The 1763 Monument in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, commemorates one of the largest early rebellions of enslaved people in the Americas, which took control of the Dutch colony of Berbice, now part of Guyana, for a year.
The monument, often referred to as the Cuffy Monument after a leader of the revolt, was dedicated in the Square of the Revolution in 1976, honoring the tenth anniversary of Guyana’s independence.
The 1763 Rebellion came at a time when a few hundred Dutch planters held four thousand Africans and hundreds of indigenous people in slavery on sugar plantations. The rebels were eventually defeated by troops from neighboring French and British colonies.
But that defeat wasn’t the end of rebellion among enslaved peoples in Guyana; one of the figures shown on the thighs of the Cuffy statue represents Quamina, leader of a revolt of ten thousand enslaved people in what had become a British colony. Slave revolts in Guyana and Jamaica helped push Britain to abolish slavery a few years later.
The statue, which is 15 feet all and weighs more than two tons, is the work of Guyanese sculptor Philip Moore, who included symbols of Guyana’s many peoples in the design of the statue and its base.
Cuffy’s hands are shown crushing two animals: a pig, representing ignorance, and a dog representing greed.
