The Caribbean History Archives

The Red House

2012-02-01T05:35:00.000-08:00

It was a hot night in the dry season of 1808. Mosquitoesseemed to be attacking the little town of Port of Spain by the millions,swarming out from the nearby swamplands. It was one of those nights when thenoise from the streets was especially annoying. Tossing and turning in the bed,sweating; why isn't there the habitual cool breeze?

Suddenly, a piercing scream disrupts the uneasy slumber.Governor Thomas Hislop sits bolt upright in his soldier cot. The blanket slipsto the floor. The scream, and the stinging smell that gets the adrenalinepumping instantly: smoke. Now, he hears the crackling. Yes, fire, and a big oneat that.

The fire that had Governor Hislop startled from his sleepdestroyed a large part of Port of Spain. The small town had grown tremendouslyin the last twenty years, since thousands of French immigrants and theirAfrican slaves flocked to the island to establish plantations and businesseshere.

The prevalent building style of the city was wood andshingles, a bad choice of materials as this night of flames and smoke was toprove. Hislop had to deal with hundreds of homeless people from one day to thenext. Valuable historical records from Spanish times were destroyed. To dealwith the chaos and to prevent such a disaster in the future, Hislop'sadministration passed legislation with regard to building regulations,stipulating that the re-building of the destroyed parts of town and any othernew construction had to be made with brick and stone.

A wise decision, which was put into action by Hislop himselfand his successors Munro, Woodford, Grant, Hill, Gregor and McLeod. The latter,Sir Henry McLeod, laid on February 15, 1844 the foundation stone for a newgovernment building on the west side of Brunswick Square (now Woodford Square).This was to be the first building on the site where the Red House now stands -let us call it the "first Red House", even though it was not thenknown by that name.

The architect of the first Red House was Richard Bridgens,known to us also by his drawing of Trinidadian people, i.e. Amerindians, the"Negro Figuranti" and scenes of Tobago. He was then appointed as theSuperintendent of Public Works, a sector of the public administration that hadbeen very busy since the 1810s and 1820s, when Governor Woodford did some majorstructural changes in the town.

The builders of that first Red House were G. de la Sauvagèreand A. A. Pierre. The final building was somewhat smaller than the second(present-day) Red House. Somewhat artless, it was comprised of two blocks,connected by an archway through which coaches could pass from Abercromby Streetinto Prince Street (now Sackville Street). In those days, it was exclusivelypedestrians, people on horseback, and carts and buggies that populated thestreets, and a detour around the Red House would have been inconvenient forthose muscle-powered means of transport. Also, in case of fire or publicturmoil, the part of town behind the Red House had to be easily accessible forfire fighters or for the police.

The first Red House was opened in 1848 by then Governor LordHarris, an enlightened man who contributed much to the development of theisland, in particular to learning and education, founding a library and thefirst public school system that included Indian and black children in thecountryside. The building was then not quite completed, but the inaugurationceremony in the Trinity Cathedral took place anyway.

Fifty years later, it was still not completed, for reasonsunbeknownst to the author. Olga Mavrogordato in her book "Voices in theStreet" quotes the Port of Spain Gazette of 1892:

"Nothing further had been done to complete thebuildings since their erection some fifty years ago. The only attempt torelieve the monotony of the whole is to be seen in the arching of thecarriageway through the courtyard which is a perfect skeleton and, like theruins of Pompeii, is more suggestive of what the buildings must have been thanof what they were intended to be."

The Director of Public Works in the 1890s, J.E. Tanner,apparently took those comments to heart, and together with the increasing needfor a proper public records office, £15,000 was allotted over the next years tocarry out extensions and alterations. The first Red House started to look alittle more stately.

In 1897, the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria wascelebrated all over the British Empire. Trinidad, too, spruced up, and the firstRed House was painted red. This was when it got its name - not officially, butby Trinidadians, who henceforth referred to it by that name. The name stuck,and so did the red colour, at least up to the year 2001 when this article waswritten.

Five years later, on the 23rd March 1903, the first RedHouse was destroyed. Its windows were smashed by stones, the plaster of thewalls damaged here and there by bullets, and then the whole thing went up inflames: an enraged mob vented its anger on the government's property. Thisincident is known today as the "Water Riots", since it started withthe discussion of the increase of water rates by the Legislative Council, andended with panic, death and destruction on the side of the protesters outside.The governor then was Sir A.C. Maloney. Again, for us interested in history,valuable records were destroyed, making it at times impossible to retrace thefacts of times past.

In 1904, re-building began. It was a time of construction onthe whole. Cocoa had brought a lot of cash into the economy, and theadministration and some private individuals invested in beautiful buildingsthat are today Trinidad's heritage treasure: the Magnificent Seven were alsoerected in 1904.

The second Red House is the one we know today. Designed andbuilt by German architect D.M. Hahn, who was Chief Draughtsman of Public Works,it cost an estimated sum of £47,485. It was much more splendid and elaboratethan the first Red House, with beautiful gesso work in the Legislative CouncilChamber (now the Parliament Chamber) and in the Justice Hall, which is depictedin its old, undecorated form in the first house on the cover of the Digest. Thegessowork and the panels were in fact made in England, shipped to Trinidad inparts, and installed by Italian craftsmen who also worked in the halls of forexample Whitehall.

The carriageway between the two wings of the Red House wasclosed by Hahn for vehicular traffic, but remained open to pedestrians, and hada beautiful fountain in the centre under the rotunda. The square opposite to itwas renamed Woodford Square during World War I, when Germany and its city ofBraunschweig (Brunswick) had become enemies of the British Empire and no majorlandmark was to be named for them. Similarly, Hanover Street (named for the GermanHouse of Hanover, whence Queen Victoria's husband hailed) became the extensionof Abercromby Street.

Inspite of all these name changes, the Red House remainedthe Red House and is now officially referred to under this name.

An Indentured Prince

2012-01-30T05:23:00.000-08:00

This is a tale of two royal princes and how they madetheir way to the Land of the Hummingbird. It is a fictional, dramatised accountof two true adventures, one of an Indian prince who came to Trinidad as anindentured labourer, and one of an African prince who was freed from a slaveship.

The history of Trinidad and Tobago is a story of immigrants.Coming to these islands from three continents, these themselves separated bythousands of miles, distinguished by cultures fundamentally different, theimmigrants shared, however, the island's eclectic and dynamic 19th centuryculture. Sometimes, they had a unique background in common, like royalty.

Ishwarisingh, by the grace of God, was born into the royalhouse of Jaipur. He was the third son of Motilal Singh, uncle and one timeguardian of the Maharaja of Jaipur, Surat Chandra Singh. Ishwarisingh grew up inthe shadow of the great mandir dedicated to Shila Devi, who representsMahishasuramardini, the 'slayer of the buffalo-demon'. He became a musician,poet and devotee, a dedicated priest to that shrine of Her benevolence.

Ishwarisingh was born in the 20th year of the reign of QueenVictoria of England, whose majesty had spread across the known world, even toIndia, where her agents and military had engulfed the Mungal kingdoms andthreatened the independent princely Rajput states. Jaipur stood as an island,independent, as it had done for close upon a thousand years. defended by thewealth and the wisdom of her ruling house and walked in the ruins of longdeserted temples.

Ishwarisingh, in the flower of his youth, decided upon a holyjourney, a pilgrimage, so as to visit shrines and sites of his devotion. He traveledin the style not of a prince of the blood, but as a mendicant, a humblemusician, a storyteller. He followed the dusty roads of India's vast hinterland,through huge forests and across gigantic mountainscapes. He bathed in holyGangama, visiting ancient cities that had been built upon even more ancientones. He thronged with millions of the poor and touched the feet of the holy,and visited in wonderment the great and majestic palaces of long dead kings.

His travels took him eventually to the magnificent city ofCalcutta, built up the breast of the great river Ganges. One evening, the sunsetting with Asiatic splendour, he found himself in a throng of travelerssurging up on the great wharves of the city. In the distance, he could see thetall masts and elaborate rigging of a sailing ship. Soon he could see her vasthull, portholes, gunells, ballast, bails, barrels, boxes, trunks, cargoes. Linesof passengers with expectant, eager, fearful, excited expressions surroundedhim. The gang plank leading to the vessel "Count of Lancaster" nownamed by the merchant Yusuf Haji Mohammed Sadeek of Bombay the "Fath Al Karim", Victory ofAllah the Generous, the Noble.

What karma placed the foot of Prince Ishwarisingh upon thatpath none but he could tell. What destiny drove him to leave his dharti mata,his land of birth, his kingdom, to take this journey that for some would be oneof no return, no one would ever know. It is said that he was told by theimmigration agent that he had been recruited under false grounds. His reply wasthat he had promised to go and so he must go.

The ship slipped away with the very early morning air on thehoogly on the 19th April 1871 with a cargo of 218 Indians. It sailed silentlydown the river for about 100 miles and reached Sangor Island at the mouth ofthe Ganges and would not drop anchor for another 60 days and 500 miles.

The journey to the South Atlantic island of St. Helenacommenced with the Fath Al Karim sailing to the south west towards Africa'sCape of Good Hope, the Kali Pani. The towering waves in a monstrous running seabecame even more terrifying for the passengers as the icy waters of theAntarctic met the warmer of the Atlantic. Raging storms sent the wind howlingthrough the rigging. The ship's decks were awash from stem to stern. Creepingdamp grew to clammy wet to a dripping cold, which affected the food, the mindsand eventually the sanity of the travelers now bound together in the contractsof indentureship.

On a bleak afternoon, the exhausted sea reduced to rollingswells, the ship sailed warily into the great bay beneath the ancient volcanoof an island that had known only one famous visitor some sixty-odd years beforeby the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. In the placid bay of St. Helena, the memoryof the "Pagal Samundor", the mad sea slowly fading, the indenturedwere prepared for the final leg of the journey. This island, held by theBritish since 1673, had previously been used as a holding bay for slaves enroute to the Americas, and from 1810 for the Chinese who were destined forindentureship to the New World. Now it was a stop to drop off the sick or dying,the "troublesome coolies" and the rebellious European seamen.

The "jahagis" longed to be put ashore to touch theearth, to step upon its firmness. but no. Soon, she set sail again, taking thetradewinds north and westward over a rolling water for another 40 days andnights to yet another island, named by the Christian navigator for his triuneGod, Trinidad.

The journey had been gentle, and the jahagis hadrecuperated. The sea was calm and the winds allowed the "Victory of Allahthe Generous, the Noble" to enter the Gulf of Paria through the GrandBoca, to drop anchor before the smiling town of Port of Spain.

Ishwarisingh now knew his fate. To which estate he was sentand what was his experience here is forgotten - there is no record. However,Sir Neville Lubbock, Chairman of the West Indian Committee from 1884 to 1909,in his evidence before the Sanderson Commission of 1910, makes reference tothis strange adventure. The following extract is taken verbatim from theminutes of evidence of the said commission:

"I do not know whether you have had before you a ratherinteresting report by Mr. Mitchell of Trinidad. It appears that there was aPrince went out from India to Trinidad by mistake. He thought he was making areligious pilgrimage, but when he got to Calcutta, he found his mistake. Theemigration agent there told him that he had been recruited under false grounds.Well, he said, he had promised to go and he meant to go. He went to Trinidad,served his five years, remained there the ten years, and when he was returningto India, he told Mr. Mitchell his story: how he was an Indian Prince and howhe was very pleased with the way in which he had been treated in Trinidad andthanked them and returned back to India. I think that is about ten years ago.It is a rather interesting story."

Saving Trinidad's David Copperfields

2012-01-26T05:33:00.000-08:00

130 years of St. Dominic's Children's Home

Port of Spain, particularly east Port of Spain, 130 yearsago, was a crucible for destitute people who came from all over the island tothe city seeking opportunities. Three decades after the abolition of slavery,the children of the ex-slaves had now had children themselves. Unemployment washigh, wages were miserable, and many could not care for their offspring as theyshould have.

Abandonment and homelessness was the fate of many small infantsand youngsters, who were the children of the poorest of the poor. They could beseen everywhere in the streets, begging, loitering, without any education orcare, without love. Many were naked, and the more industrious ones took tostealing. In their abandonment, they shared the fate with thousands of childrenin Europe, children of parents whom the Industrial Revolution had left behind,who suffered from illness, bitter cold, hunger and thirst, and desperation intheir loneliness. In some cases, their parents were imprisoned for debt, orwere simply too sick or destitute to bother with their kids. Charles Dickens'"David Copperfield" is an example of what abandoned children inLondon had to endure, and Port of Spain knew many of those little DavidCopperfields, both boys and girls.

One man, the parish priest of Rosary Church, could not bear seeingthe misery of the street children on a daily basis. His church was literallysurrounded by this misery, and at any point in time, one could find two orthree little ones huddled in the church's portals, holding out their tiny,dirty hands for alms. Father Mariano Forestier decided to found a home forthose children, intent on not only saving their souls, but also their miserablelittle bodies from starvation. Mr. Leroy came to his assistance, and togetherwith other friends, the priest bought a small property on the summit of the"Morne" in Belmont, overlooking Port of Spain.

As soon as the sale was finalised, three children werepicked off the streets and given into the care of Father Forestier's children'shome. Who knows who their parents were, and why they had to roam the streets ofthe city all by themselves? Maybe they were orphans, maybe they weren't. Butthose three out of many had at least found a home now, a home where kind ladiestook care of them, begged for them, clothed, bathed, and fed them on a dailybasis. Soon, they were joined by other children, and by the end of 1871, theirnumber had risen to eleven.

Five years later, Father Forestier got the Dominicansisters, who had established themselves in Cocorite in 1868, to take on thoselittle charges. Christmas of 1876 saw 66 pairs of big eyes glow expectantly -maybe this year Father Christmas would not forget them?

The old building was bursting at its seams with so manychildren. The Dominican Sisters recruited everybody to help with the extensionto the home. In their annals, it is recorded that the boys and girls carriedall the water, stones and cement up to the Morne for the builders to get towork! The little ones had little buckets, and the older ones took a brick or two,and all trundled back and forth to see their new living quarters grow.

"Wood, slates and bricks too had to be carriedup," writes Olga Mavrogordato in her book "Voices in theStreet". "Some had boxes and baskets, others had old pans, old platesand jugs, and they counted the number of their journeys during themorning."

The parish priest of Maraval, Padre Alvarez, also mobilisedhis parishioners. More than 250 people came to help! From 7 o'clock in themorning until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, women, children and men worked on theextension of the children's home. Of course, the work was not completed in oneday, and many of the inhabitants of Belmont, as well as the Societies of St.Anthony and the Holy Trinity, all came and lent a helping hand, levelling,digging, carrying water and materials, or simply cooking food and distributingsome lunches for everybody.

Three years later, the extension as well as the chapel and ahouse for the sisters was equally completed. At the end 1879, Father Forestiergave over the home to the Archbishop of Port of Spain, which was at that timeMost Rev. L.J. Gonin O.P.

Over the years, more building work was done and the woodenbuildings of the children's home gave way to concrete houses. Also, the numberof children increased steadily. A government grant provided the financialbackbone of the home, but it also depends ongoingly on the goodwill ofcharitable people.

One of the distinct features is the home's bakery. There,the older children learnt how to bake their own bread - and how much better ittastes if you make it yourself! It was important for these parentless childrento learn a trade, so that later, when they become old enough to leave the home,they would be able to make a living. Not only baking, but also cabinet makingand shoe making and tailoring was taught in the classes. The children's homealso produced a very attained band, and oftentimes, members of this band areaccepted by the Police and Regiment bands.

Father Mariano Forestier died in 1901. "The littlecottage on the Morne which sheltered those first three little children whomFather Forestier received, became a large home, comprising ten buildings, wherelived more than 400 children."

And for those who have never seen this historical and socialmonument, go and visit the St. Dominic's Home for Children in Belmont!

Most Selfish Generation

2012-01-25T06:43:00.000-08:00

by Jean de Boissière

Some eighty years ago, theleading people of Trinidad the (plantation owners) were hard workingindustrious folk who exploited themasses shamefully in the interest of what they thought was a sound conception ofsociety.

Embodied in this conception was afirm belief in the family unit as the very basis of that society. this made oneof their first principles the establishment and strengthening of large familygroups. Another solid conviction was their faith in religion as a forceessential to the past, the present and the future. It was not an emptyconviction for they propagandised that faith among the thousands of illiteratewho came under their influence.

To these people (the freed Negroslaves and the East Indian indentured labourers who were their workers) theyextended a regard for their material as well as their spiritual welfare. Inpractice, this welfare was administered in a completely despotic but benevolentmanner. A gardener got a dollar a week, and if he forgot himself and his placeso far as to demand fifty cents more as his just wages, he would be chased fromthe estate. But if he asked for a spot of land to build his shack, or fivedollars to christen a child, he was given it and more with a paternalgraciousness that made him feel that he was as much part of that family unit as its oldest son.
The elder Creoles of three generations back were in most instancesconservatively constructive, paternal and kind. That they were unaware of anindustrial revolution that was torturing Europe and which would eventuallydestroy their work and their world, that they accepted the status quo with thesame faith that they did their God was not their fault. In their time and placethey could not possibly have done otherwise.

If one could accuse them ofcrime, it could be only for thatof spawning the generation that followed them. No single excuse could be foundfor these. Their parents graciously cheated the masses in order to create asurplus to send these hopes-of-the-world foran education in a Europe that was perpetually seething with an under-current ofindustrial and political unrest. For all they saw of this they might as wellbeen blindfolded before they left. But what they did see and learn was the unscrupulousselfishness of the bourgeois class, rampant in the jungle they had made out ofEuropean civilization.

When they returned, the adulationand regard with which they were greeted was completely misinterpreted. Theylooked upon it rather in the way a millionaire's son does on the salutes of thesailors from his father's yacht. The first practical application of the lessonsthey had learnt was in their treatment of these workers on their plantations.

No more benevolent despotism. Theattitude was now that of the European bourgeois to their factory workers.Ruthless individualism replaced the former almost feudal arrangement. It wasexpressed in such phrases as these: "The gardener get his wages - and hisstandard of living doesn't justify his getting any more. So why should we givehim free lands for a house, when we can get rents from those lands, everythingmust make a profit. If they don't want to use the estate barracks and want tolive above their means - and they always were a lazy, spend-thrift lot anyway -let them rent the land."

To their industrious parents whohad worked and cleared the estate of all encumbrances, meanwhile building wholevillages for their workers, they would talk in this strain.

"Mother, I don't see why youkeep on giving money to these people to christen their children, when you knowvery well that they are a vicious immoral lot and all of their children arebastards anyway - and the amount of money you waste giving away rosaries and prayer books, they can wellafford to buy themselves. This would make them appreciate them more than whenthey get them for nothing anyway."

In like manner to this, theyundertook to inaugurate and establish the regime of unrestricted capitalism onthe plantations of their fathers. Any resistance to them was met with cruelsuppression. They did not stop at attacking the workers, they carried thebattle for these new principles (or more correctly lack of principles) rightinto their own families. The survival of the fittest , the crowning of cunning, and the law of thejungle had to be established here too. Where their parents had assisted membersof the family in their moments of distress, they used such moments to takeadvantage of them Instead of the financially embarrassed member getting help,he would be forced to sell whatever he had left to the stronger relatives at acolossal sacrifice.

One would have thought that thiswould have brought some qualms of conscience. It did; but gave them littletrouble as they had a bourgeois conscience; the most elastic produced yet. Theyinsisted on a strict honesty that left them masters of the embarrassingsituations created very dubiously for their opponents. The elastic of theirconscience expanded with creating the situation and contracted visibly inhandling it.

In morals they insisted on anultra-puritanical code for their own wives and daughters, while those of theirlabourers were invariably supposed to submit to the advances made prior to anywork or land being given on the estate. While the older generation hadoccasionally lapsed and produce children with women on the estate which theyacknowledged and supported (in some instances even giving them a Europeaneducation), the new one ignored and abandoned the innumerable bastards theybegot as a preliminary to the day's work in the cocoa.

Not satisfied with turning theestate and its workers into a machine from which they could grind money for aself-centered empty life of pleasure, they sought official positions in thegovernment, where their most arduous work was done in jockeying for the highestpaid jobs. The first step was to reduce the work of the department to a minimumand then to arrange for the terrifically underpaid subordinates to carry on thework, while they spent their time on the galleries of their clubs, sippingdrinks and slaying peoples reputation with an impressive dignity.

There is one classic case worthmentioning of a head of a department who, having arranged his official life inlike manner to suit himself (to have told this man that he was a servant of thepublic and owed them a duty would have been to grossly insult him), he wouldturn up at his office everyday at 11 o/clock and leave at midday. For over 15years, he drew about $ 400 per month of the public's money for sitting at adesk for five hours a week. He eventually retired a short while before it wasabsolutely necessary because as he boasted to his friends, his "consciencehurt him".

They attended church every Sundaywith an eye to subtle publicity, for they went always to the biggest ones wherethey would be seen by the most people. But the simple Christina virtues ofunheralded charity, kindness and love were completely absent from their makeup.

