Barbados leaves British monarchy
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Barbados stopped pledging allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday as it shed another vestige of its colonial past and became a republic for the first time.
Several leaders, dignitaries and artists, including Prince Charles and Barbados native Rihanna, attended the ceremony that began late Monday in a popular square in the capital, Bridgetown, where the statue of Britain’s Lord Nelson was removed last year amid a worldwide push to erase symbols of oppression.
Fireworks peppered the sky at midnight as Barbados officially became a republic, with screens set up across the island so people could watch the event that featured an orchestra with more than 100 steel pan players and numerous singers, poets and dancers. It was also broadcast online, prompting a flurry of excited messages from Bajans living in the U.S., Canada and beyond.
“Happy Independence Day and freedom
to all,” wrote one viewer.
The drive to become a republic began more than two decades ago and culminated with the island’s Parliament electing its first-ever president last month in a two-thirds majority vote. Barbados Governor General Sandra Mason was sworn in before dawn on Tuesday as the island marked its 55th anniversary of independence from Britain.
“As cautioned by our first prime minister ... we ought no longer to be found loitering on colonial premises,” she said. “We must seek to redefine our definition of self, of state, and the Barbados brand, in a more complex, fractured and turbulent world . ... Our country and people must dream big dreams and fight to realize them.”
Mason, 72, is an attorney and judge who also has served as ambassador to Venezuela, Colombia, Chile and Brazil. She will help Prime Minister Mia Mottley lead the wealthy Caribbean island of more than 300,000 people that is dependent on tourism, manufacturing and finance.
Barbados didn’t need permission from the U.K. to become a republic, although the island will remain a member of the Commonwealth Realm.
Barbados became independent from the United Kingdom in November 1966, more than three centuries after English settlers arrived and turned the island into a wealthy sugar colony based on the work of hundreds of thousands of African slaves.