Remembering slavery

On a recent excursion to Trinidad, we took a short trip outside the city to visit a sugar plantation that has now been converted into a historical tourist attraction. We stopped on the way to admire the large expanses of fertile land, imagining the fields covered in slaves cutting sugar cane. The plantation consisted of the main house, converted into a restaurant, a large watchtower, and a long row of stands for artisan vendors where the slave quarters once were. The cauldrons where sugar was boiled into molasses were placed around the grounds where tourists could stand inside and take lovely pictures to remember their visit to the plantation. Inside the watch tower, where sentries used to post and have a 360 degree view of the slaves working the plantation, couples had scratched their names and families had marked their trips to the island. Out behind the main house, one of the machines used to grind the cane by having two people push a large wooden pole in a circle was placed in a little gazebo where tourists could sit and watch the recreation of slave labor. All of this made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I felt worse when we returned for lunch at the Botija, a historic tavern where we ate almost every day of the trip. On the first visit, I had noticed the shackles, whips and locks decorating the walls, but it wasn’t until the second or third that I realized the waiters’ strange all white linen get-up with head wrap were meant to resemble the garb of a plantation slave. Being a student of history, I wondered about the ways in which we memorialize horrifying periods of our history. Is attempting to recreate the “feel” of slavery in a tourist tavern or a historic plantation an appropriate way to remember that gruesome history? Is it meant to make us feel uncomfortable and think about the implications of slavery on the island? I found it much harder to enjoy my comfortable meals as I watched promotional videos on the walls of the restaurant showing two waiters in costume grind sugar cane with an antique machine.