In their lifetime, they succeededin deranging the social order created by their forbears so completely, that theformer good relations that existed between the classes disappeared and the samesocial disorder and unrest that haunted Europe permeated the island.

Some of these supremeindividualists still exist and linger in the estate houses, the position ofgovernment and the benches of the larger churches. They are few now and theseladies and gentlemen of the most incredibly selfish generation will pass away,but it will take more than a little time to heal the wounds they made on thebody social that their forefathers brought forth."

Cycles of Revolt

2012-01-23T05:48:00.000-08:00

Trinidad in the 1840s was going through a state of flux. Thetime of African slavery had officially ended. About 25,000 former slaves wereactually on the move. Some left the country districts and walked for milesthrough the bush to get to Port ofSpain. Others travelled from one estate to another to get work in better orsimply different environments. Some stayed where they were, working asdomestics in the houses of Port of Spain.

Fr. Anthony de Verteuil in his chapter "The End ofSlavery" from his publication "Seven Slaves and Slavery" givesand excellent perspective of the period before emancipation and following. Henotes that in 1777, there were only 225 slaves in Trinidad, scattered aroundSt. Joseph, Maraval and Diego Martin and on the islands in the Bocas. Somelived in the Naparimas, cultivating crops of mostly cotton and coffee.

With the French came the Otaheite sugar cane, and only 20years later, in 1797, the slave population stood at 10,007. By 1813, it countedin Port of Spain alone 6,170 slaves. In the second decade of the 19th century,it was 23,227.

Estate life during slavery produced craftsmen such ascarpenters, tanners, coopers, blacksmiths, boat builders, whalers to name afew.

After emancipation, most of the slaves left the estates andnever returned. As such, the economy just about collapsed, and there was alsono work for the skilled craftsmen. The French plantocracy was much affected; estateswere abandoned; many families migrated to the southern United States.
By the 1840s, there were several experiments with the importation of labour.Some Chinese were tried and also Portuguese. The first influx of "smallislanders" took place. The real turn-around came with the arrival of theIndians. José Bodu, social commentator, remarked:

"An event of immense importance in the history of thecolony is the arrival of the first batch of East Indian immigrants on board theship Fatel Razack."

1845 also saw the emergence of the Reform Movements, therepercussions of which are still felt 150 years later. Bodu remarks:

"In 1845, the question of reform began to occupy theminds of the people of Trinidad. Nearly 50 years had elapsed since thecapitulation, and although Spanish institutions which then prevailed and whichit had been covenanted to respect had been Anglicized, no modicum of directrepresentation such as obtained in other parts of the Empire had been affordedthe colony."

Trinidadians had little, in fact no control over their fate,particularly their economic destiny. This lack of local representation was alsothe reason for the high maintenance cost of the colony, and was not approved ofby all Englishmen. Already in 1822, a Mr. Hume moved to appoint a commission ofenquiry to report on the state of Trinidad. Joseph Marryat, Esq., gave thefollowing speech in the House of Commons on July 25th, 1822:

"The amount of the taxes annually raised in Grenada areabout £30,000 currency. The amount of law expenses and fees of the Courts ofJustice are estimated at £20,000. The annual expense of the Registry of Slavesis £ 200. The expenses attending the apprehension and restitution of a runawaynegro seldom or ever exceed £4, and frequently do not amount to half that sum.In Trinidad, 44 runaway negroes were apprehended together about two years ago,[...] which amounted to no less a sum than £5,272; or nearly £120 each, whichin many cases exceeded the value of the negroes.

"Large sums are also raised in Trinidad for objects ofembellishment, utterly inconsistent with the means of the inhabitants. TheGovernor [Woodford] ordered the streets to be new paved, and assessed theproprietors of houses £4 6s. 8d. per foot on their frontage to defray theexpense of the alteration. [...] Some of them have been actually obliged tomortgage, and others to sell their houses, to liquidate their assessments tothe pavement.

"The inequality of the burdens imposed on theinhabitants of Grenada and Trinidad is easily accounted for; Grenada enjoys aBritish constitution - her laws are framed by representatives chosen from amongthe people, and who can impose no taxes to which they do not themselvescontribute, in common with their fellow subjects. But Trinidad is under anarbitrary government, and her laws are made by a single individual, who has nocommon interest with those over whom he rules."

1846 saw the arrival of Lord Harris, an extremely able andmost progressive administrator under whose aegis the difficult question ofeducating the population was first tackled. The first Portuguese shop wasopened in that year by a Señor Esperanza. This marked the commencement of aninstitution that would continue for generations. Two deaths occurred in 1849 ofmen who, apart from leaving their mark, also left many descendants who arestill with us. In April of that year, the venerable and much respected Mr. PaulGiuseppi passed away, aged 78 years, at his residence "Valsayn" (thenan estate house, not a suburb). It was in that same house that the articles of capitulationhad been signed almost 50 years ago. A native of the island of Corsica, Mr.Giuseppi held the office of Teniente Justica, Mayor of St. Joseph, during thegovernorships of both Sir Thomas Hislop and of Sir Ralph Woodford. Passing awaythat year was also the Hon. Francisco Llanos at the age of 71. Dr. Llanos was anative of Caracas and had come to this island in 1810. A lawyer by profession,he enjoyed a large practice at the bar. He held the office of Defender of theAbsent and at various times filled the positions of Assessor to the Court,Intendent and Judge Criminal.

The year 1849 was remarkable for what is known as the 1st Octoberriots. The cause of this lamentable occurrence was an Ordinance to compel civilprisoners in the Royal Gaol to have their heads shaved in the same manner asthe criminals. It was sought to pass this Ordinance through the Legislative Council.The public feeling of all classes revolted at the proposed indignity, whichwould have mainly affected people of some respectability which had neverthelessincurred too many debts. On Saturday, 19th September, placards were visible allover the town, announcing the convening of a public meeting for the morning ofMonday, the 1st October. The place selected was a house on Almond Walk (nowBroadway), Port of Spain, which was soon found to be too small a location toaccommodate the vast number of people who congregated on the occasion.

An adjournment was therefore made to the Eastern Market,where the butchers had struck work in sympathy with the objects of the meeting.

As an outcome of the meeting, a deputation composed ofMessrs. Dessources, Radix, Scott, Jean Louis, Edward, Phillip Rostant and Hoboswere appointed to wait on the Governor, which they did at the Governor's officein the building that was later known as the Red House.

They were followed by a large crowd that grew increasinglynoisy. The Governor agreed to withdraw that part of the Ordinance which hadreference to the shaving of the heads of prisoners for debt. Notwithstandingthese assurances, the crowd, now numbering some three thousand and comprised ofthe lower orders, rioted, destroying property and threatening to overrun theGovernor's office. Some young men even got into the Council Chamber. One wasarrested. When the rioters outside discovered this, they hurled a shower ofstones in the buildings. At this point, the military was sent for, comprisingthe 88th regiment and the 2nd West Indian Regiment. The riot act was read bythe Attorney General Charles Warner under a hail of stones, and the order tofire was given. Several people fell. This did not stay the fury of the mob.They continued to attack the soldiers and the police with large stones torn upfrom the streets. Four six-pounder cannons were landed from H.M.S. Scorpion,and preparations were made to open fire on the unrelenting rioters.

In the meantime, several of the crowd lay dead or dying inthe streets and in the square opposite to the government Buildings. It was sometime before order could be restored and the ringleaders arrested. They werelater brought to trial.

With this incident, the colony had experienced its first civilriot. This was to be followed some 30 years later by the Cannes Brulées riots,which in turn were followed by the Water Riots 24 years later, in 1903. Thesewere followed by the general strike in 1937 and by the Black Power uprising in1970 and by the Muslimeen insurgents in 1990.

For close to 150 years, six generations of people have takentheir lives into their hands to revolt violently against authority inAbercromby Street, Woodford Square, both outside of and in the Red House:Trinidad's cycles of Revolt.

Shouter Baptists

2012-01-20T05:56:00.000-08:00

On March 30th, Trinidad and Tobago celebrates ShouterBaptist Day, and we look at the history of this religious group, drawing oninformation of Rt. Rev. Eudora Thomas book "A History of the ShouterBaptists in Trinidad and Tobago", published by Calaloux Productions,Ithaca, New York, 1987.

The Spiritual Baptists, called "Shouters" inTrinidad and Tobago, had been suppressed by both the colonial and theindependent governments for many decades. Nevertheless, the group prevailed and,in spite of being a relatively small minority, has inspired a national holidaysince the 1990s.

Like Santeria in Cuba and Brazil, Voudoun in Haiti, andShango in the British Isles: the Spiritual Baptists are a syncretic African-Christianfaith that goes back at least two centuries, to the days of slavery. Being aphilosophical belief system, it did not come into being at a specific moment,but evolved over a long period of time. Due to this, and due to the fact thatit evolved often "undercover" in the undocumented slave population makes the exact rootsof the Spiritual Baptist shrouded in the mists of history.

The Africans who settled in the Americas and in theCaribbean came from various parts of West and Central Africa, as the map shows.Up to today, we do not describe their origins with their"nationalities" (the present-day borders were drawn by the Europeancolonisers at random, disregarding traditional tribal borders), but with theirtribal ethnicity: Yoruba, Ibo, Dahomey, Mandingo, Congo, Rada, to name but afew.

The Yoruba were the largest group to come to the WestIndies. It is to them that, according to Thomas, the forms of worship of theSpiritual Baptists are mostly attributed. In the slave society, where theYoruba mixed with people of other tribal origins, Christian concepts of thedominant European culture were mixed with pan-African customs to create thesyncretic forms of religious expression. Thus, the bell-ringing was borrowedfrom the Europeans, and the chanting from the Africans. Anointing can be foundin both the Catholic and African religions.

"Handclapping and chanting, which are manifestations ofthe Shouters, are a substitute for the drums and shac-shacs of Africancustom," writes Thomas.

In the West Indies, the Spiritual Baptists were soon oustedby the Europeans. They aren't called Shouters for nothing: were simply tooloud! All this chanting, shouting, bell-ringing and hand-clapping infringed onthe more delicate European sense of propriety. It definitely smacked of somebarbaric African cults. Laws were passed against those disturbances. TheCatholic and Protestant churches too were worried about that their efforts toChristianise the African population would be undermined by the Shouters. Wayinto the 20th century, it was often the leaders of the established churches whoopposed the revocation of the ordinances that forbid the Spiritual Baptists inthe British West Indies, and not the colonial government.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the "Ordinance to Render Illegal,Indulgence in the Practice of the Body known as the Shouters", was passedon 27 November, 1917. The Anglican church was then between leaders, Bishop JohnFrancis Welch served up to 1916, and Bishop Dr. Arthur Henry Anstey wasconsecrated in 1918. The Roman Catholic church was headed by Archbishop JohnPius Dowling. The governor was Lieut. Col. Sir John Chancellor, after whosewife Lady Chancellor a street was named.

The bill was introduced by the attorney general, Sir Henry Gollam.He acted in accordance with the government's practices in St. Vincent, wherethe "Shakers" had been banned from worshipping in 1913.

"According to his statement, the Shouters' form ofworship, which was introduced to the island from the neighbouring island of St.Vincent, was an 'unmitigated nuisance'," writes Thomas. "A Shouter meetingwould make the neighbourhood where it took place unfit for residentialoccupation." She continues to give names of several leaders of theShouters who had to suffer for their faith after 1917: Teacher Patrick ofSangre Grande served a three month prison term for conducting baptisms in ariver; Leader Roach earned himself the name "Braveboy" for preachingat street corners in spite of rotten eggs being pelted at him; Leader HaroldLackeye was put into prison for six months for preaching but put on bond;Leader Smith of Roxborough was beaten and arrested for conducting a baptism;and Pastor Guiton of Tunapuna was raided several times and had to pay highfines.

On March 30th, 1951, the Ordinance that banned the Shouterswas repealed. Pastors Griffith and Balfour were depicted on the front page ofthe local newspapers. Two months later, on May 22, the ban was also lifted inSt. Vincent by the colonial administration. The spokesman in the LegislativeCouncil for them there was Vincentian George McIntosh, whom Thomas quotes:

"In view of the fact that the poorer classes of thisColony are in deplorable, poverty-stricken condition because Government isunable to remedy conditions and ... religion being the only means whereby thesedepressed people can find comfort in their misery and as the Superintendent ofPolice and His Honour the Administrator have colluded to deprave these peopleof their right to religious freedom in the Colony."

During the years of slavery in the Caribbean, African slaveshad a need to maintain their spiritual health in order to cope with theterrible conditions they lived in. In the new environment, Europeans tried to Christianisethem; many of the Africans also brought their own, powerful belief structureinto the equation.

"The religious propagation, with the stunning magicalpower of the African medicine man, so strongly influenced the Africaninhabitants that they started to borrow from their own myths and religiouspractices until they had established a variant form of the faith," writesThomas.

If the importation of those myths and practices was verystrong, they superseded the Christian forms, i.e. in Voudoun or Shango. But thesame syncretic borrowing took place in the religious practice that eventuallybecame the Shouters, or Shakers as they were called in St. Vincent, or TieHeads as they were called in Barbados.

But why did the slaves not accept Christianity? Was itmerely a manifestation of their inner opposition against the slave master, inspite of the outward adaptation to the system?

Thomas writes that Christianity was never really fullyadopted by certain African tribes because of its monotheism (which, as anthropologistswould tell you, was also the problem in ancient and middle-age Europe, hencethe translation of various pre-Christian religious concepts and personalitiesinto God's son, Mother of God, patron saints etc.). To those tribes, bothChristianity and Islam would have forbidden a part of their world view in that wasbased on nature and ancestor worship. What happened in the case of theSpiritual Baptists was that they adopted the concept of baptism and the HolyGhost from the Christian missionaries. Thomas adds: "mourning, talking intongues, healing preaching, and teaching of the gospel according to the diversegifts manifested by the Holy Ghost."

From their African ancestors, the Shouters inherited otherpractices, e.g. the incantation of traditional Christian hymns in a patternthat leads to shouting, or the hand-clapping and "shaking", whichimply African participatory patterns. In comparison, physical manifestations duringworship are very reduced in European Christian churches. The Vincentian Shakerswere banned after an incident where the shaking and vibrations of a group hadfrightened the governor's horse so much that he fell off!

In Trinidad, the first recorded leaders of a syncreticAfrican-Christian religious cult was Papa Nanee, who has been described earlierin the Digest as the founder of the Rada community in Belmont. He was also ahealer, a role which is part and parcel of Black syncretic movements in the NewWorld. The Shouters give their spiritual leaders the title "Teacher"or "Elder". Teacher Farnum was a leader in the late 19th century, whospread the Shouter Baptist faith from her little shack off the Tunapuna road.Other significant leaders were, according to Thomas, Pastor Bowman in Arouca,Pastor William Cox, his wife Irma and his son Douglas, who established amission in 1904 in Tunapuna, and Pastor Theophilus Ottley, who was believed tohave started a church in Laventille.

In 1987, Rev. Thomas wrote:

"The Shouter Baptists celebrate their Day of Emancipationfor religious observances, and efforts should be made to commemorate this dayduring their lifetime."

This year, it will be the 50th anniversary of their Day ofEmancipation, and Eudora Thomas' wish has been granted on a national basis.

Today, in world where car engines and blaring televisionsets seem to be the soundtrack of our lives, it seems strange that the ShouterBaptists had been banned for 34 years on grounds of the noise level they createduring worship. When we put up our feet on Friday coming, let us think a minuteabout the reasons for their coming into existence as a church with distinctreligious practices, and let us give acquiescence to the fact that theirmovement is, in fact, one that finds parallels everywhere in the New World.

Frank Messervy

2012-01-19T05:46:00.000-08:00

The unrelenting hail of shot, shell and fire stopped withthe dawn. The rain that had been falling for the previous six weeks continued coursing,a weird syncopation of dropping sounds, a drip-splash-drop-drop-drip symphonythat managed oriental quarter-tones, a lunatic cacophony through which thedrifting mist made not merely the landscape, but the immediate surroundingstake on the quality of Chinese mist paintings of the type seen on screens inrestaurants.

It was typical of the Japanese to fill the night with terrorand death, only to fall silent with the dawn leaving the enemy exhausted,shell-shocked and desperate with the certain knowledge that the ring had growntighter. The fourth army corpse lay entrapped in the maze of mountain gorges,precipices, spectacular but unseen waterfalls in probably the world's thickestprimeval tropical jungle, where only dynamite may be brought in to blast awaygigantic trees so as to clear the way for lieutenant General Frank Messervy toremove his entrapped army from the heartland of Burma during the devastatingdays of the last war. he did. And with the 7th Indian Division and thereconstructed 4th Army Corps, he drove the Japanese Army through the Burmesemountains to take Rangoon.

That itself is a tale worth telling. For the last threehours, the Japanese Imperial Commander for Malaya, Sumatra, Java, Borneo andthe Dutch East Indies, General Seishiro Itagaki, had been standing at attentionwith his ceremonial sword held out at arm's length, with his entire officercorps lined up behind him. His army of 100,000 men were drawn up without armsin parade in the open field adjacent to the city of Rangoon, now reduced toashes. General Frank Messervy entered the open field accompanied by the pipesand drums of the Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders (Princess Louise's), andthe entire 4th Army Corps for the purpose of taking the surrender. Detachmentafter detachment formed up and with the entire corps at present arms, GeneralItagaki handed his sword to Frank Messervy. It was just over 550 years old andhad been made by Kanemoto, the most famous sword smith of his day.

Years later, I went to visit Sir Frank Messervy in histhatch-covered, large cottage not too far from London. Tall and gangly, and anolder man by now, Frank recalled:

"In all my life, I have never seen a man so overwhelmedby emotion as was Itagaki when he handed his sword to me. He went ashen gray,just like a corpse, and the pupils of his eyes dwindled until there were nopupils at all. I know, because I looked straight and hard into his eyes as hesurrendered his sword. It was as though he was surrendering his soul to me, andI though he would drop dead at my feet."

The said sword had killed many people in its time. When theheir of the house came of age, he would go into the family village where the tenantswere kneeling on either side of the path. To prove his manhood, he would take aright-hand swipe and a left and so on, severing heads on his way.

Why this story? General Sir Frank Messervy, K.C.S.I.,K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O, was the son of Myra de Boissière who married an Englishmanby the name of Walter Messervy, who had come out to Trinidad to work in theColonial Bank, later Barclays Bank, eventually becoming its manager. Myra wasthe daughter of Poleska de Boissière, who then lived with her husband, Dr. deBoissière, in Champs Elysées, which is now the Country Club. Frank in factmight have been born at Bagshot House, which went to the Bank when his originalowner, Valleton de Boissière, got into financial difficulties.

After Myra and Walter had had several other children, andWalter was posted to Jamaica to work in the bank, Frank had the good fortune ofbeing "adopted" by wealthy, childless relatives of his father. Theyeducated him at Eaton and made him their heir. From them, Frank inherited theTwining tea estates in Sri Lanka. He had an exceptionally brilliant militarycareer. Graduating from Sandhurst in 1913, from where he was posted as a 2ndLieutenant in the Indian Army, joining the 9th Hodsonshorse in 1914. During theFirst World War he served in France, Palestine, Syria and Kurdistan. Hisexperience in this war was, as for most of the soldiers, a horrible one. Afterthe Treaty of Versailles, Frank came back to his home country for prolonged visits,staying with his beloved grandmother in Champs Elysées. His uncle Arneaud wasLieut.-Col., the most seniorofficer serving on the western front in the war, spent much time with him aswell.

Back to England, where Frank passed the staff college courseat Chamberley in 1926, going on to become a brevet major in 1929 and a brevetlieutenant-colonel in 1933. During the Second World War, he first served inEritrea and then in North Africa. Captured by the Germans, he escaped. He roserapidly in rank, ending the war as Lieutenant General. Appointed G.O.C. in C. and Governor of Malaysia. Helater became C. in C. of the army of independent Pakistan, and served there atthe time when India achieved her independence.

Messervy was deputy chief scout to Lord Rowallan.

In his military career, Messervy was known as the"spearhead general". He went into battle with his men, and did notstay behind to direct battle strategies over a map. In most pictures, he isdirty, unshaven, and probably missed his lunch. A deeply religious man, in thelast years of his life, he went regularly to Lourdes, where he acted as stretcher-bearerfor sick pilgrims. He died in 1974 - a Trinidadian at heart and in genes, decoratedwith the highest military honours of the British Empire, celebrated in manyinternational publications, a brave hero who our soldiers can be proud of.

Electric City Part 3

2012-01-17T05:39:00.000-08:00

As the end of the 19th century neared, the social fabric ofTrinidad began to show a move towards modernity. This was demonstrated inseveral ways, for example, a notice was published in the newspapers on the 25thJanuary, 1895, that "all transvestite dressing was prohibited". Thiswas, of course, directed at masqueraders, but it also reflected what the"better-thinking people" had taken up arms about.

