Playing Statues: Monuments, Racism, and Children’s Geography Texts

Do you remember playing a game, maybe at a birthday party, called Statues?  You took a statue pose and had to be the last one remaining still.  You often got a prize for not moving.  I had this image in mind over the last few days, as the events in Charlottesville had people all over the world focused on the way that statues can take us back in history and hold us in a place of racism, division, and oppression.

I’m not the only one who has been thinking about this.  London’s Black History Walks group (http://www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk/) has a list of eight statues and buildings with racist histories in the UK (you can sign up for their email newsletter even if you are outside the UK to get this and other stories, but if you can get to one of their history walks, I can personally recommend that you do so).  And of course there is the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, which began in South Africa in 2015 and expanded to Oxford in 2016; this week the global editor of the Huffington Post, Lydia Polgreen, commented on Rhodes Must Fall as a model for Americans who want to remove confederate statues, although she added, “changes to monuments will only be enough once economic justice is included in the redress of South Africa’s socio-economic crisis” (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/08/14/rhodes-must-fall-campaign-could-help-charlottesville_a_23076674/). There have been many critics of the idea of statue removal as well. I doubt I need to tell you who was “sad” this week “to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” but he is not alone in this sentiment.  Many have suggested that statues of racist and imperialist figures in statues and monuments remind us of humanity’s troubled past, and help keep us from repeating mistakes (although the logic of this when examined in light of this week’s events is somewhat questionable).

But surely, even if you believe that statues can tell a sobering history of human inhumanity, that story must be put into context; otherwise, viewers draw their own conclusions.  Many towns, for example, have statues of generals in full battle gear in triumphant poses, but only simple pillars or crosses to the many ordinary soldiers that died in the battle or war.  To me as a child, that always suggested that generals were heroic and important, but you should definitely try not to be an ordinary soldier, since their lives clearly did not matter as much.  There was no context to tell me anything different, especially before I could read.  Image was everything.

CW Airne’s Our Empire’s Story shows a triumphant statue of Rhodes. Note that even in the depiction of the Last Stand of [white British] Captain Wilson, it appears the Matabili are losing.

Because of my own childhood experience of statues, I wanted to examine how children’s literature, particularly geography texts, considered statues.  The books I discuss here are from my own collection, which largely contains British empire and post-empire examples (it would be very interesting to look at similar geography books about the US).  Early examples often mentioned statues and memorials.  George Dickson’s A Nursery Geography (Thomas Nelson, ca. 1920) has two children traveling the world on a magic carpet; coming into London, “The first thing we saw was a tall column, the Nelson Monument.  We had heard of Nelson, the greatest admiral that ever lived, who was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar” (131).  There is nothing here (or on the statue itself) to suggest that less than six months before his death, Nelson was vowing to fight “that damnable and cursed doctrine” of abolitionist William Wilberforce (http://blog.soton.ac.uk/slaveryandrevolution/tag/horatio-nelson/); in fact, most adults today are not even aware of Nelson’s pro-slavery stance.  C. W. Airne’s Our Empire’s Story told in pictures (Thomas Hope, ca. 1944) has drawings of several statues around the British empire; perhaps the most pertinent page to current events is the page on Rhodesia, which begins with a statue of Cecil Rhodes—contrasted with an “Ancient conical Tower in the mysterious ruins of Zimbabwe” (41)—and several pictures that show Rhodes’s influence (positive, of course).

Taking a stand against imperialism and slavery; Morrison’s Guyana celebrates Cuffy rather than Victoria.

I was therefore quite surprised to examine more modern examples of geography texts and see how other histories often take pride of place.  My collection only includes a small sampling of geography texts about the West Indies (my particular area of interest) but the books I do have either ignore statues and monuments altogether, or highlight anti-colonial histories through their statues.  Marion Morrison’s Guyana (Children’s Press, 2003), part of the Enchantment of the World series, does not mention the famous statue of Queen Victoria, erected in 1887, dynamited in anti-colonial protests in 1954, and finally permanently removed in 1970 upon declaration of the Guyanese republic (http://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/victoria-monuments/210/statue-of-queen-victoria-), but has a photograph of a statue of the Berbice Rebellion leader, Cuffy (48).

Not all kings are white, and not all visitors to abolition monuments are Black, as depicted in Hintz’s Haiti

Martin Hintz’s Haiti (Children’s Press, 1998) in the same series, not only has a picture of the statue of King Henri Christophe (22), but also includes an undated historical drawing of “A temple honoring the end of slavery at Le Cap” (85).

Sarah De Capua’s Dominican Republic (Marshall Cavendish, 2004) is perhaps the most disappointing of the books I found with statues.  Part of the “Discovering Cultures” series, the book not only elides Columbus’s connection with the slave trade on the page that shows his statue (11), it fails to discuss the front cover statue, the Monument of the Heroes.  Originally a statue to the dictator Trujillo, the statue was repurposed to depict heroes of the war of independence from Spain in 1961.  But nothing about the statue is mentioned in the text, while Columbus is depicted as the founder of the first permanent colony in the island.

Malcolm Frederick’s Kamal Goes to Trinidad (Frances Lincoln, 2008), with its pictures by Prodeepta Das, could also have included a photo of the statue of Columbus that stands in Port of Spain, but instead, he chose a statue that acts as a reminder of both the British Empire and a time more than a thousand years’ previous (when Britain itself was a tiny outpost of the Roman Empire).  The inclusion of the statue of Hanuman, the Hindu deity, points out Trinidad’s multiculturalism that resulted from British imperialism—but the religion itself came before and outlasted that empire.