The city's streets had also been given a thorough face lift.Asphalt was used for the very first time in 1890. Mr. Tanner, the townsuperintendent, put a paving on Clarence Street (upper Frederick Street) andOxford Street. He carefully made them convex for the rainwater to run off.This, however, upset a lot of people, especially people with horse-drawn buggies and caps. It would appearthat the paving caused horses to slip and fall, and buggies to tip over? Soundsfamiliar for those who try to drive up Cascade main road after the recentpaving exercise without sacrificing their car axles in foot-deep crevices onthe either side of the road?

Be that as it may, Tobago had recently (1889) been joined toTrinidad in a somewhat arbitrary manner. In so doing, the colony of Trinidadand Tobago had come into being. Already, there was the telephone which wasregarded as plain miraculous. The island's economy was sound - at least forthose with access to it. The middle classes were buttressed to a degree, withan access to funds derived from small and medium cocoa estates. Repeatabilitywas the order of the day, and in looking at old photographs, what strikes onfirst is that everybody is wearing a hat! All men wore suits and ladies'dresses were at ankle length. It was still a charcoal-burning society.Everybody cooked on coal pots, and although there was pipe-borne water formany, very few possessed indoor toilets called W.C., water closets.

Into this scene, the marvel of electricity was introduced bythe young American entrepreneur, Edgar Tripp. In 1892, Tripp leased a parcel ofland from the Port of Spain Borough Council. What he had in mind was thesetting up of an electricity plant. The land he leased was the southernmost endof the old Ariapita Estate. The area was known as Shine's Pasture and alreadyproduced a type of energy and generated fuel: grass. As a grass market, itsupplied fodder to the city's hundreds of horses. For $100 a year, paid to theCouncil, Edgar Tripp set about setting up his plant. The Council was in supportof his plan to light the town, as an ordinance had been put into place since 1887to facilitate this event. There was, however, one problem. It had to do withthe removal of the city's rubbish dump. In typical style, which has not changedmuch over the years, there was much wrangling and elaborate bureaucracy. Trippwas made of other stuff and commenced planting poles in Port of Spain and stringingup wires over the existing telephone lines. The limited liability company heformed was called "The Electric Light and Power Company". He registeredit at the Red House, which was not red yet, on 5th July, 1894. His board ofdirectors were William Gordon Gordon, chairman, W.S. Robertson, Eugene Ciprianiand Lucien Ambard. Tripp was the company's secretary.

The contract with the Borough Council was signed by GeorgeGrant, who was not a member of the board, but who was soon to go into businesswith William Gordon Gordon and form the firm Gordon Grant & Co. Ltd. Thecontract stipulated that by the end of August 1894, the town was to be lit upby electric power.

The officials of the telephone company began to be alarmedby the work being done by Tripp's workmen. They took objection to the electricwires being strung above their own. They felt that if the wires were to comeinto contact, a fire would be started which could damage their telephoneexchange.

Council member Mzumbo Lazare felt that electric wires shouldbe run underground, but his suggestion, a good one, had come too late in theday. The electric engines arrived at the docks, accompanied by Mr. Kuhn, anengineer. There also were dynamos. No one had ever seen a dynamo; it was a verymodern term. Part of the installations was also a huge boiler with a tall smokestack. To facilitate the stringing of the wires, the city's trees had to betrimmed. T

here were questions asked in the Legislative Council:"Is the government satisfied that all precautions have been taken againstthe risk of accident to life in the erection of overhead wires in the streetsof Port of Spain?" This was raised by Conrad Stollmeyer, chairman of theCommercial Telephone Company. Walsh Wrtightson, the newly arrived director ofPublic Works, put everyone at ease by saying that overhead wires were not atall a problem, inasmuch as they existed all over the world.

Edgar Tripp had done his work remarkably well, and was, infact, ahead of schedule by a week. Great excitement swept the town on Tuesday25 February, 1895. As the sun set, instead of the dim kerosene lamps that hadpreviously lit the town, the much brighter electric light appeared. "Therewas a great deal of enthusiasm shown by the crowds on the streets when thelights shone forth and great crowds collected under each lamp and discussed thecharacteristics of this new agency by which night is to be made more likeday."

Edgar Tripp had turned night into day. The wife of thegovernor, Lady Napier Broome, took a cricket team visiting from England on atour of the town, especially kept alight on her bequest. Tripp rode through thetown on his buggy, inspecting the new facilities wherever he went. He wasreceived with much applause.

Government House was, of course, electrified and so too theQueen's Park hotel in which Edgar Tripp had a major interest. Times had reallychanged.

Well, next time you put on your computer to surf theinternet, fully aware that you are part of the future, spare a thought for theyoung American who first put power into place to take you there.

Lessons in history

2012-01-12T05:59:00.000-08:00

Without really understanding what it implies, people withsage expressions arranged on their faces say something like: "How can youknown where you're going if you don't know where you've come from?" Thelistener, aware that he is being straightened out with the warm iron of goodintention, also arranges his physiognomy in a manner compatible to theconversation, and awaits his turn to be profound.

Lessons in history should be, in truth, much more thanplatitudes. We make everything in our own image. What is different is oftenhard to understand and might even be dangerous. Only as we grow in maturity andunderstanding do we discover that differences can be used creatively and thatthey are exciting and enriching.

This is why Trinidad and Tobago, in fact the Caribbean onthe whole, is so full of challenge, and so full of creative energy. There is achance here and now to create a new kind of society. These islands can be tothe world of today what the Aegean was to the world of Homer, Echnaton or St.Paul: a place where many ideas and cultures are fused together, a place wherephilosophy, science and the arts grow and flower, a world which knows thatunity is not the same thing as uniformity.

West Indian history shows what happens to a society thatpromotes division and hatred, that puts a premium on prejudice anddiscrimination. Turn for a moment to the history of the French islands, andconsider the manner in which history arranged itself with regard to the"mulattoes", people of colour with both European and Africanancestors, of Martinique, Grenada and Haiti for example.

In these islands, there was at first no prejudice againstEuropean men living with Carib or African women. Indeed, this was a generalpractice. In theory, the children of those unions were free, but in fact theboys did not become free until they were 20, and the girls until they were 15.Many of the people of colour married French men and women. The crafts andtrades were open to them, with the exception of the trade of goldsmith, and bythe time of the French Revolution in 1789 thery were in that trade also. Theycould own property - as in Spanish Trinidad -, though in Martinique there wererestrictions. Over the decades, free people of colour increased in number andgrew prosperous.

The French government was alarmed at this. It feared thatthe growth of the free coloureds would endanger white supremacy.Institutionalised segregation was organised for the setting-up of divisionsbetween Europeans, mixed people, and Africans on the basis of skin colour. Partof an official report read:

"These people are beginning to fill the colony and itis a scandal to see them increasing in number, mixing with the whites,overtaking them in opulence and riches, they give refuge to vagabonds andfugitives."

The work of division went from generation to generation.Some restrictions read like those which the Nazis imposed on the Jews in the1930s. The colour of a man's grandmother became important. African blood keptsome out of the judiciary, out of the militia, out of public service. A whiteman who had a coloured wife would be kept out of those professions.

In Haiti, d'Auberteuil, the Governor, rejected the princilethat either the sons or the grandsons of emancipated slaves should beconsidered worthy of being free men. Special laws were passed to prevent thecoloured mistresses of Europeans from inheriting property willed to them. Therewere regulations on clothes that might appear too luxurious, against usingwheeled transport, and on holding dances.

In Haiti in 1792, the world exploded. Coloureds and theslaves rose against the French in a storm of violence. But the lessons of Haitiwere not learnt in the British islands, because the same society that existedin French slave islands existed in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad: one where humanrights were denied to a vast percentage of the population.

In Trinidad, a significant individual, a man of colour, Dr.Jean Baptiste Philippe, made a herculean effort to maintain the rights andprivileges of his people. In Grenada, Fedon staged a bloody revolution.Toussaint L'Ouverture, the hero of the Haitian revolution, died in a Frenchjail and the coloured creole Simon Bolivar liberated the South and CentralAmericas. We have travelled far since then, but in these days, when we face thechallenge of maintaining our independence, we need to remember that these oldprejudices die hard - they in fact tend to reverse themselves.

On Saturday night before Carnival, I found myself sittingopposite to a black woman at a dinner party, whose anti-white-Creole,anti-Indian views were the very same as expressed by white people I knew when Iwas a boy growing up. I was intrigued. Not knowing history very well, she wasafraid of the future in much the same way as the whites were 200 years ago!

We can give a positive meaning to being independent as apeople, if we can commit ourselves to the idea that all human beings arecreated equal. Already, as a nation, we have exploded the myth of racialsuperiority. Already, we are progressing to a higher level of humanrelationships that many countries do not know - in spite of some counterproductiveleaders such as certain calypsonians or politicians. For many, the terms toleranceand acceptance don't even apply, as they imply that something or somebody needsto be tolerated or aceepted.

We have to understand that we are each a part of the whole,of each other. In the same way as two centuries ago, prejudices often arise outof economic insecurities. In this time of opportunity and challenge in ournational life, let us learn the lessons of history, in that economic stabilitycomes about when, and only when, the majority of us are neither afraid of thepast, nor of the future. We have come too far not to have it our own way!

100 Years of Salvation Army in Trinidad and Tobago

2012-01-12T05:47:00.000-08:00

Poverty is hell. Indifference to it is a crime againsthumanity. William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, understood this. Bornin Nottingham in 1829, Booth knew as well the Dickensian squalor of Britain'sinner cities.

Triggered by the rapid growth of industrialisation, tens ofthousands flocked to the factories, the mines and the tenements, overloadingthe already centuries old support systems that were hardly existent in anyevent. The rigid class system served only to condemn the poor even moreirrevocably to their station where they lived in humiliation and degradation.

William Booth became a Christian in his youth and spent whatlittle time he had from his job at a pawn shop helping the poor, the sick, thehopeless. He encouraged the destitute to look to God for solace in thechurches. He was indeed convincing. The poor, however, soon rediscovered whatthey have always known: there was no real place for them amongst thesweet-smelling, elegantly dressed Sunday church goers. William founded the EastLondon Christian Mission. It worked, but hardly. William, his son Bromwell andtheir friend George Railton, dedicated to their cause, were eventually inspiredby the concept of "The Christian Mission is a Volunteer Army".

At the time, Victorian England, Imperial England, wasdefined by its armies that had carved out for her a huge and far-flung empire.This army was largely comprised of volunteers. This inspired William Booth andhis small circle of helpers. It also drew some mockery - being called a "VolunteerArmy" to help the poor! In a moment of inspiration, Booth crossed out theword "Volunteer" and wrote "Salvation" instead. Thus, theSalvation Army was born.

The rapid development of the first Salvationists was intruth aided by the adoption of a quasi-military structure. An army in theservice of God, dedicated to help those in need, had declared war againstpoverty and hopelessness. Booth's work drew opposition and sometimes evenbrutal persecution. Those with vested interest in living off the misery of thepoor - the barkeepers and the brothel masters for example - were angered whentheir former customers were converted to William Booth's army. A Methodist, hewas eventually ordained a minister, with a difference: his was a open airchurch; he took his ministry to the streets of London and to the country roads.Space does not permit as to describe the now forgotten story of the hell seenby Booth, his wife and family, and their small circle of supporters. To say theleast, it was bloody and terrifying. "The Army" produced in thosedays several martyrs. Notwithstanding, the idea of an army fighting sin caughton and spread across the Empire, in fact the world.

General William Booth dispatched Brigadier Thomas Gale tothe colony of Trinidad and Tobago, where crime and poverty held a large sectionof the population in an awful grip. A veteran of the Jamaican wars againstignorance and indigence, Gale arrived in Trinidad in July 1901, ready to openfire. Realising that this would be an uphill battle, he called for reserves,these arriving under the command of Captain Luther Atkins. "By Septemberof that year, the newly invaded island had several promising converts"writes Doreen Hobbs in her little Book "Jewels of the Caribbean".There was real resistance to the work.

One young volunteer, Lieutenant Lilian Bailey, was knocked downand had to be hospitalised!

The Port of Spain Central Corps became to be known as"Number 1". A member, Brother Whistle, was over 100 years old in1917, and could remember the days of slavery. The first person to wear theSalvation Army's uniform was the wife of Corps Treasurer Abraham Busby. In1903, the sailors' home on Queen Street was opened, and seamen, shore labourersand sailors enjoyed its hospitality. "In one year alone, 7,581 meals weresupplied and 10,807 men slept at the home," writes Hobbs. In 1913,Trinidad's Governor, Sir George Le Hunte, visited the sailors' home, and musthave been duly impressed: in a successive session of the Legislative Council,£520 were granted to the Salvation Army towards a new home for soldiers andsailors.

In the legendary escape from Devil's Island in French Guianain 1930, 200 men were taken into the care of the Salvation Army and nursed backto strength. But it was not the end of their journey: they were just placed ingroups on safer vessels, and with 10 days' rations on board were tugged backout into international waters and left to their own devices to find refugesomewhere else! One of the fugitives was René Belbenoît, who in hismuch-acclaimed books about Devil's Island "Dry Guillotine" and"Hell on Trial" wrote about his Salvation Army experience inTrinidad.

In 1908, a central hall was opened in Port of Spain by thethen Governor, the Hon. Adam Smith. Number 3 in Belmont also got accommodations.Number 2 Corps was located in Tragarete Road. Colour Sergeant Goringdistinguished himself as an enthusiastic leader of the open-air brigade inthose early years. Other significant names of the first decade of the 20thcentury at Tragarete Road were Corps Secretary H.O. Thomas and Corps TreasurerHenry Lewis. It was only half a century later, in 1955, that Tragarete Roadreceived a new hall and quarters.

Another long-standing local officer of "Number 1"was Corps Sergeant-Major Ralph Hoyte, who had come from Barbados. He gotmarried to Martha Gibbs and raised five children in the Salvation Army ethos.

In 1907, the Tunapuna Corps was launched. General FrederickCoutts cut the ribbon personally 59 years later, in 1966, and Brigadier EdnaBurgess opened the Army hall in Tunapuna.

The early years of the Salvation Army in Tobago were firstrecorded in 1909, but it is possible that a Corps was established there beforethat year. But it was not until 30 years later, in 1939, that the Tobagorepresentative on the Legislative Council, the Hon. George de Nobriga, opened abrand new hall for the Corps in Scarborough. "Now, as the steamer fromTrinidad drops anchor in Scarborough Bay, one of the first sights that meetsthe eye is a pleasing two-store y building right on the sea-front bearingthe Salvation Army sign." (The War Cry, June 1939, as quoted by Hobbs).Serving in the Salvation Army in Tobago in the formative years were Brigadier EdwardJ. Bax, Lieut.-Colonel Gordon Simpson, Captain Shepherd, Captain Skeete andLieutenant Davis, to name but a few.

The Caribs fear the Horses

2012-01-11T05:33:00.000-08:00

In the year of our Lord 1533, the Spanish establishment on theisland, named for the Trinity, discovered by the Grand Admiral forty-fiveyears ago, was comprised of just one pueblo at a place described by thenaturals as Mucurapo.

It was a fortified camp and consisted of thirty-one houseswith kitchens, stables, smithy and storehouses.

Before the attack in September of that year, it wasprotected by a singly stockade, but now a double wall was constructed of heavy balksof timber, filled between with earth. This wall was 180 paces each way, piercedwith loop holes and flanked by bastions mounted with cannons from the ships.The strength of the last Indian attack had clearly left and indelibleimpression upon the Spaniards. Antonio de Herrera in his 'Historia General deLas Indias 1730' cited a report by Antonio Sedeño to His Most CatholicMajesty's Audencia at Madrid:

"Thus we waited on watch until four o'clock in the earlymorning of September 13th, 1533, as dawn was breaking upon the pueblo andbefore the guards were relieved or the rounds made, a great number of Indians,all clothed, swept down upon us, with loud cries contrary to their usual modeof attack.

They at once surrounded the pueblo on all sides and launchedthe attack with great courage and persistence as though they had been Turks,and in half-an-hour about 15—20 of our men had been wounded.

So many were the arrows that they covered the ground. As thehorses were stabled in the middle of the pueblo, the Indians were not able toget at them through the defenses, but by shooting arrows high up they managedto wound five out of the eight before steps were taken to cover them. Thesehorses were the principal reserve and would be urgently required later, as wefelt certain that without them we should all be killed. We all agreed that ifthese horses were lost, that day or soon after, it would be necessary toabandon the Island with the loss of everything.

We then sent out the horses to resist and break up thisfurious attack. As soon as the first horseman was seen, the Indians began toshout loudly, 'Horses, Horses, Horses,' and to turn and fly. As the otherhorsemen followed and wounded and killed the Indians, they broke completely andfled to the hills, leaving on the battlefield many bows, arrows, shields andwar clubs. We killed about 30Indians and captured three alive, from whom we learnt that many tribes hadunited to make this assault. They had agreed to take arms to kill the Spaniardsand drive them out of the Island. If this attempt were not successful they hadagreed to return again in eight days in still greater numbers to make theIsland free of us.

This was sure to happen sooner or later and our men weredepressed at this news, for the punishment inflicted by the horsemen was notsufficiently great. We searched the battlefield and collected our wounded,about 20 or more. Amongst these was the Teniente of Paria who had been one ofthe horsemen; his horse had been killed by two arrows tipped with poison, so thatit died raving mad."

The tribal people generally referred to as Caribs wereterrified of horses. The Spaniards with iron helmets and breast plates wererecognisable as men, but horses, it would appear, touched some nerve, someprimal fear. The second battle of Mucurapo lasted about an hour and half, involved some 3,000 Caribs. Itcommenced in the pre-dawn hours. The warriors had moved silently across theSavannah and through the high forest of giant silk cotton trees. This attackwas in response to one launched upon an Indian village by the Spaniards somemonths before when at the one in the morning they had fallen upon a sleepingvillage. The Indians had engaged in a desperate defense and refused to yield.The Spaniards set fire to the huts so as to bring out the men, the women andthe children, and by the fierce light of their blazing homes, this bitter andunequal fight continued to the end.

Event he women and children submitted voluntarily to theflames rather than surrender. Many warriors died, a handful fled into thenorthern mountains. Of the Spaniards, ten had died "raving in madness'from the wounds of poisoned arrows. The Caribs took the fort by surprise andpenetrated the stockade of the Spanish camp and were engaged in hand to handfighting (K.S. Wise). It was only the timely action by the horsemen which savedthe day for Spain.

It was now evident that the Carib people had gathered instrength and were not afraid to die for their Iere. Antonio Sedeño knew thatthe margin by which he and his men had survived was very narrow. FourteenSpaniards had been killed, and only 30 men remained. All the horses had beenwounded. There was great dissent in the camp at Mucurapo. Antonio de Herreradeclared that this conquest of Trinidad was doomed to failure and that heintended to leave for the main land.

That night, the rations almost done, they received food fromthe cacique Maruana, leader of the south of the island. the Caribs, as wellreceived fresh reinforcements and a large quantity of poisonous arrows. Fromthe fort, their encampments could be seen dotting the forested areas of what isnow Woodbrook and St. James. The campfires in the fort were piled high withlogs and blazed brightly as the sun settled into the Dragon's Mouth, turninggold to red with the intensity of primeval volcanoes. Starving sentinels scannedthe forest for a sign that could signal attack from the Caribs. The night grewinordinately still.

Sedeño had received news that no assistance nor suppliescould be expected in Trinidad. Many men had deserted, preferring to risk thecrossing to the main in rotting and unsafe pirogues than to face the poisonedarrows of the Caribs. Dissatisfaction and discouragement enhanced by theabsence of adequate supplies of food had grown since March 1534 the rest of hismen mutinied against Sedeño and demanded to be led away from Trinidad whereonly death and destruction awaited them. That night, he was arrested by his ownmen and removed to the mainland. The second battle of Mucurapo had been won bythe Caribs.

(from "Chronicles of the Carib Wars", K.S. Wise)

The Witch of Rose Hall

2012-01-09T05:33:00.000-08:00

Sparrow and I were in Jamaica doing a recording at ByronLee's studio in Kingston, when I first heard about Anne Palmer, the famous"white witch of Rose Hall".

It must have been after 2 in the morning, when in thecompany of Herman Hadeed and two Jamaican musicians we sat down under the starsoutside of the studio to unwind from the day's and the night's work with thebest that Jah Kingdom has to offer.

One of the musicians, a bass player, whose name I cannotbring to mind, felt compelled to tell a story - the story of Rose Hall Estate.He said it was about ten or twelve miles east of Montego Bay. As you drovealong the north coast road, you would pass through miles of sugar cane untilyou come to a point when the road branches off to the right and passes somepoor people's houses and a Chinese shop. You could follow a dirt road to alittle hilltop and there find the ruined halls of the most terrible hauntedhouse in Jamaica, if not the Caribbean.

"If only those walls coulda talk, man," he said,his lion-like mane darkly silhouetted against a starlit night sky, "theywould tell you that to this day people 'round there fear this place."

Here is the gist of his story.

Rose Hall began as a happy house to which in the 1750s asugar planter, George Fanning, brought his pretty, vivacious bride Rose. Rosehad had four previous husbands - now don't hold that against her, mortality washigh in the colonies back then! They lived a good life, and when she died, herhusband John had a medallion with her profile carved and set into the wall ofthe nearby parish church.