Statues depict a moment in time to remind people of historical events.  They can act as a way to glorify a less-than-glorious history, especially when viewed without a context (or with a one-sided context).  But as some of these examples from children’s geography show, statues can, paradoxically, show us a way to move away from histories of racism and imperialism, and toward one of ordinary people’s struggle against that oppression.

Shades of a Brutal Past

Last week, Haitian president Evans Paul warned that the Dominican Republic’s policy of deporting those of Haitian descent back to Haiti would lead to a humanitarian crisis. Fourteen thousand people have crossed the border in less than a week, some by choice and some by force. Many of those coming to Haiti were born in the Dominican Republic and have never been to the country before, yet they are being denied citizenship because they cannot prove their place of birth. It is estimated that there are half a million Haitians in the Dominican Republic; of the 250,000 who have applied for citizenship, only 300 have been granted residency permits (those who can prove they have applied will not, according to the government, be deported until their case is examined).

Most of the Haitians (and people of Haitian ancestry) in the Dominican Republic live in bateys, company towns built for sugarcane workers. Many entered the country illegally, and their employers refuse to vouch for them or their families because they do not want to admit they are hiring illegal workers. This is a situation found all over the world in the agricultural industry especially; but in the Dominican Republic, it has a particularly brutal history. In 1937, under the infamous reign of Trujillo, around 20,000 Haitians were massacred because they could not say the word “perejil” (parsley) like a native Spanish-speaker would. The current deportation order goes back to any Haitian who has entered the country since 1930.

Other countries, including the US, have preserved official silence (in general) about the deportations. According to the New York Times, this is due to “the troubled relationship many countries have with migrant workers who enter their borders illegally seeking employment” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/world/americas/migrant-workers-in-dominican-republic-most-of-them-haitian-face-deportation.html?_r=0). But official silence about the Dominican Republic’s racial policies has long been the case. Take, for example, Sydney Greenbie’s wartime Three Island Nations: Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic (1942), part of the Good Neighbor Series and developed under the auspices of the US Commissioner of Education John Studebaker (the US government had a habit in the 40s and 50s of “suggesting” what children should read; this is one reason so much science fiction was published in the decade before the US landed on the moon). This series, designed to teach American children about their Latin American neighbors, surprisingly mentions the Perejil Massacre—but is rather coy in its explanations: “it is always a temptation for the Haitians to come over into the more spacious lands of Santo Domingo to seek work,” Greenbie writes, and, “In 1937, when the Dominicans found that thousands of Haitians had crossed the border illegally, a serious armed clash occurred. The Dominican Republic finally admitted full responsibility for the incident and paid Haiti an indemnity” (72-73). Here the discussion of the massacre ends, and the reader is left with the idea (based on the words “illegally” and “clash”) that—despite the Dominicans taking responsibility—the Haitians are equally to blame. Greenbie’s text does, however, admit that the problem is a racial one; he writes that Dominicans “punish anyone on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti who dances the Negro dances or sings the jungle songs” (72), because Dominicans want to emphasize their Spanish origins.

Mostly good neighbors–except for that massacre thing.

Perhaps Greenbie (and the US government) felt it was wise to remain vague about a dictator still in power at the time his book was written. But most modern geographies for children do not mention the Perejil Massacre or the large number of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic (then or now) at all. One that does is Susan Haberle’s Countries and Cultures: Dominican Republic (Capstone: 2004), but again, the discussion raises more questions than it answers and leaves the Haitians appearing partly to blame. She writes, “Most Dominicans, and people around the world, remember Trujillo’s rule as a time of terror. He imprisoned, tortured, and killed people who opposed his rule. In 1937, he ordered the murder of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic as revenge for the killing of spies he sent to Haiti. More than 20,000 people were killed” (29-30). Although admitting to the number of Haitians killed, there is nothing about Dominican racism, and the Haitians are faulted for spying on the Trujillo regime (the US was also spying on Trujillo, but he didn’t murder 20,000 Americans . . .). Even more than 60 years after Trujillo’s assassination, children’s geographies remain evasive about the Perejil Massacre and the racism that led to it.

Suffering under the DR’s Trujillo in Alvarez’s novel for children.

This is true of children’s fiction as well. Although authors like Julia Alvarez have brought powerful stories of Trujillo’s regime to a young audience (Before We Were Free, 2004), her children’s books do not discuss the Dominican-Haitian divide. Interestingly, she has written a story about migrant workers being sent back to their native land, in Return to Sender (2010), but this book is about Mexican migrant workers in the US. Edwidge Danticat, who along with Junot Díaz has called for intellectuals to take a stand against the deportations in the Dominican Republic (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/25/junot-diaz-edwidge-danticat-condemn-dominican-republic-haitian-migrants), has written one of the most powerful books ever about the Perejil Massacre, The Farming of Bones (1998)—but this is for adults. Haitians, in children’s books about the Dominican Republic, are not just fictional—they are almost nonexistent.

There is only one book that I could find that tells the story of a contemporary Haitian child in the Dominican Republic. The self-published book by Amanda Ellis, with text in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, is called Jwenlapaix in the Bateyes (2009) and tells the story of Haitian canecutters in the Dominican Republic. “Their lives are one long fight, one endless struggle,” Ellis writes, “against the sun, against the cane, against their Dominican sisters and brothers, and against a world that does not even know they are there.” Perhaps this latest crisis will bring their struggle to the attention of authors and readers at last.