For several years, the great house was shut up. Tall weedsgrew right up to the massive doors, while the huge iron gates hung rusting ontheir hinges.

In 1820, Fanning's grand nephew, John Palmer, inherited theestate and brought his young bride Anne to live at Rose Hall. Sugar had by thattime started to decline. The slave trade had been abolished in 1807; there wastalk of emancipation.

In oral history, there are many tales about Annie'sbackground. Was she an Englishwoman, who was instructed in Voudoun black magicby a Haitian priestess? Did she only remember the sadistic elements of herteaching and forgot about the healing properties of that cult? Whatever it was,the young and pretty Annie managed to engulf her surroundings and those whoshared her home in terror.

Around the great house at Rose Hall there grew an atmospherenot of joyous anticipation, but increasingly one of fear. It was said amongstthe slaves - amongst those of them who knew of such things - that Anne was awitch. Her beauty drew men to her. Her powers of witchcraft kept her slavessubdued despite of the dreadful punishments she inflicted on them. In beatings,she herself wielded the whip. She put with her own thin hands the spiked ironcollar around their necks. She had their feet burnt until their toebonesdropped out.

John Palmer died in 1826 a haggard man. His widow Anne nowruled the mansion and was in control of the wealth. At nights, the house wasbrilliantly lit. Seen reflected in the huge silver tureens and mahogany floorspolished to a shine were terrible sequences of events. In their golden frames,the long-dead Palmers gazed down on scenes that would have turned theirProtestant bowels to liquid. The house-slaves knew of the men, overseers,book-keepers and the like, who, entrapped by her, died there in that house,their bodies no one knew where.

Legend has it that there were bloodstains on the floor ofone of the bedrooms upstairs that could not wash away, where a man had died ofa dagger wound, the blood pouring across the highly polished floor. In one stain was the print of a heel,in the other the mark of the ball of a woman's foot. It was said that it was inthese upper rooms that Anne Palmer killed lover after lover, including slaves.Sometimes they were strangled by her slaves as she watched on.

There was a young man who lived at Rose Hall, a relative ofher late husband John. His name was Andrew Phillips. His account was saved byone Rose Stopford who wrote of a young Englishman coming to Rose Hall:

"Just at that moment came a stranger's voice calling myname - 'Is Andrew Phillips here?' I turned and saw a tall, handsome youth. Hedid not look older than myself, but gay and ... and talked with ease. He told me he was my employer'sson, Ned Palmer, and that he had come aboard to welcome me and to take me backwith him to the estate. I gave Ned Palmer all the news from home, then pouredout my questions - an endless stream. Good-humouredly, he answered all I asked.Then our eyes met - we knew we should be friends. A sudden shadow passed acrosshis face, his eyes left mine, and gazing out to sea he muttered: 'Why did youcome? Go back. there is still time. The boat is here until Saturday. It's ahard life and you are very young.'"

Young Andrew stayed on an took up the job of overseer atRose Hall. One day, he had occasion to rescue a lovely young slave girl from acruel beating and went up to the great house to protest. It was getting on totwilight. A splendid sunset lit up the sky, the many windows of that statelyhouse glowed red as blood, the mansion seemed on fire, through the double doorshe entered a long room. A silvery voice said: "Here he is at last. I hopedthat I should meet our overseer."

A slender woman rose in welcome. Here eyes were bright andtender. She smiled the sweetest smile that he had ever seen. He stammered outan answer awkwardly. Then he remembered why he had come.

"This is no friendly call. I come to say I found aslave receiving punishment. They told me you had ordered her the lash."

For a second, a shadow crossed her face and then she smiled.

"Come, sit down. I see I must explain. That wretchedgirl had spoiled a whole day's work. The sugar boiled today must be drawn off -ruined because of one rat-eaten cane."

"But I think the punishment extreme. We should exemptwomen from the lash."

She dropped her eyes. He, following her downward gaze, sawthe beauty with which she was made, framed in burgundy velvet. The new overseerfell under Anne Palmer's spell, until one terrible afternoon when he came faceto face with her wickedness in one of the dry ravines behind the estate.

He had been dozing in the upstairs verandah of his cottagewhen he heard a voice:

"Take him to the gully, take him to the gully, bringback the frock and board, carry him along." He knew the ravine well; itwas where they threw the dead slaves for the birds of prey, thus saving themoney for the undertaker.

"Take him to the gully," she shouted.

"Oh massa, me no deadee yet."

He could not bear the house, but got his horse and canteredup a lonely mountain track, going anywhere to be alone. At length, the pathwayslowly widened out, the mare stood still. He could not urge her on.

Great mossy rocks were scattered on the grass and gray withlichen were the twisted trees. Dismounting, he walked forward to explore.Something was creaking in the gentle wind. A sickly odour was wafting in thebreeze. the flapping of big black wings startled him, the flock flew skyward. Therebefore him an iron frame was hanging from a tree, and in the frame a woman'sbody hung. He knew at once it was the girl. Even so, with this horror in hismind, Anne Palmer's spell on him was strong. He made up his mind to leave, butfelt compelled to go to the great house to bid her good-bye - this in spite ofthe pleading of the slaves. One old woman who had grown to love him for thecare he took in all that came under his charge fell on her knees before him.

"Oh massa, do not do dey," she pleaded. "MassaMcNeil, he go and not come back. Ask Miss Palmer where McNeil is now."

It was then he learnt the real truth.

"When the mistress tire of the man she love, she makethem two black slaves go throttle them, den drag dem dong dat passage to thesea and throw them to the sharks - them tell no tales."

Little wonder is then that Anne Palmer was hated by herslaves and yet they dared not touch her, because they believed her to bepossessed by magic powers. However, in the slave uprising of 1831, they setfire to the sugar cane, and then the time came when one of her lovers, sensingthat he was falling out of favour, strangled her before she could have himmurdered. This might have been in 1833. There is also a version of the storythat a group of slaves came to kill her in her bed, surprising her in herslumber.

None of her own slaves would bury her body. Planters broughttheir coachmen from neighbouring estates and buried Anne Palmer in the centreof the garden by the east wing of the great house, setting a pile of largestones to mark the spot where the white witch of Rose Hall lay to rot.

(from De Lisser "White Witch of Rose Hall", Dr.Phillip Sherlock's papers and the bass player in Byron Lee's Band in 1975)

Alfredo Antonio Codallo

2012-01-09T05:23:00.000-08:00

Folklore Artist (1913 - 1971)

After a text by artist Holly Gayadeen, friend and ferventsupporter of the work of Alfred Codallo, published by the author in 1983.

Holly Gayadeen's first vocation was to become a teacher, andunderwent training for this profession in Trinidad and in England. But his truecalling was to be an artist. Throughout his long career, Gayadeen alwayscombined the two, expressing himself in various media such as painting andceramics, and at the same time teaching visual arts, crafts and design. Hisspecial interest in art education as well as local folklore manifests itselfstrongly in his book "Alfredo Codallo - Artist and Folklorist", whichGayadeen published in 1983.

Codallo's folklore drawings are special in several ways.Firstly, they were done for the world of communications in an era whenadvertising agencies didn't even exist yet. Hand Arnold and FernandesDistillers were the two companies who commissioned Codallo's pictures for theiradvertising campaigns in local newspapers. Illustrating the usage of flour andrum, Codallo managed to capture life in the streets, back yards, shops andhomes of Trinidad.

"Honesty, acceptance and a penetrating vision of onewho lived a full life with the people and for the people" - this is how Gayadeencharacterises Codallo's work. Much like somebody with a benevolent camera,Codallo managed to capture everyday life of the 'simple people', their chores,their surroundings, even their hopes and their fears.

His work is contemporaneous with other artists, who, asGayadeen puts it, "struggled relentlessly in their artistic pursuits torecord for posterity the people, places, folklore and festivals of Trinidad andTobago": M.P. Alladin, Sybil Atteck, Leo Basso, Dominic Isaac and, in theperforming arts, Beryl McBurnie and Thora Dumbell to name but a few. "Evenat that period, there was no particular trend or school of painting. Eachartist developed his own personalised style and pursued a particular direction.Despite this, as it is even so today, the Caribbean idiom and images are easilyrecognisable in the art productions of our artists whose works have foundthemselves in collections locally and abroad," writes Gayadeen.

In 1962, Alfred Codallo wrote about himself: "Throughart, I wish to speak in a language that all should understand. A language ofbeauty - unspoilt by confounding 'isms', yet rich with common understanding andnative pride. In my self-imposed job of preserving the folklore way of life,dances, land, river and sea scapes of my country, I am trying to establish alink with our past in the most comprehensive way I know."

Codallo grew up in a generation that felt oppressed by whatwould be the last decades of colonial government. After the First World War,the mentality of Trinidadians changed: having shared the common experience ofthe trenches with "white" soldiers, the stereotypes of race and classstarted to soften up. However, the economy didn't flourish, and poverty amongstblack people was as dire as ever in the 1930s, when Codallo would have been inhis prime.

"He was a simple man who always seemed to havepreferred the informality and unpretentious atmosphere of genuine camaraderie.It was easy to converse with him and his views were generally pointed, seriousand sometimes colourfully expressed," writes Gayadeen. Like Gayadeenhimself, Codallo was an art teacher, who never had any qualms about impartinghis knowledge and skills to those who came to him.

Self-educated, Codallo had little interest in the artistic approachesof impressionism, Fauvism, Dadaism or expressionism. "Codallo's worksreflect that quality of superb realism," writes Gayadeen. "He gavevisible forms to his concepts of the several folkloric themes, traditionalcultural patterns and the environment."

Codallo's subjects were drawn from the Afro-Creole segmentof Trinidad's society. His own ethnic background was not from this matrix perse: his father was from Venezuela, his mother was of East Indian descent.Having been born in Arima and grown up in Port of Spain, Codallo grew up as agood 'mixer' full of joie-de-vivre, as Gayadeen describes him.

"Codallo was keenly aware of the fact that West Indianfolklore has a rich heritage and that legends surrounding the mythicalcharacters of La Diablesse - the female devil, Soucouyants, Douens etc., neverfail to stir the imagination. It was Alf himself who gave the name of Paul CarrLandeau (Poluycar) as a man who delighted in telling stories in the open air ofTamarind Square in Port of Spain, wherever he happened to be away from hisoccupation of a shipwright."

The Trinidad Publishing Company noticed Codallo's talentsand employed him as commercial artist, photographer, photo-engraver andlithographic artist. Codallo drew for advertising: the "Spirit ofTrinidad" festival and folklore series was created for Fernandes Vat 19 andthe village life series to advertise flour.

In many cases, Cadallo's drawings of these two series arethe only visual representations of what many Trinidadians feel to be the 'goodold days'. Especially the older generation seems to have known characters wholooked 'just like that' - the Portuguese shopkeeper, the impoverished FrenchCreole man who uses the back door, the ancient cello player in a parang band.Codallo managed to capture the essence of the role in the character, which has,many decades later, become a blueprint for our communal memory.

"He had been an introspective artist of visionaryideas," writes Gayadeen. "His creations have a metaphysical and mythologicalconcept, each one showing a genuine power of characterisation."

Alfred Codallo passed away at the young age of 58 years, leavingus with many images of life long ago, and the memory of himself as an artist ofdistinction.

T. Geddes Grant

2012-01-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

Written for the Centenary Anniversary of T.Geddes Grant Limited - From Grandfather to Grandson after a text by Sir K. LindsayGrant

"A family heirloom" -this is how members of the Grant family view the firm of T. Geddes GrantLimited. In this article, we look at the historical role of the firm in thechronicles of Trinidad and Tobago, and in particular at the founder, ThomasGeddes Grant.

A family firm can only besuccessful if there is family unity and devotion to a common goal by the familymembers who contribute to the enterprise. To maintain a family firm for acentury is an outstanding feat in a relatively young society as ours. The 100thanniversary of T. Geddes Grant is not only a company jubilee, but, in truth andin fact, a celebration of a family tradition. Now a member of the Neal &Massy Group of companies, T. Geddes Grant is still very much an institution inthe business life of Trinidad and Tobago.

130 years ago, a Canadianmissionary, Reverend K.J. Grant, sailed into Trinidad with his four-year oldson, Thomas Geddes Grant, little realising the lasting impact this boy wouldhave made in later years in the commercial life of Trinidad and Tobago. Theimmigration of Indian indenturedlabourers was at its height, and Reverend Grant was one of the clerics who, inthe tradition of the Presbyterian Canadian Mission to the Indians, helped tobring education and welfare to the offspring of the indentured men and women inSouth Trinidad.

Young Thomas was born inMerigomish, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, on May 19, 1866. But it would be theisland of Trinidad that he would always know as his home. As a youngster, heworked as a clerk with Tennants Estates Limited in San Fernando. After 17 yearswith Tennants, the young man decided to enter into the intriguing world of businesson his own, and started his own Commission Agency at the age of 34. He waspossessed with a spirit of adventure, unlimited drive and considerable businessacumen, and his 17 years' experience with Tennants as a protégé of AlexanderRiddell served him in good stead.

As a Canadian, it followed thatyoung Thomas would concentrate in the main thrust of his business on Canadianmanufacturing contacts, since it was absolutely necessary to gain a foothold asagent in that market. Trinidad and Tobago and in fact the British Caribbean asa whole depended largely on numerous Canadian manufacturers. Thomas amassed aconsiderable number of agencies, and as such contributed to Trinidad's growingreputation as a commercial centre in the Eastern Caribbean. So effective had been his association with theCanadian trade, that in April 1922 he was appointed the Dominion's first andonly Honorary Trade Commissioner to the West Indies.

Thomas established his firm at avery opportune time. Oil had been discovered at Guayaguayare and the colony wasjust about beginning to enjoy the advantages of what, in that day, was thesophistication of progress. the telephone, a relatively new invention of theday, was becoming more and more popular. Electric street lights took the placeof gas lamps, and buggies and carriages were making way for motorcars.

The first office address was 19,Henry Street. The firm had about six employees. The modest Henry Street officesoon proved inadequate to conduct the company's growing business, and newoffices were found. In 1908, T. Geddes Grant had about a dozen employees, andthe firm moved to 9, Broadway.

As the country prospered, so didT. Geddes Grant. With the increasing business volume, Thomas also realised thefirst step towards a Caribbean commercial empire: in 1916, the British Guiana(now Guyana) branch of the company was opened.

The First World War was literallyin is dying stages when, in 1917, T. Geddes Grant was converted into a limitedliability company with the founder as Governing Director and his eldest son,Frederick Geddes Grant, the Managing Director. An office was opened in Halifax,Nova Scotia, to expedite the export of goods to Trinidad. This office wasmaintained until 1931. Another branch was established in Bridgetown, Barbados,and three years later, in 1920, the company expanded to Jamaica.

The company had now grown so muchthat a house magazine started to be published: "The G.G. Advisor".The objective of the magazine was to give buyers first-hand information on theorganisation and the latest developments on market conditions. It was one ofthe first company magazines in Trinidad and Tobago, and continued to bepublished for many decades on a monthly basis under the name "The T.G.G.Review". In 1923, there was another move, which was to be the last one foryears to come: 1a Chacon Street.

But it was not all easy sailingfor the company. When the Wall Street markets crashed and the world was plungedinto an economic quagmire in the early 1930s, only a few survived. Owing to thefirm, guiding hand of Thomas, the firm managed to wade through successfully.But the crisis took a toll on him: in 1934, Thomas Geddes Grant died.

His son, Fred Grant, O.B.E., tookover with equal fervour, dedication and commitment as his late father. Apartfrom his dedication to duty, Fred always found time to carry out civicresponsibilities: he was an appointee of the Legislative Council, a positionwhich he held until his death, served on numerous government committees andalso distinguished himself in cricket, yachting and football.

Fred was faced with thechallenges of World War II. The Barbados office was destroyed by fire in 1938and had to be rebuilt two years later; German U-Boats threatened and destroyedmerchant fleets in the Caribbean and in the Atlantic, and in 1945, it was theGuyana office that burnt down. Just one year after the war ended, in 1946, Freddied as well, leaving the helmsmanship of the family firm to his brother,Kenneth Lindsay Grant.

It was now the 1950s, and thecompany had about 200 employees. Expansion was the order of the day. Businesswas thriving. Willard Geddes Grant, another son of the founder, joined hisbrother in running the business. The Guyana office was rebuilt, and newwarehouses were opened at Laventille and in Jamaica. Towards the end of thedecade, the number of employees had more than doubled to 464.

In 1963, one year after Trinidadand Tobago had been granted its independence from the British Crown, LindsayGrant was knighted by her Majesty the Queen. Later that year, T. Geddes GrantLtd. became a public company.

Thomas Geddes Grant's significantcontribution to maintenance and development of the lifestyles of all theirworkers during the difficult years of recession and virtual economic collapsecan never be underestimated.

STOP! You imperfect speaker!

2012-01-06T06:08:00.000-08:00

As we all know, Carnival is a barometer, the mirror of thesociety. The tempo, the feel of the mass, reflects the society. Art imitatinglife imitating art: evolving through the centuries, Carnival has at timesprovided the means for various styles of self-expression and a ready vehiclefor confrontation, which could be played out between the competing revellersthemselves or against the authorities.

Carnival bands were by their origins aggressive, led bychantwells who encouraged the stickmen, who were, in turn, enervated by themusic, which, together with the heat and the rum, also drove the crowds, bothmembers and onlookers, into a frenzy.

Carnival for the outsider is often unnerving in its disorderand abandon. To the European of the 1880s, the dancing was nothing but the mostdisgusting obscenity, "being an imitation more or less vigorous andlustful by the male and female performer of the motions of the respective sexesin the act of coition".

The contemporary writer goes on to add that together withthe rum and the excitement, "performers and spectators then disperse withtheir passions excited to go and put into immediate practice the immorallessons they have been greedily imbibing." Ent.

Undoubtedly, there was a grain of truth in this observation.But there was more to it than that. The portrayals expressed the grandeur ofthe imagination of a subject people, yearning for the "other". Let'sgo and look at mas in 1937.

Dressed in several textures of black, his shoes replicas ofcoffins, his very wide-brimmed hat a castle of crossed destinies, armed withcutlasses, knives and pistols, his face painted white like a skull, his whistlerings loud above the surrounding noise, his prey embarrassed in theiruncostumed role of spectator grin sheepishly, trying to edge away, but alreadya small crowd has gathered and they now find themselves as a part of streettheater, protagonist, antagonist and audience -

"STOP! You imperfect speaker! Stop!

Drop your keys and bend you knees,

and call me the Prince of Darkness, Criminal Master.

I have no compassion. In this time of execution,

Master of Masters, King of Kings,

man who can compel men and women to die,

I following the star of the unconquered will,

which makes me inexorable and unbeaten still,

as a burning diadem upon my breast,

invulnerable and calm and self-possessed.

Now my fabulous verses will befuddle your dunce head.

I will have fun and I will give you rocks for bread.

So stand and deliver all the "King's Head"(pennies)

that jangle in your pocket or I will blast your tail like arocket!"

The crowd, much larger now, applauds. The undisguisedshuffle and pay up. They seek to escape, for another robber is on the way,dressed from head to foot in red with tiny silver mirrors sparkling in thebrilliant light of noon. From the distance, loud cracks like gunshots. Thecrowd shout and scatters.

"Jab Jab!" shouts a boy. "Look they comingfrom Erthig Road!"

In the clearing crowd appear three tall, strapping mendressed in red and yellow tights. Golden hearts cover their chests, and theywear jester's hats like horns, tipped with bells. Their trousers' ends are alsosequined with bells, and bells surround their waists. They wield 15 foot longbull whips that crack the sky. Their eyes are wild. Men, women and childrenflee before their impertinence!

Now what's that smell? Oh Lord no! I thought they would stayin Jouvay. They must have slept out last night - it's a Pissenlit band. thesedreadful people have soaked nighties in urine for days or weeks and are wearingthem. Run, they coming to rub up on you! Run, quick!

"Look, look what is that?"

It's bats - a bat band on roller skates, all dressed in grayand brown fur, huge wings catching the breeze. Look, one little boy bat! He isjumping, trying to fly. How fantastic! Their masks so real, like bats.

Moko Jumbies always have a dwarf with them to make them lookeven taller, stalking on stilts 15 or 20 feet above the crowd, dressed instriped pants, a wide skirt and a colourful shirt. They wear torshon for a hatand carry a small umbrella. They collect money from the people in the upstairswindows, but have to be careful about electric wires.

Oh, how cute! Look a baby doll band, all dressed in pink andblue with lots of fru-fru and baby powder! How sweet - what that he's drinkingfrom his bottle? Rum! And look that one, it look like curry running down hislegs out of his diapers. What's that he wants to show you? A shilling to seeCain and Abel - well, there it is in a little black box, a piece of cane and abell.

Carnival is something else again, yes. Oh, look a truckdisguised as a radio full of pretty girls! They all work at Rediffusion, RadioTrinidad, you know.

Come let's go and see what Mr. Strasser playing this year. Ihear he's coming out from Victoria Square. Last year he played a penny, a hugething about 12 foot high. No one could see him until he stepped out from wherehe had formed a part of Britannia.

Look, there is something coming - it's Strasser. Everybodysay it's Strasser. What is that - a stamp? Strasser playing six-pence stamp, ahuge red stamp depicting Raleigh at the Pitch Lake! How real - look the detail,perfect! It's made of painted cloth with black and gold appliqués. Where isStrasser? He must be there - oh look, he's climbing up onto the float and he'sgone, he has disappeared the moment he walked past it, he just stopped stilland vanished - how fantastic! I want to see the Seven Ages of Man, they comingout from by Norville's drugstore. That so far, come go.

We go take a drink by Crown Lion Bar. Ah hear they havestick fight tonight! Look,Mahalle. Eh, Mahalle, give us a drop! - "Not in this car, it not forhiring, it's a private vehicle," he said, slipping into first and drivingoff his invisible car just missing the orange man.

Patrick Jones and them fellers playing Beelzebub and theForty Thieves. That is devil mas! They have a Satan with a face, almost as bigas you. Eleven devils chained together in the everlasting darkness. GilbertScamaroni is plying the beast from the apocalypse, chained to female impsdressed in red with shimmering wings. They have a dance - very sexy. Lookskullboxman, bookman, keyman and bellman, and Lucifer the Demon straight fromhell. Shiffer Fabien father is play that. They does meet in Lapeyrouse topractice that mas every night for nine nights before Carnival! They collectdead dogs and boil them till they get the bones. Look he have a dog's skullround his neck and look that one have a cowfoot. Take care, they will throw thewater they boil the dead dogs in on you. If that hit you, you blight for life!

Look the Belmont tram coming. Let we go by Crown Lion, ahcould take a beer.

And several years later:

"Invaders beating sweet - ah ha

Coming down Park Street,

Tokyo coming up, beating very slow

and when the two bands clash

if you see cutlass

never me again to jump up in a steelband in Port ofSpain!"

Born in Dominica - The Foundation of St. Anns

2012-01-05T05:22:00.000-08:00

"La Fantaisie Road," she murmured, lookingover her shoulder. The MG picked up speed. "Who lives there?"

"The Prime Minister."

"La Fantaisie, what a lovely word."

She smelled vaguely of the type of cologne wealthywomen wear. Her eyebrows, unshaped, were quite thick. They gave her an outdoor,sporting sort of look.

"Who gave La Fantaisie Road its name?"

"I believe it was named by Celeste Rose Peschier.It was really the driveway to a lovely house nestled between gigantic trees,long ago demolished. This is a very old part of Trinidad, in the sense that itsdevelopment dates from the 1790s or even before."

"Do you know about it?"

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do."

I was taking my charming guest to Maracas Bay. "Itall began with the wars between France and England for the control of theCaribbean's sugar-producing islands... It's quite a tale, I am afraid that I'lltake a few liberties in the telling - but Maracas is a long drive."

"Artist's license?"

"Well, you be the judge!"

She had been born in Saint Domingue, Haiti, and therewas no date of birth for her. For people like her you were either born beforeor after the revolution. Her circumstances were thus: her father, a Frenchmanfrom Nice, butcher by profession, was sentenced to five years deportation forthe attempted murder of a cooper over a matter of honour. It would appear thathe had attempted to drown him in a barrel of his own manufacture. For fiveyears he had laboured in the cane fields along side the seventeen slaves andthree Canary islanders who, like himself, were indentured to Clotilde Voisin.Freed from indentureship, his life forever altered, he practiced his professionat the Grand Market in Port-au-Prince. As soon as he had enough money put by,he presented himself at the slave market and for the sum of one hundred andeighty pilars - silver Mexican-Spanish dollars - bought a tall, flat-chested,aggressive Ibo woman to be his house keeper, companion and mistress. His choicehad been inspired by the fact that the available white women on the island ofhis class were absolutely worn out by their previous profession of prostitutionand poverty in France, followed by five years of working under the tropicalsun.

Much in this manner in those days, there came intobeing three classes, the white, the mulatto and the black, which at that timeimplied no particular evil, except the obvious one of slavery. Their domestic lifetogether was organised along the lines of never ending attack, defense,capitulation, occupation, revolt, over throw, accommodation and the perpetualdestruction of most of their worldly goods. It was during one of their moreferocious engagements that Ameline Louisa “Cocutes” Paseu was conceived, and itwas at the time when the eye of the most devastating hurricane ever to surgeout of the Atlantic ocean was steering down upon the most hideous collection ofshacks that huddled in and around an enormous rubbish pile in the quarter of LaPac, that she was born. As a consequence there were no more offspring to thestate of war that passed for their relationship. After a while he forgot thathe owned her and she, despising both her keeper and her child, became a wealthymarchande and something of a power broker in the Grand Market at Port-au-Prince.

She grew to possess her mothersheight but not her temperament, her fathers commitment to survival but not hislack of ambition. She belonged to a category of persons who were woven into thevery fabric of the islands society. She belonged to all classes and to none.The entire system, the very structure of society of life, even death, on theisland was based on the colour of your skin. It had nothing to do with class,money or worldly achievement. The coloured man could own 10,000 acres of landand be the master of 1,000 slaves and still be nothing in the eyes of theauthorities. He could not carry a side arm, a sword or a sabre. He had to sitin public places where he was told. His life was circumscribed by theirrational fear of the European, who had engendered him and by his aversion tothe race that had bore him. For the mulatto woman there was one way in which toconquer: it is said that they, in their youth, combined a natural naiveté, atouching gracefulness and a lascivious languor that could enflame the mostplacid, the most disdainful or the most sanctimonious of men. By the time ofher sixteenth birthday she knew everything. The place was too crowded, therewas too much competition. She needed a smaller island. She found passage on a windjammerby charging her favourite currency and within a week arrived on the beautifulisland of Martinique. She became the plaything of an elderly Count who owned aplantation on nearby Trois Islets. He was attempting to paint, in watercolour,an idyllic scene from a classical fantasy on her smooth and slightlypalpitating stomach when the calamity of revolution overwhelmed them.

Their escape was described byhis later biographers as providential. For propriety's sake, she was writtenout of the story. Fleeing from the revolution, it took them south along theCaribbean chain to the Spanish isle of Trinidad, where before death closed hiseyes he provided for her by introducing her to, and recommending her, as ahousekeeper, companion and mistress to a young protégé of his by the name ofJean Charles Baron de Montalambert. He himself had recently escaped theguillotine by immigrating to Trinidad where he had joined another youngaristocrat by the name of de Mallevault in an agricultural enterprise in theCascade valley at a site where two rivers met, that they named, for sentimentalreasons, Coblentz.

In the days of great peace,their love produced a boy of exceptional beauty, tall for his age. He was hisfather's constant companion. The plantation had come into existence as a resultof a heroic escape from the bay of Ste. Anne in Martinique during a period of aparticularly bloody war of retribution conducted with legendary savagery by allconcerned. Amongst the several hundred, black and white, slaves and free, thathad crowded the careening decks of the frigate "Marshall de Castries"was a dwarfish creature too ugly to be recognised as either man nor woman, whohad secretly come aboard. Huddled in a chest that belonged to no one, it hadwith it just one possession: a vial of the most virulent poison to ever leavethe Guinea Coast. He, for it was a man, was to become the estate’s cutler,sharpening all knives, plows, shares and scissors.

During the period of slavery,poison was the most preoccupying consideration for the proprietors of plantations.Either the estate had a poisoner or it did not. The most commonly used poisonwas of course arsenic. It was used in the fields as an insecticide. But therewere other sinister poisons such as the venom of snakes, centipedes, scorpions,the pulpy white starch that oozed from the manchineel plant, the dirt fromgraves and cesspits were easy to obtain as well as many roots and herbs. Therewere also the more obvious killers such as ground glass.

Poison and the poisoner onestates was a viable alternative to life as a slave and was sought after togain release. Poison, applied when profound injustice with no hope ofretribution was dished out between the enslaved, and for vengeance, was soughtat a price. Poison was when a master, too cruel to accommodate had to be gotrid of. Poison was used by an old man gone mad with an old man’s sense ofobsolesce in a place so far from his ancestral gods that it might just as wellbeen hell. Poison was used at Coblentz Estate in the year 1803. Amongst the 70people who died was the masters son. Amongst those who lived was an incrediblyugly, short old man and a beautiful mulatto woman whose descendants might befound amongst the Bonaparte, Lambert, Danglarde and Foncette families and St.Anns and La Pastora."

We had arrived at Maracas.

"And what happened, howcome 'La Fantaisie'?"

"Gyal, I'll tell you aboutthat after a shark and bake!"

(continued next month)

Amerindian Names

2012-01-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

Place names are points of memory in the fabric of West Indian lifestyle. Let us look at some of the names that come from the period long before the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean Sea, from the years when Trinidad was settled only by the Amerindian people. The world being ‘brand new’ in those days, things received their names for the first time - some of them have survived.
The tribal people gave names to the rivers and plains, the mountains and capes. Some of these names are to be found in Venezuela as well, such as Tacarigua, which has a parallel in the Lago Tacarigua, or Cumana, which is found in two places on Trinidad’s North coast and also on the mainland. There is a Caroni river on this island and a mighty Caroni running through the jungles on the neighbouring continent. Other pre-Columbian names are Arouca and Caura, where the Capuchins had missions in the 17th century.
People spoke Spanish exclusively in these hamlets until quite recently. Siparia was the site of another mission, where tobacco was cultivated. Arima and Naparima, Toco and Tunapuna, Chaguanas and Chaguaramas, Piarco and Oropouche - all these are Amerindian names which survived. Port of Spain was once called Conquerabia, a name which disappeared early.
Corosal, Maraval and many other names ending in -al are very interesting, because in most cases the -al is the Spanish collective suffix, sometimes stuck onto an old Amerindian root. For example, a place rich in the palmtree called “corozo” by the Amerindians became “Corozal”. In Cocal, the name refers to an abundance of coconut trees. The story is that a ship was wrecked on this part of the east coast of Trinidad. Its cargo of nuts were washed ashore and took root. Maraval is described as a large track of land below Anapo. It was covered with maro trees.
This marriage of Spanish and Amerindian also happened in the other islands. Pouisal in Montserrat got its name from the abundance of poui trees, as did Morichal in the same island and in Trinidad as well, which refers to the moriche palms that grew there.
The Spanish settlers who came in the wake of Christopher Columbus named their estates after the distant places now left behind: El Socorro, Barataria, Aranjuez, El Dorado. When they marveled at the beauty of their new homes, they called the Vistabella and Buenos Ayres.
There is magic and beauty in these place names. They contain, like time capsules, messages from another age, when our country was still roamed by its original inhabitants.
They contain, like time capsules, messages from another age, when our country was young.

From the African languages, other words have survived like "zami" ﬁ (meaning "friends"), and "susu", which we use when we become "partners", each contributing so much a week to a savings club. When gardeners went into their fields, they owuld take with them a calabash full of water, known long ago as a "paki", unsing te Ashanti work "apakyi". In parts of West Africa, it is the custom to name a child by the day of the week on which it was born, for example "cudjoe" is the the Ashanti word for Monday, "quashie" for Sunday, "quaco" for Wednesday, "cuffie" for Friday and so on.

In our search for African words that have survived, we have to turn to our floklore. Here we find fascinating evidence of African survivals: anansi, the central charater of many folk tales, is in fact the spider god of the Akan-Ashanti people. In Accra, Lagos and the northern regions of Nigeria, where the land falls away into a vast ocean of tawny-coloured sand, people know all about this Anasi, the spiderman who is weak but who overcomes the strong by guile in a way that the Greek hero Odysseus overcame the cyclop.
Nansi stories brough delight, but as a boy gowing up in belmont in the 1940s and 1950s, these were jumbies living in the "big canal", in Olton Road and at the corner of Reform Lane and Hermitage Road - a dangerous place after 9 o'clock!
Throughout the Caribbean, out the Caribbean region, chance word used in conversation, a game played at evening time, a song chanted to still a restless child, the names given to food and plants, link us with distant times and with men and women long dead. Cudjoe, Quashie, Paki, Zami, Senseh: words like these whisper of the past, revealing our history to us - but only to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

African cultural influences

2011-12-23T05:41:00.000-08:00

Trinidad started late as acolony, which was partly the reason that it experienced several waves ofimmigration lasting from the 1780s to the 1950s.

The various groups of people whocame contributed to the development of our overall culture and music andfolklore in various ways: some to story-telling and singing, others to music,to dance, to cooking. Out of all this has come our unique way of expressingourselves. As it is with all true folk arts, they provide an excellent methodby which to gather an overview of social development. In the 1800s, these werein Trinidad a mixture of creole (that is, born in the Caribbean) slaves andAfrican slaves. To what extent there was contact and sharing of culture canonly be guessed at. We know that in a census taken in 1813, there were 13,980people from six or seven areas of West and Central Africa and Mozambique, and11,629 creole slaves, the majority of them French-speaking. It is estimatedthat just over 5,000 slaves were brought into Trinidad between 1798 and 1802.After emancipation, between the years 1841 and 1867, the African population -that is, the people who had never known slavery as the result of being takenoff slave ships and freed in Trinidad - amounted to 3,383 who came from SierraLeone, 3,510 from the Kru coast and 3,396 from St. Helena.

Between 1838 and 1931,approximately 100,000 British West Indian migrants settled in Trinidad. Theycame from both Protestant and Catholic islands. This was culturally importantas each denomination possessed a different cycle of festivals. All these peoplewere absorbed into colonial life, and as a result of extensive intermarriagevirtually lost their identity almost immediately. However, there remained avast assortment of words and ways of doing things, spiritually and culturally,that remained unique. This expressed itself in song, dance and lifestyle. L.O.Inniss in his "reminiscences of Old Trinidad" recalls"Bloke", a game played with a hole being made in the ground or in awall. You played this game with dry gru gru beff seeds, hard and round like bigblack marbles. Bloke was highly competitive and often led to fights in schoolyards. It was, in fact, the precursor of pitching marbles.

Professor Phillip Sherlock tellsus that bloke has a West African origin, similar to another one, called"Warri". Warri is the name of a tribe in the Niger delta. It is alsoa board game, not dissimilar to Backgammon. Long ago, at the end of the day,men would sit with a board between them and with small stones enjoy this gameof skill.

From the African languages, otherwords have survived like "zami" (meaning "friends"), and"susu", which we use when we become "partners", eachcontributing so much a week to a savings club. When gardeners went into theirfields, they would take with them a calabash full of water, known long ago as a"paki", unsing the Ashanti work "apakyi". In parts of WestAfrica, it is the custom to name a child by the day of the week on which it wasborn, for example "cudjoe" is the the Ashanti word for Monday,"quashie" for Sunday, "quaco" for Wednesday,"cuffie" for Friday and so on.

In our search for African wordsthat have survived, we have to turn to our folklore. Here we find fascinatingevidence of African survivals: anansi, the central charater of many folk tales,is in fact the spider god of the Akan-Ashanti people. In Accra, Lagos and thenorthern regions of Nigeria, where the land falls away into a vast ocean oftawny-coloured sand, people know all about this Anasi, the spiderman who isweak but who overcomes the strong by guile in a way that the Greek heroOdysseus overcame the cyclop.

Nansi stories brought delight,but as a boy gowing up in belmont in the 1940s and 1950s, these were jumbiesliving in the "big canal", in Olton Road by Papit's Shop, and at thecorner of Reform Lane and Hermitage Road - a dangerous place after 9 o'clock!

Throughout the Caribbean region, achance word used in conversation, a game played at evening time, a song chantedto still a restless child, the names given to food and plants, link us withdistant times and with men and women long dead. Cudjoe, Quashie, Paki, Zami,Senseh: words like these whisper of the past, revealing our history to us - butonly to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Bhadase Sagan Maraj

2011-12-23T05:37:00.000-08:00

The buffalo emerged from a lake of mud. Huge, it seemedthat a part of the earth itself had become detached. It rose majesticallyagainst the dark gray sky with a white egret perched precariously upon its hindquarter facing in the direction from which it had come. The boy sitting underthe oldest mango tree on the estate, hugged his knees and stared past the beastto the line of blue gray mountains to the North. They had recently shot hisfather as he lay, reading from the Bhagavad Gita in his hammock under his housein Central Caroni. Matthew Sagan Maraj, his father, had been a big, verystrong, powerful man, he dominated the neighbouring villages and was known toinvade them. Mitto Sampson said “He made laws and no man in Caroni brokethem...” He was feared. “Expert stickmen crumbled under his ferocious blows.”

Michael Anthony wrote of his son, “Bhadase Sagan Marajwas born into an environment full of drama and bravado, lived in the self-samestyle of life, while contribution enormously to this country’s good.”

The hitmen promised to return for him. The boy had toflee. In the distance, the smoke, a harsher hew than the thunderous sky, rosefrom his father’s funeral pyre. The boy stepped from the cane piece just intime to stop the bus. He was 13; it was 1932. The bus was bound for Tunapuna,where a close relative would look after the boy. His earliest education hadbeen gleaned from the Canadian Mission to the Indians in his home county ofCaroni. Later, he had traveled to Port of Spain to Pamphylian High School. Now,however, with his beloved father dead, it seemed that his childhood had come toa close, as he was faced with the responsibility of looking after at least thematerial needs of his brothers and sisters.

The tall, gangly youth turned his hand to whatever cameto it. Bottle collecting, running errands, he loaded cane trucks at the nearbyestate, put on some size, he bought and sold scrap iron, he acquired a boat andtook sand from the Caroni river so as to sell it in the building boom that camewith the war days. He had inherited his father’s handsome features, size andmanly manner. He was a man of his times, knowing that the future could be ofhis own making. He was good at business and knew how to make a profit. He was young,and felt compelled to return to his village, wanting to confront the realitythat had forced him away. But the tensions were gone, and he moved on with hislife. He became a wrestler, challenging all comers - it brought in a littleextra money. He remembered one in particular; his name was Gotch. A naturalleader of men, the American employers at the Naval Base at Chaguaramas wereglad to see him. He went into trucking.

Made aware of the various shortages brought on by thewar, like nails for example, Bhadase bought up as much old boards as possible,took the nails out, hammered them straight and sold them, making a profit. Heworked hard and honestly for the Americans. This paid off handsomely. As thebases closed, he was allowed to purchase surplus goods at prices that allowedhim to turn a remarkable profit. The foundation for his first fortune was laid.

In 1948, three years after the war, India was grantedindependence. This coincided with his own. He was wealthy now and could affordto finance a lavish celebration to mark India’s Republic Day.

In the context of the Indian community, he was regardedas a man of stature, a man to respect. His generosity to all was a hallmark ofhis life. He entered politics, and in the general election of 1950 “wonhandsomely” and became the member for Tunapuna in the island’s LegislativeCouncil.

The boy who, tortured by his father’s death, had gazedhelplessly into a bleak future, was now very popular, very powerful, and verywealthy. As a Hindu, his religion meant a lot to him. In 1952, he formed theSanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, a religious organization which had as its goal thepreservation and dissemination of the Hindu philosophy, and which possessed apolitical wing, the People’s Democratic Party. A great wellspring of supportrose about him. He was, however, not without detractors, who accused him ofusing his “Indianness” for political ends. It touched him, and he declared thathe was a Hindu and could do nothing else but.

As a man of little education and knowing how littlethere was available, he rallied the Hindu community to organize a schoolbuilding program. Forty schools were built between 1952 and 1960. In the realpolitic, the changes taking place in the overall society were to set the tonefor the next four decades. The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha acted as a catalyst inbringing the Hindu community together. Bhadase became a leader of the DemocraticLabour Party (DLP) in 1953 and prepared to fight the general elections due in1955. For various reasons, these elections were postponed to the followingyear. Disappointed and furious, he resigned his seat in the LegislativeCouncil, only to reconsider fighting the by-election and regain his seat. TheDLP contested 14 seats in 1956 and won 6. The People’s National Movement (PNM)under the brilliant Dr. Eric William's won 13 seats.

In the federal elections of 1958, Bhadase’s success wasoutstanding, leading the DLP of the West Indies, winning 6 of the 10 Trinidadseats for the Federal parliament. Politically, he moved from strength tostrength. In 1959, he was able to win control of 5 out of 11 county councils inthe municipal and county council elections of that year. He refused to be takenin by those who accused him of being a racist, insisting that he was aTrinidadian, a Hindu and a citizen of the world. People said his popularity wasbased on the schools he had built in cowsheds. His response was that it wasbetter to be educated in a cowshed than not to be educated at all.

To the tens of thousands who passed through Bhadase’scowsheds, there was no doubt in their minds. In a sense, he outgrew the DLP hehad created, left the party and in the words of historian Michael Anthony, whowrote a short biography of Bhadase, he “fought on, like a lone gladiator”. Hecarried his battle to both the PNM and to the DLP. In parliament, he was afierce critic and a true independent.

In 1960, the reins of leadership of the DLP passed toDr. Rudranath Capildeo, a remarkable man possessed of genius. As age andillness crept upon Bhadase, he started to diversify his considerable interest.A substantial landowner, he sold to Canning & Co. as well as to thegovernment some 310 acres of Streatham Lodge. The Maha Sabha benefited from hisgenerosity with the site of a new headquarters at St. Augustine. In 1966, helost at the polls to Dr. John Bharath of the DLP, and in 1968 he was on thehuskings again, winning the Chaguanas seat in a by-election.

In 1969, he led a bread-away faction of four members ofthe DLP. In 1971, he suffered a total defeat at the polls, and died at theearly age of 52 on Thursday, 21st October of that same year.

The glow of the Street Lanterns

2011-12-22T06:38:00.000-08:00

For the generation born after emancipation, life inPort of Spain was possessed of great contrast. The economic collapse brought onby the demise of free labour drove many French Creoles from the countryside to the easternextremities of the city streets. Later to be known as the “French Shores”,these streets had names that recalled the provincial towns of France whence theirancestors hailed, like Besson Street, and had French names that persisted wayinto English times: Rue des Trois Chandelles (Duncan Street, named after thethree candles burning outside the Mason's Lodge), Rue d'Eglise (Nelson Street),Rue de la Place (George Street), Rue de Sainte Anne (Charlotte Street), RueNeuve (Henry Street), and Rue des Anglais (Frederick Street).

The wooden mansions they built when they moved to eastPort-of-Spain are now all gone. Old-timers, however, recall that the town hadabout it an air not dissimilar to Fort-de-France or Pointe-à-Pitre in theFrench Antilles. The land over the dry river known as Piccadilly was then called“Grand Jardin” (Big Garden), and further north was Mango Rose and Lacou Harp.The large central area, stretching from Argyle Street to St. Paul Street, wascalled Sorzanoville, with large parts covered with sugar cane. The entire areto the north and east was bounded with high woods, ancient forest that hadnever been cut.

Former slaves who had escaped in previous times and thenewly emancipated encamped in the forest, to be later joined by an increasingpopulation of former slaves from the other West Indian islands. As aconsequence, many African customs and usage's were maintained in eastPort-of-Spain form many decades. Several yards, divided along tribal lines,were established, along with gangsor bands which originated in the secret societies of West Africa. There were“malongues”, special groupings of people how had shared the experience of theslave ship or the barrack room.

Smart town houses, lived in by the now somewhatimpoverished French gentry, existed side by side with amazingly squalid yards,peopled by the city’s poor, who were mostly black, but also contained in theirnumber many destitute Europeans, some Spanish, some French, some ofindeterminable origin. There were wakes, dances and religious ceremonies. Thesheer volume of noise emitted by these astounded the visitor of Port-of-Spain.C.W. Day, English traveler, describes such a dance with astonishment (note hisignorance of how drums are made):
“One night, hearing a horrible drumming, I followed the sounds and in thesuburbs of the town came to a Negro ladies’ ball. A narrow entry led to aspacious shed, rudely thatched with palm branches. Standing in the four cornersof this dingy salon de dance were well-muscled young men holding aloft woodencandelabras with tallow candles casting a fearful glare over the place. Therewere five huge Negroes thumping might and main on casks, the tops of which werecovered with parchment. Ranged along the side were twenty negresses roaring achorus. These dingy damsels, of whose features nothing but their rollingeyeballs and brilliant teeth were visible, raised their voices to a pitch thatwould have satisfied the King of Ahanti.”

Another man, C.H. Eckstein, had the following to sayabout this period:

“At this period of history of our experimental island,the town society could not yet boast of sufficient stock of elegance to assumea ‘bon ton’ and the ‘haut ton’, to which it has since so rapidly aspired, wasscarcely suspected. The seductive soirees at Mademoiselle Annie’s - thefascinating Ninon of Trinidad, collected at this time, the male beau-monderound her sofa or the harpsichord satiated with the ordinary indulgences ofhuman appetite, relish of higher society became so exquisite nothing less willnow soothe the modern ear than Parisian-tuned harps. None must touch the bosomof the finished school miss except the pedal lyre.”

Against this contrast the city fathers struggled toestablish a semblance of modernity. One such was the introduction of streetlighting. The Port of Spain Gazette reported in 1878 (as reported in theGuardian Centenary Issue):

First Lighting On The Streets

The inauguration of the lighting of the lamps placed bythe Municipality in Marine square and from the square northwards to the gaol,took place, as announced on Christmas Eve. The lamp was lit by His Excellencythe Governor; and among those present we notice the Hon. the Attorney General,The Hon. T.A. Finlayson, The Hon. L. Guiseppi, John Agostini Esq., L. MathieuEsq., Oliver Warner Esq., R.D. Mayne Esq., John Fanning Esq., J.F. Rat Esq.,(Town Clerk). We also noticed that, His Worship the Mayor’s published programnotwithstanding the Borough Councilors were conspicuous by their absence. Wewere ourselves unable to be present at the display of fireworks offered to thepopulation, (at the cost of the population), by His Worship the Mayor. (28thDec., 1878)”

These lamps like most elsewhere were imported fromEngland. Made of cast iron, they were shaded by glass and burned whale oil.They were placed on street corners and were lit at dusk by the lamp lighter whomade his way in a ceremonious style, accompanied by a boy carrying a ladder andanother ringing a bell signaling the close of day as dusk settled on the littletown.

In the distance the bells of the towns two cathedralstolled the hour. It would be another generation that would see the marvels ofthe introduction of electricity.

Interviewwith the last lamplighter

“Memudda, she da make me de year de cholera be so bad. Dat be so long time andlook how I get, I must be well old.”

Hemay have been born in 1855, he may have had no idea really, black people seldomknew how old they were or when they were born.

“Yes,I be dey de day de govener light the first street light.”

Hecould also remember the small pox epidemic, when no precaution was taken toisolate cases to prevent infection. People said that if you were brave, and youvisited all your friends that had it you were safe but if you tried to run awayyou’d inevitably catch it or it would catch you. In order to combat the“disease in the air” they burnt pitch on the street corners under the newlyinstalled oil burning lights.

Mosquitoescarried the fever and to drive them out of the house a Wood-ants nest was burntin a coal pot. The smell of smoke pervaded the town. The streets were swept andthe drains flushed once a week by a gang of short time prisoners and the corbeauxsaw after them in the interval. Carnival, well, no descent person would attemptto go about the streets on Carnival days as the masqueraders had a free handand the opportunity to settle old scores. The confrontations between Baker andhis bobbies (policemen) and the stickmen reached a high point in 1881. TheCannes Brulées broke every lampshade in the city. He remembered that the lampsremained unlit for a long time until new glass shades could be imported fromEngland. Creole patois was prevalent he said, and it was the habit that when“you had a dead” you hired a Patois speaking person, preferably a woman in aMartiniquan dress: chemise, jupe, foulard, a pair of "zano cylendre"in her ears, a string of "grain d'or" round her neck and a stiff"canlanday" head kerchief tied turban wise. It was important that shehad a good voice for she would pause at every street corner under the new lamppost and proclaim “Ladies and gentlemen Pierre Jean Modeste has died. Hisfuneral will leave the house at the back of the grass market this afternoon at4 o’clock for the cathedral. His wife Marie Louis the seamstress, his mother isMrs. Murphy who sells chutney by the cab stand, his aunt is Mrs. Chantall wholives at the back of the Black Lion Bar on Park Street, his uncle is the bakerfrom Venezuela, who in jail for stabbing “Doudouts“ the carterman.

The Maroons of the Blue Mountains

2011-12-22T06:25:00.000-08:00

The Blue Mountains of Jamaica are spectacular. Almosttwice as high as our own Cierro Aripo, they appear to have heaved themselvesupwards at some distant and prehistoric moment when Atlas shrugged, easing hisshoulder bone from the worlds weight.

The Blue Mountains of Jamaica are really blue,sometimes bluer than the sky and sometimes when their bases are lost in theheat haze their summits appear enskyed, distant, remote, removed. It was totheir vastness, to their hidden secret valleys and remote plateaus that men andwomen, in pursuit of freedom, fled to be marooned.

In the earliest days of Spanish settlement thoseAfricans who preferred to take a chance of freedom in the mountains rather thanbear the burden of slavery on the ranches and estates ran away into the wildparts, to the mountains like those that rise up from behind Port Antonio. Therun away slaves were called Maroons from the Spanish word ‘cimmarron’ meaning“wild” or “untamed.” As the number of African slaves brought to Jamaicaincreased so to did the number of Maroons. Some held the wild lands known asthe ‘Cockpit Country’ or the ‘Land of Look Behind,’ with their chief base at Accompong. Another band was based on Nanny Town. These keptPort Antonio in a state of terror early in the 18th century. A third band heldthe eastern Blue Mountains under the leadership of men like Quaco. Experts inguerrilla warfare, they would win battle after battle against the British. Themaroons would sweep down in the silence of the pre dawn shifting in and out of the circling mist. Theplantation dogs, curiously silent at their approach, appearance sudden, theirdeparture swift, taking with them supplies of food, women and young people.Legends about them grew that they had the ability to appear and disappear, tostand so still in the evergreen that a party of soldiers could pass them bysight unseen. They could ambush and wipe out columns sent against them.

Caribs brought in from the Mosquito Coast of CentralAmerica to track them down were wiped out. Two British regiments were broughtfrom England but the soldiers took to rum so enthusiastically that they neverhad a chance against the elusive maroons in a fortress of the Blue Mountains.An expedition under the command of Captain Stoddart fought their way into themountains above Nanny Town and succeeded in dragging two cannons into theheights over looking the villages and blew them to pieces. Those who survivedwent further into the mountains. They showed the British by their subsequentcounter attacks that they had not been destroyed. The British war against themaroons was costly in terms of men and materials.

Peace came only when a treaty was made with them in1739. The remarkable document recognized them as a free people and handed overto them 1,500 acres of land. It further allowed them to administer their ownlaws. The maroons agreed to ally themselves with the government of Jamaicaagainst any invader, such as the French from nearby Haiti or the Spaniards fromCuba as well as to hand over any runaway slaves. Sir Phillip Sherlock remarksin his paper on the maroons, “The Maroon has been absorbed into Jamaica thoughanyone who knows West Africa would find signs of Africa clearer in the Maroonvillages than anywhere else in the West Indies.” The novelist Peter Abrahamsfound this when he went some years ago to Accompong to speak with the Colonel,as the leader of the Maroons from generation to generation over the centuriesis described. He had recently returned from the Gold Coast and found thesimilarities in physical appearance and lifestyle striking. Impressed by thedignity of the Colonel, he described him as “a tall, slender man, very darkwith a lined but tranquil face...”

Sir Phillip Sherlock in his closing remarks catcheswell the spirit of the Blue Mountains in saying:

“The Maroon is not representative of a nationalmovement. He is tribal rather than national. He sometimes fights as an ally ofthe oppressor of Africans. But he is a symbol of man’s love for freedom, atoken and agent of active protest against slavery. If you were to go to theMaroon village at Moore Town in the Blue Mountains you would find that therewas no difference between the Maroon and the other men who gather towards theevening in the rum shop to talk and take their tot of white rum, or Cowneck asit is sometimes called since only a cows throat can tolerate the hair raisingstuff; or who still go pig hunting in the shadow of Stoddart’s peak or SugarLoaf or Candlefly, hacking their way through the thickets of sharp bladedbamboo grass or hog grass; or who sell leathery highly peppered jerk pork inthe streets of Port Antonio, or tell tales at night of the giant wild hog thattheir fathers hunted, a great red boar that killed six dogs and a man. Of thegiant boar: it is a backra duppy, a bad man duppy, says one. Or they speak ofthe common bushman’s belief that if you are so unlucky as to have to camp nearNanny town for the night, white birds will come and perch in tiers in thesurrounding trees. You can let off all your shot in vain. It goes through them.They are all ghost of the Nanny Town dead..."

There is an enormous significance in this coloneltalking over a glass of rum in an old house set in the forested mountain sideabove Accompong, for he has behind him a long history of protest and therejection of slavery - more than 250 years of freedom!

French Immigrants

2011-12-21T05:30:00.000-08:00

Grenada had become a Frenchpossession in 1674. For some 20 years the Caribs had held out, boldly meetingtheir foe, matching weapons of wood and stone against cold steel and gunpowder.They had fought the French on the beaches and in the steep inland valleysamongst the towering trees of the islands interior. The ancient volcanobelching fire and sulfuric flames, forming a hideous backdrop to this theirdoomsday scenario, which finally came with a mass suicide when the lastremnants, hounded by the invader, leaped to their deaths in a mad forecast ofthe things to come some three hundred years earlier.

The island was cultivated and anAfrican slave society was introduced. The plantocracy comprised in the main ofthe French provincial gentry with money to sustain their endeavor until profitscould be realized. The other French islands in the Caribbean, apart from Haiti,comprised of Dominica, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia and St. Vincent.Professor Gordon Rohlehr observes "The island of Grenada was captured bythe British in 1759 and ceded to Britain in 1763. The British sought toaccommodate the French residents whom they included in the limited assembly ofthe time." The British were aware of the necessity to maintain a unitedEuropean front against the free blacks who outnumbered them. These arrangementsin the main did not last as the French were more than a little sympathetic withthe rebellious American colonists who were seeking to over throw British ruleon the North American continent.

The French government did all inits power to undermine the British imperial expansion. In response Britainattempted a few years later to capture Haiti from both the French and the BlackJacobins who had risen in revolt. As the winds of the European wars surged backand forth in the Western oceans, Grenada was captured by the French in 1779 atthe height of the American War of Independence. However it was returned to theBritish under the Treaty of Versailles. It was against this background of beingfearful of British recrimination, for the discrimination which the French hadperpetrated against the British over the previous four years, made the plantersglad to take advantage of what was being offered to them under the Cedula ofpopulation of 1783. This accommodation by the Spanish crown to fellow Catholicsin the Caribbean, that was increasingly torn apart by war, was in fact adefining element in the history of Trinidad. The inability to recognise the bicentennial of this event in1983 by the government of the day in Trinidad was a testimony of our social andpolitical immaturity. Significant anniversaries are important landmarks which give us the opportunity tore-examine these special events. The French entry into Trinidad was verysignificant. French researcher F. P. Renault wrote:

"The French inhabitants ofthe islands considered themselves as brothers, jointly responsible to eachother and hardly coming to care for a nationality which they would probablynever employ for long. Also, they were more attached to the islands where theyhad established themselves, to the islands in which they were united inmemories and interest, than to a mother country which they had left with nothought of returning. It was because of this that the all powerful tradition ofkinship developed and became central to the French Creole character.

The original colonists were knownas the new colonists to distinguish them from the old Spanish settlers ... Manyhad left the land of their fathers several generations before, and had helpedto colonise French possessions in other parts of the New World. Some familiesbegan their colonial experience in Acadia, in what is now Canada, in the 17thcentury, others in Louisiana and New Orleans.

In their migrations, subject asthey were to changes political, economic and climatic, they found themselves attimes completely uprooted; their circumstances substantially altered, oftenhaving to start afresh; and because of the fortunes of war, families would findthemselves distributed among several islands whose ownership would change handsfrom one year to the next, while in reality they would continue to shareidentical interests and a way of life that had evolved as a result of living inthe tropics, on cocoa and sugar plantations operated by slave labour for, insome cases several generations. All the while they maintained the language andtraditions of the land of their origins. All these factors contributed to thefostering of a West Indian spirit, a West Indian French Creole way of life, aswell as to produce a community of opinion between the colonists of variousislands, in spite of the strict application of the various colonial laws."

Other French elements made theirway to Trinidad, as Professor Bridget Brereton wrote in 'Book of Trinidad':

"Right from the start of theFrench Revolution, in 1789, privileged Frenchmen, and especially members of thenoblesse, fled from their native land to the comparative safety of exile. Thisexodus stepped up during the first half of the 1790s, when the revolutionaryregime was at its most extreme.Although the emigrés included thousands of clergymen and members of the ThirdEstate (commoners), it was the noble exiles who gave the emigrés as a grouptheir main characteristics: royalist, fiercely Catholic, and bitterly opposedto the revolution and all its works.

Since many of the noble emigréshad been military officers (the army being one of the few acceptable careersfor young noblemen), it was natural that they would want to serve the greatcounter-revolutionary military alliance spearheaded by Britain, Austria andPrussia. And of these, large numbers did enlist in the armed forces of thesethree powers as officers, to such an extent that special French units wereorganised in each army. The British military authorities allowed many emigrésto raise regiments for regular service with the army, such as the 'ChasseursBrittaniques', only one of many. Royalist emigrés often bought commissions inregular British companies or regiments.

Many of these emigrés serving asofficers with the British armed forces fought in the Caribbean campaigns of the1790s. As early as 1792, before Britain was at war with revolutionary France,plans were being hatched among emigrés in Britain with property in Ste.Domingue (Haiti) to ship an army of emigrés to the Caribbean, presumably tocrush the revolution in the French colonies. This came to nothing, but manyFrench emigrés from the Antilles received commissions in the 9th, 10th, 11thand 12th West India Regiments, which were raised in Guadeloupe and Martiniqueand were taken into the British Establishment (i.e. as regular British troops)in 1798. White French Creole officers serving with British-raised black troopsin Ste. Domingue during the British occupation (1794-1798) often remained inthe British service after the occupation was over. Many emigrés withoutCaribbean connections, who had received commissions in regular British troops,took part in the West Indian campaigns of 1793-1797, in one of which Trinidadwas conquered. Several of them stayed on in Trinidad."

Apart from the military men,there were other French royalists from Haiti who offered their services to theBritish forces during their ultimately abortive campaign to undermine theHaitian revolution and wrest Haiti from both the blacks and the Frenchrepublicans. Rejected by the British in Jamaica because the assembly therefeared that their Haitian slaves might have absorbed the dangerous doctrine ofrepublicanism, Haitian planters and their slaves were re-settled in Trinidad.The impact of the Haitians, both planters and slaves, was felt in Trinidad. TheHaitians tended to settle in the south of the island, and, whether true orfalse, the planters found themselves stigmatized as being licentious andaccused by the other French colons of indulging in outrageous orgies. Theirslaves introduced the syncretic African religion, 'voudoun', and with it thepathological fear of poisoning and the creation of the 'zombi', or the livingdead, a cult that was unknown in the French islands of the Lesser Antilles.Mistrust, financial insecurity, an atmosphere bordering on hysteria, all thishelped to determine the spirit of the first years of British rule in Trinidad.The British did not trust the loyalty of the French, whether freshly arrivedroyalists or seasoned Creoles in their second or third generation. They trustedthe free coloureds and free black people even less, fully aware that theGrenadian revolution of 1795 was led by Fedon and other free colouredrepublicans. This revolution had cost the lives of some 7,000 persons on thatisland. Dr. James Millette in "Genesis of Crown Colony Government"tells us of the great care that was taken by the region's military governmentswith regard to slaves from Haiti. In the case of Trinidad, taking all but 39 of300 Haitian negroes refused at Martinique, there were plots or rumours of plotsto wipe out the entire European population. This was dealt with by GovernorThomas Picton very harshly. Notwithstanding poisoning did take place on severalestates. One case, a serious one, occurred at Coblentz in St. Anns.

The year 1803 proved to be veryfatal for the Coblentz estate, as the owner, Baron de Montalambert, lost 70 outof 150 slaves in a period of nine months. Governor Colonel Hislop commissionedSt. Hilaire Begorrat, a member of the Council of Government, and Louis FrançoisSergeant, a French notary from Martinique, to inquire into the circumstances ofthis tragedy. Eventually the principal driver, the hospital orderly and threeslaves of the estate were convicted of poisoning and executed. During theinquiry, it became known that amongst the slaves on the estate were some whohad been brought by Monsieur de Mallevault, the previous owner of Coblentz,from his estates in Martinique, where in 1793 a similar excessive mortality hadoccurred, where as well the use of poison had been suspected. Was one of theAfricans he brought Trinidad's first (and thank God so far only) mass murderer,hitting his victims both in Martinique and here?

As the report of theCommissioners states:

"Every experienced planterknows that the negro doctors, obeahmen, are nothing but poisoners who profit bythe ignorance and credulity of their comrades. They sell them someinsignificant powders to which they attribute miraculous virtues, and aftercarrying on with this trade for some time to acquire reputation, always finishby selling poisons extracted from plants with which they are well acquaintedand can always find. The police can never be too vigilant of these sort ofdoctors, as they are dangerous from their principles and from the consequencesthey produce."

The Baron de Montalambert wasnear total ruin by the loss of almost half of his slaves. In 1806, he sold histown house property on Frederick Street between Woodford Square and ParkStreet, and in 1808 he put up large sections of his St. Anns estate for sale.That same year, the planter died as well.

Look the devil dey!

2011-12-20T05:58:00.000-08:00

Somebody, I forget now who, oncesaid to me that Jab Molassi (the Molasses Devil) came out of cannes brulées andwas played in depiction of the worst thing that could happen on a cane estate:a person meeting his or her death by falling into a vat of boiling molasses.The molasses devil was the ghost of the cane estate.

Jab Jab, whip-cracking, mirroredmass decorated with red and green satin skirts, mauve moiré taffeta and orangestockings, is the father of the Dragon Band or Devil Band. This metamorphosiscommenced in 1906, when Patrick Jones assisted by Gilbert Scamaroni prompted bya sacred picture, illustrating the exorcising of the devil from a sick person,displayed in a shop at what is now 65 Queen Street, prompted the organising ofthe first Dragon mas. Khaki and slate were the colours chosen, cow horns andrope tails were used. They wore flexible wings that flapped. The band wascomprised of about 70 or 80 men and women, who carried long forks. There werepresidents with even more elaborate costumes, covered with brass buttons andgold fringe, diamante spangles and gold cord. Everyone wore small face masks.There was one central character called Lucifer who wore a golden crown and waseven more elaborately costumed. He was portrayed by Gilbert Scamaroni who useda large head mask imported from Germany by the firm Waterman Brothers ofFrederick Street. Between 1906 and 1909, cowtails held upright by wire wereadded. In 1909, Patrick Jones, along with 'Skeedo' Phillips and the Valere broughtout the "Red Devil Band". Patrick Jones was a man who loved to readand was able to put his hands on to an illustrated copy of Dante's Inferno, andas a result was able to add a host of diabolical characters to his alreadycharming retinue from hell.

In 1910, Jones brought out a bandcalled "Demonites" and introduced the character of Beelzebub, Lord ofthe Flies. He was enclosed in an iron cage and bound by nine chains. Beelzebubwas made of papier mache. Fearsome in character, the entire contraption wascarried aloft on poles. In 1911, Satan was introduced. His costume was similarto Lucifer's and Beelzebub's, but he carried a book and a pen in which torecord sins. This was the year in which the Beast appeared for the first time,and it was portrayed by a man called "Georgie". This costume of theBeast was made of large fish scales and so constructed that they could bustleup or be made to lie flat.

Professor Gordon Rohlehr tells usa lot about Patrick Jones in his book "Calypso and Society". Jones,he says, was one of the earliest devotees to serious masquerades in the early20th century. he was a pyrotechnicist and a calypsonian. Known as ChineePatrick, he was "hakwi", that is, half Chinese and half African. As acalypsonian, he sang under the name Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, andhis songs were in the tradition of Atilla the Hun and Lord Executor. He was apowerful calypsonian, so much so that his challenges were often hardly taken upby even the most significant aficionados of the art.

His daring to put the devil andhis hordes from hell on the streets of Port of Spain created an enormous impacton the city, its institutions and citizens and on the calypsoes of the time,and was to be retained in memory and folklore, still imitated, albeit poorly,to this day.

Bruce Procope, from whose papermost of this valuable information has been gleaned, points out that by 1911 themain features of the Dragon Band were already established and were to survivemore or less intact for another fifty years. Fresh characters emerged, such asthe devil as "gentlemen Jim", who, together with his devil mask, worea tail coat and carried a stick, behaving in a courtly manner with much bowingand kissing of hands.

Various theories have beenbrought forward concerning the devil band. Procope writes:

"The theory is that thedragon band is an ambulatory depiction of Satan and his horde cast from heaven ...he and his followers return to earth on the two days before the Lenten seasoncommences in order to try the virtue of the faithful."

The people who played this mashad no reluctance in playing the devil and the forces of evil, although manyfelt a great excitement, even fear, to be associated with it. By the 1930s,Patrick Jones' band was big, some 200 or 300 people. The devil mas generatedmixed feelings. As there was much delving into occult literature, looking forinformation to enhance the portrayals. Such books as "Hope and theRace" by Frank Patterson and the "Chronicles of Leviathan", ananonymous work, were consulted. This was a time when, not only in Trinidad,there was a great interest in the esoteric. Dealing with the devil in exchangefor souls was a minor industry amongst both the unscrupulous and the foolish.The fact that it was frowned upon by the religious was sufficient to make itdesirable. Others followed Jones' idea. Devil bands had tents, bamboo and carataffairs, where members met to build their mas and to practice their 'pass' ordance steps, and its 'chantwell' to compose songs. The Dragon's head was builtin secrecy, so that when it appeared, it would astound even the band members.

The green Beast would have amovable tongue with an iron band around the waist attached to three or fouriron chains, held in different directions to control the progress of thecharacter. The dance of the Beast consists of a lunging movement as it strikesout attempting to bring down the horde of surrounding red imps, who wouldconstantly goad him, sometimes there would be several Beasts in a band with onebeing the chief Beast.

There would be a king imp in redtights, mask, wings, a tail, attended by other imps who would carry axes,scrolls, horns, bells, dice, face cards and scales with weights. The showing ofthe face card was vital for the water crossing. One authority affirmed thatthere should be 42 characters in a devil band, some of these would be a gownman, expensively dressed with a mask imported from Europe, a Queen Patronesswith her court, Lilith, Eve's mother, a Bookman with a large book and an imp tocarry it. The character of Beelzebub would have a host of blue flies, sexygirls, buzzing about. All this produced an amazing sight, with the impstaunting the Beasts and dancing away with highly complicated steps, as otherimps would dance, twirl and skip, maintaining a constant activity and providinginteresting contrast with the noble mien and stately bowing of the Sataniccharacters.

Long ago, the fight of the Beastwas a feature of Carnival. The corner of Duke and Frederick Streets, middayCarnival Tuesday: the great Beast Zatog the Invincible met and destroyed Azoth,Keeper of the Inferno. This challenge to combat occurred automatically when twodevil bands met. Bruce Procope recalls:

"The combat took the form ofthe execution by the reigning Beast of various dance steps, which the challengerhad to imitate. If he succeeded, he then had to demonstrate his own for thereigning monster to imitate. The one who failed was dishonoured. To be thereigning Beast was considered the highest honour."

"Mr. Jones says that theDragon or Beast was suggested to him by a picture of St. Mark and the Beastwhich he saw at Laventille church," writes Procope. "Another of ourinformants, Mr. William La Borde (alias Willie the Beast) also remembersGeorgie. Georgie was the reigning Beast from whom Willie captured the crown.The step that brought him victory was one which was shown to him in a dream.One night after practice at the tent of his band, Willie went home to sleep. Hedreamt that a man came to him dressed in a top hat and tail coat. The mansuddenly turned into a zandolie and started to wriggle on the ground. Willieawoke, told his wife about the dream and immediately began to practice a stepin imitation of the movements of the zandolie. He perfected this dance and byit won the crown from Georgie."

With regard to the crossing ofthe water, Procope recounts the "coming out" or the"invocation", which takes place as the band is coming from the placewhere it has assembled onto the streets to parade. Led by the King Imp and hissexy quick-stepping horde, the music band blasting live music on their feet inthe road. they would burst upon the streets, the Beast itself, green-scaledwith its clawed dragon's feet straining at the chains held by the musclemen,barely able to contain it. As the Beast approaches the first drain, the KingImp or "tempter" steps forward, confronts him, and rings a big brassbell. He shows him a face card to bring him to a halt. The imps, in blazingred, their wings quivering, sequins sparkling in the noonday sun, show their"pass" and perform their play with cutesy antics and much teasing of theBeast.

The Beast, head rearing, clawsslashing the air, attempts the crossing, feigning fear lest any part of hisperson should touch the water flowing in the street's canal. With the Beast"over the water" other characters blaze out, bats temporarilytraveling with the band, big with black huge wings; zombies, a section ofjumbies in black and red. Two robbers also moving with the ban enter PiccadillyStreet, glowing, pulsating with human energy, Lucifer last of all, elegant,black satin cape lined in red velvet, dressed in the costume of a grand dukewith scarlet sashes and jeweled orders, and ceremonial sword in hand. Beforehim, mincing and cringing, his court of sycophants. They mime a play that nonebut they can understand. A coffin carries a man. A live black cat looks outfrom the Queen's hair piece. They have real dwarves who are old men, seendragging chains to which are attached souls waiting to be reincarnated. Theperformance of crossing the water is repeated. The teasing of the Beastcontinues. Small boys run up with slapsticks to make him jump, and old womenthrow pails of water before Lucifer to stop him - isn't that a tradition fromCatholic Ireland, throwing water before a hearse? But he just laughs hideouslyand shows them a morocoy and two live frogs he has in a small black and goldbox.

The Beast makes a bolt for it,catching the musclemen unawares - but don't worry, he's not going far - justfor a cold Carib from his nennen in the planning!

Some lyrics of the day relfectthe Red Devil Bands, but that was long ago. Now we are afraid of a weathervane on top the Red House - the old iron dragon. They should put it back!

"I am a monarch from heartand soul

Whenever I go I bound to control

I am guided by the three stars

Jupiter, Mercury and mars.

And if tonight I shall lose myname

Blood is going to flow from everyvein

They call me Beginner the terror,the brutal conqueror

Santimanite."

(Lord Beginner)

"Come into my den and thereyou shall see

Skeletons and bones of yourfamily.

Your body shall be placed on amountain peak

And there you shall say yourprayers for a week

And after that dreadful pain youshall meet a hurricane

Santimanite.

From the very first day that Iwas born

Men like Houdini started to mourn

Monarchs wept and princes cried

When they saw this new star up inthe sky

Astronomers in my horoscope state

He'll be proud, grand,illustrious and great

And they named me Atilla, theterror, the brutal conqueror

Master Mi Minor."

(Atilla the Hun)

Respectability

2011-12-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

Thatremarkable quality that Trinidadians like to boast about, that is even toutedon political platforms, and euphemistically describes us as a "RainbowCountry", essentially derives from our 19th century experiences duringwhich race, class, colour and caste arranged themselves to create anelaborately complicated, intricately woven pattern of human relationships.

These,frozen, as it were, in the mould of colonial rule, stamped or stigmatised bycolonial prejudices for almost two centuries, have only just in the last 40 oddyears since independence, begun to thaw out. Like the mythical Sleeping beauty,we stir and sigh and open our eyes to the brilliant dawn of reality. we lookabout and see our castle overgrown and the people who had been frozen in timeare somehow left behind, as they cling to the modes and mores of the previouscentury.

Thiskiss that has brought us to consciousness is the reality that to move forward,with all our inherent potential, we must grasp and understand the historicalprocess in which we slumbered and the truth to which we have now awakened.

WestIndian Society, in fact New World society as a whole, has been pervaded sincethe 18th century by racist ideologies (not even to speak of chauvinist ones!).Donald Wood, in his work "Trinidad in Transition", wrote that thewhole intricate experience of the Afro-European encounter since therenaissance, the stereotypes formed by slavery, the legacy of master andservant relationships from the first slaves to arrive in Europe fromsub-Saharan Africa and carried to Portugal, taken by Antâo Gonsalves in 1441,has produced the elaborate complex of attitudes and prejudices which inform the"white view" of the "black personality". A mixture of affectionand contempt, patronage and fear was carried into the period ofpost-emancipation from the times of slavery.

InTrinidad, this was complicated further by the circumstances of the developmentof the island's economy, and the nature of its government. As a neglectedSpanish colon with a small Spanish ruling elite, a handful of black slaves anda debased Amerindian population, its first cultural shock was to come with theFrench colonists, their free coloured cousins and their slaves. With theBritish conquest a decade and a half later, yet another culture was intruced.It was in the dawn of the British period, the 1800s, that the first conflict ofclass, race and religion began in this colony.

TheFrench, marooned on this island by the revolution, were mainly a remnantaristocracy, and Catholic. They had the following view of the arriving English:"There was not a gentleman amongst them, except perhaps in themilitary." (W. Day). Also, the English were Protestant.

Blackand mixed people who for one reason or another were not slaves, butslave-owning themselves (and this group outnumbered the whites by far!) wereholding on to the rights and privileges granted to them by the Cedula ofPopulation by the skin of their teeth. With emancipation, their positionplummeted in the eyes of the Europeans. Slaves and former Free Black peoplewere now "all black together". It was at this point that the conceptof respectability began to be institutionalised.

Respectabilitywas a very important idea in 19th century Trinidad. In many respects, the realdifference in the society was between those who were respectable and those whowere not, rather than between the white people and the black. White people,whether the French Creoles or the British or other expatriates, were bydefinition respectable. White people would have to do something very shockingin public to loose respectability.

Inthe case of blacks, coloureds and the Indians, the onus was on them toestablish, prove and maintain their respectability. To be respectable today didnot mean that you were generally, so you had to be respectable all the time, inprivate and in public.

Onrespectability, Dr. Bridget Brereton comments:

"Itwas assumed that they [the blacks] were not respectable, unless they showedthat they were, by their education, attainments, occupation and style oflife."

Itwas this that made the difference between the black masses and the black middleclass - not access to money or complexion. It was manners, European culture,education and life style.

Otherconflicts had their genesis in the crucible of Trinidad's 19th centurylandscape, particularly between the newly arriving East Indians and the'respectable' coloured middle class intellectuals. These gentlemen engaged inan anti-white, anti-colonial struggle for the reform of colonial rule, and theywere against labour brought in from India - not on humanistic grounds, but fromthe point of view that cheap Indian labour enriched the white establishment(especially the English) and that it drove down wages. Their agitation foundsupport from working class blacks on the wages issue, support from the racistswho were keen to hate white people generally, but most significantly this blackmiddle class movement was instrumental in stereotyping East Indians through theuse of newspapers owned by them as "immoral, wife-killing aliens".Left unnoticed by the early Indians and unchallenged by the Britishadministration, this middle class movement too proceeded to becomeinstitutionalised.

Tobagoas an entity had a different social, political, economic and religiousexperience from Trinidad. For more than 150 years before Trinidad wascolonised, Tobago was a Protestant island, and as an older colony, its economyhas had its ups and downs in cycles different from Trinidad's. Its mainpopulation was a "pure black" peasant, land holding society. Havinghad no experience of French creoles or Indians, cocoa panols, Portuguese orSmall Islanders, and with the collapse of Tobago's economy, the Tobagonianwhites found themselves in the same boat as the blacks. Towards the end of the19th century, the island was experiencing an economic downturn and was withoutmuch ceremony joined to Trinidad. A culturally and sociologically more obviouschoice should have been Barbados.

Duringthis period, Portuguese peasants started to arrive. Because they were poor andnot educated, much like the Syrians and Lebanese of 50 years later, they werenot seen as "sociologically white", and had no place in whiteTrinidadian society, at least not until they made a lot of money. The sameapplied to the Chinese, most Venezuelans and lower class Europeans. Insofar ascaste and class were concerned, the white French creoles together with ahandful of Irish and Germans that they had married formed an elite,distinguished by its inbreeding and social exclusivity. During the 19thcentury, the French Creoles gave the country distinguished public servants,administrators, wardens and scientists, particularly in the field of medicine.

Asa fossilised element in the body politic, however, the French Creoles becameeasy pickings for the first version of the PNM, whose leader in lieu ofrevolution put them into opprobrium and in a short space of time, 1956 to 1961,effectively removed them from the political scene after 150 years of dominance.

Asthe 20th century dawned, all these various peoples as a result of ongoingsexual contact had produced individuals with a mindboggling mixture of races,cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Class became the only yardstick by which theycould recognise each other. Century-old beliefs in "white elitism"and access to European cultural values by an established hegemony started tobecome brittle at the edges. In their aspiration towards respectability, theblack and coloured middle class had produced a number of significantprofessionals, who came from property and estate-owning families. Thoseindividuals went to universities in the British empire, received awards andknighthoods, and formed that particular elite that had their roots in the freepeople of colour of the late 18th century.

Inthe early years of an independent Trinidad and Tobago, the coloured creolemiddle class was also shunned by the politics of the day, described as"Afro-Saxon" and lumped together with the French creoles. Thousandsof them emigrated, taking their culture and attainments with them. A sad lossfor our country, and a gain to coloured society in New York, London, Torontoand other metropolis: to mention the fact that Trinidad-style Carnival wasestablished by these cultured expatriates would only be to skim the surface ofthe "brain-drain"!

Thus,the respectability patterns of the 19th century were significantly changedover time through education,industrialisation and two wars. The softening up of the rigid society has madeit easier for the individual of any ethnic background to fulfill his or herdreams. In a true humanistic sense, the word "or" of the vocabularyof the 19th century has been replaced by the word "and" in the 20th.Let's see if the global village of the 21st will replace it with the word"with"!

Trade Unions

2011-12-19T07:37:00.000-08:00

Thetrade union movement in Trinidad and Tobago really came into its own in the1930s. Prior to this, the relationship between operators or owners ofbusinesses, whether agricultural or otherwise, and those who were employed bythem, tended to be along the lines of masters and servants. Workers,conditioned by the plantation lifestyle and the force of colonial might, whichindoctrinated all involved with a certain stereotype of roles along ethnic andgender lines, more often than not just accepted existing conditions, even if itmeant near starvation for them. They saw themselves as dependent on one hand onthe Almighty God, whose providence made it possible to grow food in a tropicalisland, and on the other on the generosity of the boss or the proprietor.

Historiansaffirm that the patois-speaking Catholic black and mixed Trinidadians tended tobe subservient to the system, whereas the Small Islanders, in particular theBarbadians, tended to be more independent and more aggressive.

Fromthe 1840s, people from the other islands had come to Trinidad in quantity insearch of work and a better standard of living. They came from both Protestantand Catholic islands, and as a result had known different cycles of religiousfestivals. The islands they came from had known slavery since the early 16thcentury, and there was virtually no coloured middle class there as existed inTrinidad.

Thoseimmigrants assimilated into Creole life in Trinidad, but also kept a lot oftheir own history and culture. They didn’t necessarily stay on the land, butjoined Trinidadians in small trades and crafts.

TheWorkingmen's Association was at the turn of the 20th century an aspect of thereform movements, and its membership was made up mostly of urban middle classliberals. The process to militancy would require a crucible, which as it turnedout was the advent of industrialisation. Several circumstances began to arrangethemselves, not the least of which was the demobilisation of thousands of menwho had seen foreign service during the first world war. The stereotype of themaster-servant relationship along ethnic lines was considerably softened up.

Anotherfactor was the repatriation of migrants from Panama after the completion of theCanal. Many of these were cash-rich, and a lot of them did not return to theirown islands, which were by comparison to Trinidad rather backward and prudish,but rather came here.

Thenature of the black Creole lifestyle was changing. There was still the pursuitof respectability, of education and of European culture. There was still theoverwhelming need to be accepted by the white pastor, the white overseer, thewhite madame, if only as a fellow human being. But for those who came of age inthe 1920s, new ideas such as generated by Marcus Garvey came into play, whichwere based on personal pride and belief in oneself as a being that createsfutures.

Theliterature of the time affected the thinking of workers, too. It was oftenbanned, and hard to come by, badly printed brochures on cheap paper. The ideaswere expressed in little newspapers, such as “The People”, “Trinidad” and “TheBeacon”, which all served to define a greater political awareness for a widercircle of people.

Essentially,the social divide in Trinidad was between capital and labour. This becameheightened by the fact that capital and labour were visibly different: thesmall employer class was white, the workers were black or Indian. There washardly any political representation - only 6% of the entire population had theright to vote. The governor had direct personal rule. All power, allresponsibility was centered on him.

Beforethe transatlantic cable, it took weeks to communicate with the Colonial Officein London. The governor was basically responsive only to the propertiedinterest. The landowners, the factory owners, the business and shop owners:these were regarded as the people with ‘responsible opinion’ who had ‘a stakein the country’. All others had neither voice nor vote. This situation was infact not unique to Trinidad, but was the case the world over; certainly inEngland.

Itis difficult for us, born in affluent times where opportunities forself-improvement actually exist for those with ambition and determination, tocomprehend the dead-end poverty and the stifling frustration of the periodbetween the wars. When with the great depression things suddenly took a turnfor even worse, however, it was hard for all to accept. Money vanished. Therewas little to buy.

Thesituation was summed up in Growling Tiger's "Money is King", wherethe calypsonian says that a lot of education and "broughtupsy" willnot help anybody in obtaining food in hard times as these. I quote here fromDr. Gordon Rohlehr's 'Calypso and Society':

"Moneyis King begins with the assertion that if a man has money people will overlookhis leprosy or crime and grant him the highest social status.

Butif you are poor, de people tell you 'shoo'

Anda dog is better than you'

Thisthesis is then relentlessly illustrated stanza by stanza. A rich man receivesextended credit while a poor man, including the gentleman or scholar fallen onhard times and reduced to eating in a cook shop, will not be credited even apenny by the illiterate proprietor, who will instead mock at his discomfiture.

'Aman with a collar and tie and waiscoat

Askde Chinee man to trus' him accra and float

"Meno trus' am," bawl out de Chinee man,

"Youbetter move on from me fryin' pan.

Youcollege man; me no know ABC

Youwant-am Accra, gi-am penny."

Theworms start to jump in the man's belly

Andhe cry out 'A dog is better than me!'

Boththe well-bread dog and the cur stand a better chance of survival than the poorman, whose very good breeding may reduce his instinct for the hard 'scrunt' ofsurvival.

'Adog can walk about and take up bone

Fowlhead, stale bread, fish tail and pone

Ifit's a good breed and not too wild

Somepeople will take it and mind as a child.

Butwhen a hungry man goes out to beg

Theywill set a bulldog behind his leg.

Fortypolicemen will chuck him down too

Yousee where a dog is better than you.'"

Evenfor people who had jobs, the total collapse of the economy in the early 30sbrought with it a dramatic increase in the size of tasks and a decrease in paypackets. Smallholders of 2 to 6 acres were badly affected. Many lost theirancestral lands. Sir Norman Lamont, and English planter and member of theLegislative Council, remarked on the system of indebtedness to the localshopkeepers. Dr. Susan Craig in her book 'Smiles and Blood' recounts his speechgiven to the Legislature in 1938:

"Thesesmallholders are fattened up, as it were, on this bad system of debt until theyare ripe for the slaughter and ready for their larger neighbour or theshopkeeper to squeeze them out or buy them in. Everybody is doing it, even thebest people!"

Lamontwent on to point out over 100 cases in the Manzanilla district who complainedthat they were no longer paid in cash, but with purchase orders which theycould redeem at the local shop. Often the shops did not have the goodsrequired, so they gave the cash less 25% interest. There was also the practiceof giving tokens instead of cash. Many estates paid in tokens which could onlybe redeemed at shops which were owned by Chinese and Portuguese shop-keepers,whose ancestors had come in the mid-19th century.

Thewholescale cheating of illiterate people, indebtedness at high rates ofinterest, lower prices to the smallholder whose crop were mortgaged to thelocal shop, reduced access to further credit - all this led countless people tothe loss of their land, either to the estates or to the shops.

Itwas a time of merciless usury. Governor Sir Murchison Fletcher (1936 - 1937)remarked:

"WhenI arrived in Trinidad, I was somewhat painfully impressed by the povertyhere.."

Itwas a time in our history when the interest of the state was hand in glove withthe interest of the propertied. It was also a time of official deafness. Theauthorities could not or would not hear the voices of the people. They ignoredthe hunger marches, the petitions, the calypsoes; they dismissed the hangingtogether of hunger, unemployment, economic depression and worker militancy.

Thefuse was getting shorter, but no one was paying attention. As far as thegovernor or the Secretary of State for the Colonies were concerned, there wereabout 20 men in the colony who really mattered. These were the men who spokefor oil, asphalt, sugar, cocoa and commerce: all that mattered for a"respectable opinion".

Ultimately,political power resided in the ability to control sanctions, particularly byforce. The armed forces during that period were organised as follows:

Thefirst line of defense was the local police, mainly black with English officers.The second line of defense was the volunteer force, mainly white-collar workersand led by local whites and expatriate managers. The volunteer force was infact and extension of the alliance of state and capital. This was an endowmentof the rich with police and military powers to shoot to preserve their superiorposition. In the event of the police and volunteers failing to control unrestin the population, imperial troops and ships were called upon to protect theinterest of property. As Dr. Craig sums it up:

"Thus,the employer class was also vital to the defense of the colony and collaboratedwhen imperial troops intervened by providing accommodation and food for them.In so doing, when workers struck a blow at poverty, they were striking too atthe state and the whole structure of colonialism."

Andwhat had happened to the "black masses"? Firstly, they were not"asses", as the popular rhyme suggests. They were, however, extremelypoor, living in hopeless conditions comparable in the Caribbean today probablywith Haiti. Children, whose bellies were bloated and whose navels hang out in ahernia due to malnutrition, shoe-less families, hopeless adolescents: theynevertheless knew exactly what was going on. They knew that the colonialgovernment offered no options, and they knew that they were producing rawmaterials for things that came back manufactured, and unaffordable to them.They knew they were totally dependent on the patrimony of the colonial establishment.

Inthe 19th century, loyalty to the British crown was absolute, even or probablyespecially so by the colonials. To understand this from today's perspective,one can probably compare it to the absolute acceptance and devotion thatCatholics all over the world feel towards a Polish Pope who reigns from thefar-away peninsula of Italy. This loyalty also diminished in the 20th century.War, increasing communication, and the movies from America that illuminated thesilver screens all over Trinidad contributed to this paradigm shift. All of asudden, the "black masses" realised that white people too were poor,cussed, and were 'ketching their ass'! From then on, the image of the"white man" was no longer exclusive. The Second World War and thestationing of thousands of American servicemen contributed even more to that: ina country of 750,000 mainly coloured and Indian people, there appeared on thestreets all of a sudden 500,000 young American men! For many Trinidadians, itonly now became ordinary to deal with European-looking people on a day-to-daybasis.

Butall in all, it was the grinding poverty that drove the black masses and theenlightened elements of the creole middle class to make a change. The strike inthe oil fields started on Saturday, June 19th, 1937. By evening, the policeattempted to arrest the union leader Uriah Butler, resulting in the death of apolice corporal and an inspector. On the following day, Sunday, H.M.S. Ajax wasordered to Trinidad. Governor Fletcher went to the oil belt. The followingweek, the second cruiser, H.M.S. Exeter, arrived in Port of Spain. Within days,the strike is over.

In1937, the workers won the right to organise trade unions, but this wasaccompanied by the determination of the ruling class to control these unions ina way that the gain to labour would be nullified. The establishments of labourdepartments was an attempt to achieve this.

Thisentire period of the 1930s was a formative one in the shaping of the modernCaribbean. There were significant reforms; among them was universal adultfranchise and political decolonisation. Labour had thrust itself onto thepolitical arena. After the war, labour evolved into mass political parties,ultimately opening the way for West Indian nationalism and politicalindependence.

The Renaissance come to Trinidad

2011-12-16T06:02:00.000-08:00

TheRenaissance was the European era between the 14th and 17th centuries, when art,literature, and the ideas of ancient Greece were discovered again and widelystudied, causing a rebirth of activity in all these things. During that time Theauthority of kings, emperors, popes and dukes were overcome through theReformation, through the farmers' insurrections, and through the idea ofnationalism, re-directing thinking and feeling after the Middle Ages. Based onthe ideals and aesthetics of pre-Christian times, the re-orientation towardsthe good, the true and the beautiful leads art and sciences to new hights.Europeans started to see themselves as freed from the fetters of the church,and went to take possession of far-away parts of the earth in brave adventures.

Somesignificant people of the time:

Kopernikus,Kepler, German scientists

Paracelsus,Swiss physician and researcher

JakobFugger, German tradesman

Sinan,Turkish architect

Tizian,Raffael, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Italian painters

Columbus,Italian discoverer

Dürer,German painter

Riemenschneider,German sculpturer

Shakepeare,Bacon, English poets

Calvin,Zwingli, Swiss reformers

Luther,German reformer

Melanchton,German religious philosopher

Cervantes,Spanish poet

ElGreco, Spanish painter

Galilei,Italian scientist

Erasmus,Dutch scientist

Münzer,German freedom fighter

ChristopherColumbus

Theyear 2011 AD presents an unparalleled opportunity for us to mount the cockpitof history and with a pilot’s eye gaze out upon the distant horizons of ourhistorical experience. This historical experience, for those of us who live inthe west, is relatively short, commencing as it does a mere 500 years ago.Some, in looking back, see only the start of an era of imperialist brutalityand ecological degradation. Another point of view perceives with pleasure thecommencement of an age of freedom and the divers pathways that progress hascarved on the landscapes of the New World.

In1992, which people commemorated as the “Columbus Quincentenary”, the point ofview of some native Americans caught the ear of scholars, political activistsand Black Awareness groups. They were offended by the idea that Columbus shouldhave “discovered” the New World, a view that was adopted by many in theCaribbean as well. Even if their plight did not really change anything in therole that Columbus played as a historical figure, it must be seen as atestament to freedom and progress that the voices of those objectors wereheard.

Anniversariesare very important in that they give an occasion to re-evaluate history. In notrallying around anniversaries, such as for example the 100th anniversary of theannexation of Tobago to Trinidad, to pick just one instance, those importantoccasions are wasted, and a fossilised status quo is maintained.

Inthe case of Columbus, the objectors negated the achievements of him as a greatexplorer and put his motives and consequences into opprobrium. This isunderstandable from their perspective, since in the aftermath of the Admiral’scoming to the Americas, their culture got nearly completely wiped out andAfrican slavery was introduced.

However,it is important to put events and personalities of former times into theirproper historical context. To belittle the past is a vice of those who seek toaggrandise themselves in the present, without having achieved greatness. AsAnne Rice puts it in her “Vittorio”, a very insightful fictional book about theFlorentine Renaissance, “Those who don’t do anything great, find suspectanything that is not in a perpetual state of disintegration”. This is to aconsiderable extent a problem of the so-called Third World, where poverty keepsmany people from thriving and achieving greatness for themselves. To stay withthe example of Columbus, who came to this island of ours 503 years ago, let uslook at what this Admiral of the Ocean Sea really achieved in the context ofhis times, which was really the beginning of modernity in the western world:the Renaissance.

Dr.Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, historian, writes:

“Thesignificance of his [Columbus’] Atlantic crossing has been belittled anddenied. Yet, bearing in mind the resources of 1492, the opening of reliableroutes, both ways across the Atlantic, had a permanent transforming effect onthe world. No single event contributed so much towards making our unified worldof today different from that of antiquity and that of the Middle Ages, whichwere composed of discrete patches like a decayed mosaic.”

ChristopherColumbus, then, can be commemorated as the discoverer of these reliable routesin the age of the sailing ship. He found a way to use cutting-edge technologyof the time to its fullest potential. In fact, it was on his second voyage tothe west that he concretised the ideal route, which led south-west from theCanary Islands in the mid-Atlantic to the Lesser Antilles, and on his way backto exit north from the West Indies to catch the westerly winds. These journeysfrom the old world to the new forged a significant link that has stood the testof time. But much more than that, the vast populated middle region of theworld, stretching from the Americas to Europe across the caravan routes toAsia, India, and the sea lanes to China now formed a chain. No more would theworld be comprised of loosely joined cultures hardly speaking, barely tradingwith each other. With the advent of the remarkable Genoaese adventurer, we wereon the way to the making of the “global village”, the whole breadth of which“could be crossed by cultural contagion, human migration and commercialexchange.”

Columbus’discoveries of the 1490s, remarkable and special as they were to theRenaissance, belong in fact in the context of an evolving and unfolding, a changing,world.

Inthis period, paradigm shifts took place in the religious, cultural and economicspheres. Explorers were setting out. Marco Polo had not too long ago returnedto Europe, having visited China mostly by foot. Vaso de Gamma and de laPeyrouse would circumnavigate the world in the years ahead, which would be asignificant development, since only full circumnavigation offered concreteproof that the world was round! This, in fact, was one of the great goals ofChristopher Columbus. He felt sure that if he sailed west into the Atlantic, hewould eventually arrive in the east - a great supposition at the time.

Egypt,ancient and obscure, was undoubtedly the original source of all the sciencesknown to man in olden times. The scientists of Egypt - today referred to aspriests - taught the Greeks all they knew. At the time of Columbus and thelater circumnavigators, the most important sources of geographical writingswere those of the Greeks. The great Aristotle, who lived about 400 years beforethe birth of Christ, had demonstrated that the world was round. His views werediscarded and eventually lost to the medieval Catholic world in western Europe.They were only remembered in Islamic works which were slow to make their waywestward.

AnotherGreek, Pythagoras, born 472 BC., was a product of the mystery schools of Egypt.He too knew that the world was round. Pythagoras, amongst his several proofs,pointed out that the shadow of the earth cast upon the moon during a lunareclipse was round, demonstrating that the surface of the earth must be roundtoo, from whatever angle one looked at it.

Thisknowledge led to the belief that it would be possible to reach Asia by sailingwestward from Europe. Columbus, in attempting to prove this, operated in thecontext of great personal bravery: it was not commonly accepted that the earthwas indeed round! The value of his “discoveries” is thus to be found in thefact that he proved a scientific fact, that he conquered superstition andstupidity in the people who insisted the world was flat.

Thisvalue stands for itself and cannot be debased with the argument that theAmericas and the Caribbean had been discovered by people already, that thehemisphere was populated, and that the Scandinavians had “discovered” it inprevious centuries.

Inanalysing history, one has to be careful not to unravel events like an oldsweater, and to end up with ends of wool that show nothing of the intricateknitting pattern. To judge Columbus anything other than a superb Renaissanceman by arguing that it was because of him that enslaved people from Africawould suffer in the colonies would be to make the sheep responsible for thesweater!

SpanishConquistadors

Inthe years immediately following Columbus’ discovery of Trinidad in 1498, theinterest of Spain was concentrated on the larger or her new-found possessionsto the north. In the earlier years, Trinidad was visited by the ships of thoseengaged in discovery, who, after taking wood and water, passed on. In time, thebeauty and fertility of this island attracted attention. There was also alwaysthe prospect for gold. The island was seen as well-populated, thus a source oflabour, mostly from the point of view of forced labour amongst the Amerindians.By 1509, Diego Columbus, son of the Admiral and governor of San Domingo, wasbuying Amerindians from Trinidad for 150 ducats each to work in the pearldiving industry on the island of Cubagua.

Withgold ever in mind, the Spanish King directed attention to the exploration ofthe natural resources of Trinidad. In 1511, he instructed Diego to ceaseremoving slaves from Trinidad and to send men to explore the island for gold.The two caravels dispatched from San Domingo, sailed southward in the blindingheat of May, careful to bypass islands known for the man-eating habits of theirinhabitants. With great trepidation, they put a boat ashore at the island ofRedonda, off the coast of Montserrat. Her volcano was idly smoking. Thesailors’ intent was to capture and kill the giant turtles nesting there, themeat of which they salted. They set sail once more and touched upon the islandof Guadeloupe for water and to rest the crew, before hazarding the next leg ofthe journey that would bypass the windward islands and take them to thetowering cliffs of Trinidad and its port of entry, known as the Boca delDragon.

Beforethem lay the great Gulf of Paria, and about their small and somewhat fragilevessels great whales disported, nursing their young and mindlessly enjoying thetwilight of their existence.

Fromthe shore, a small suspicious gathering of Amerindians saw for the third orfourth time these strange craft appear as if by magic. In the waters, just offtheir village that they called place of the silk cotton trees because of thegiant trees that came down from the mountains to the mangrove coast. Later, theSpaniards would pronounce that turn of phrase as “Cumucurapo”, to be rememberedhundreds of years later as Mucurapo.

CaptainRoderigo de Bastidas brought his men ashore. They were sweating in their heavyarmor and European clothes. Banners were flying, bearing the arms of Spain anddepictions of the Virgin of Compostela. They made their way through the tangleof mangrove into the savannah lands studded with great trees, that would manycenturies later be called Woodbrook, and whose streets would be decorated withthe playful names of the children of Johann Benjamin Gottlieb Siegert, a Germanwho found some of South America’s real riches in the plants that grow there,concocting herbs and tree bark into his famous Angostura Bitters.

Theexpedition followed the almost dry riverbed of the Rio Santa Anna, into thehills, to an area known as Ariapita. The Carib warriors moved purposelyforward, their naked bodies painted bright red with roocoo against themosquitoes. In the distance could be heard the roar of a waterfall. In thetrees above, the bellbirds called. In the brilliant sunlight, the high cliffsseemed indeed to sparkle with a golden light. Golden nuggets appeared toprotrude from the rock’s face, and the Spaniards, excited by their find,scrambled up the hillside. The mountain pools below them reflected in perfectunion the circle of the sky.

Thesearch for gold in Trinidad was not successful. Probably the Amerindians showedthe Spaniards the deposits of marcasite, fool’s gold, and it was not longbefore expectations in this direction were proved unjustified.

DonAntonio Sedeño

Interestin Trinidad thereupon lapsed, except as a place for enslaving Indians to besold in other islands until 1520, in which year, on December 15th to be exact,the King of Spain granted the conquest and pacification of the island to DonAntonio Sedeño, the contador of San Juan, Porto Rico. Sedeño was named governorand captain general. Don Antonio was thus Trinidad’s first governor. He was atough soldier who had made adventure his life’s work. Shortly after hisappointment to the Indies, his colleagues were sending adverse reports aboutSedeño, and in 1518, he was suspended from office and imprisoned on the allegationof having seduced a very young girl from a convent in Porto Rico.

Allegedly,Sedeño had a “turbulent nature”. Put into prison for the offense, he set it onfire and escaped aboard a ship leaving the port. Diego Columbus had Sedeñoacquitted and reinstated after an investigation.

Thefollowing year saw him back in jail, this time for making free with HisMajesty’s revenue. He was said to have “put his hands deeply into His Majesty’sfunds” with disturbing the island and fermenting factious disorders. He wassentenced to pay 5000 pesos. The index of papers of the Council of the Indiesshow Don Antonio in and out of jail. Such is the record of the man who aspiredto conquer and pacify the island of Trinidad!

Hisbrother officers were glad to see him go. To the authorities in Spain, he was aman of wealth with resources suitable for the conquest of Trinidad, a manpossessed of an undoubted courage - exactly the qualities of leadership wellsuited to a conquistador!

Whenone thinks of conquistadors, the names of Cortés and Pizzaro come to mind,iron-clad men who went to Mexico and Peru. Men who burned their ships on thebeaches of the New World and resolutely set out to conquer and in fact destroycivilisations that were thousands of years old. What those rough-edged,ignorant Spaniards mindlessly destroyed were in fact precious records of thosecivilisations’ knowledge of precessional astronomy, mathematics and geometry.Their vast libraries were annihilated, and the information of the “Gods comingto earth” was forever lost. Probably, the loss of their archives was more thananything else the undoing of the Aztec and Inca civilisations. Montezuma,emperor of the Mexicans, really believed that Hernando Cortés was the Godprophesied to return.

TheSpaniards at that time had come out of a terrible war for the reconquest ofSpain. Generations of an aristocratic knightly Catholic class had clashed withthe flower of Islamic warrior culture. Victorious against the ‘infidel’, theCatholics destroyed the high culture established by the Moors in Europe andproceeded to cross the Atlantic to wipe out another.

Trinidadreceived its first conquistador, Don Antonio Sedeño, in 1531. The frailcaravels sailed for the Indies from the port town of San Lucar de Barrameda inSpain, carrying 70 men and some horses. He had a fortunate and successfulcrossing, and as was the custom, made landfall at the south east corner of theisland, just about where the gas pipelines now come out of the Atlantic oceanon Galeota Point. He proceeded along the south coast, past Moruga, to enter theGulf of Paria by the Serpent’s Mouth, and sailed straight north to seek for theIndian Cacique named Turpiari, who was the ruler of the north of Trinidad.These two became friends, and it is said that their relationship endured manydecades.

Trinidadwas hard for Sedeño to handle. He had arrived at a time when a war ofAmerindian conquest was being waged between rival tribes of Caribs. He wascaught in the primitive politics of the day, and beset by Carib warriors whowere not afraid to die for their island. They attacked the Spaniards again andagain, destroying Sedeno’s stockade at Mucurapo in a series of bloody battles. Their bravery andcommitment should be known and remembered with the same respect as the Apachebraves: Geronemo, Crazy Horse and Little Bear. These were in fact the firstheroes of Trinidad. They fought and died for this island, which they knew asIere, the Land of the Hummingbird.

Itis because of the valor of the tribal people that the hummingbird, now anational symbol, is in the centre of the cap badge and buttons of both theTrinidadian police force and the regiment, and is, in fact, saluted withrespect.

DonAntonio did not conquer Trinidad. He died in the high forest of the province ofMeta on the mainland, organising yet another attempt to colonise Trinidad. Hehad left his fortune behind in Spain and had come out with his ambition and hisyouth to make a fortune. He had earned the friendship and the respect of thecaciques throughout many difficult years - no mean feat in those times - asuccess which should give him a notable place in the ranks of theconquistadors.

Today,if you visit President’s House,there is a plaque at the entrance bearing the names of Trinidad and Tobago’s governors. His is the veryfirst.

Who celebrated Carnival?

2011-12-16T05:39:00.000-08:00

Carnivalin Trinidad has grown out of the collective experience of all people who havecome to this island from Spanish times, prior to 1797, on through to thepresent day. Carnival is essentially Roman Catholic in origin. Its earliestparticipants must have been the Spanish settlers who, in isolation, living inthe little hamlets bearing beautiful names like San José de Oruna and Puerto delos Hispanioles, would have danced the medieval “burroquete” in the muddystreets accompanied by guitar, fiddle and drum. The local Amerindians must havebeen looking on in amazement.

Hardlydrawing a crowd, the pre-Lenten fiesta would have been at most a dozen or sopeople dressed in rags, alpagattas and battered straw hats. The priests, theGovernor, the chief of police, and of course the donkey costumes into which aman or boy got to prance about, waving the little ass’ head from side to side,making mincing steps in a parody of riding merrily. The burroquete mas isancient, having its origins in north Africa and finding itself marooned inSpain after the withdrawal of the Moors in the 1490s. Eventually, it wasbrought to the New World.

Inthe period before 1783, before the influence of the French and Africans, it hasbeen suggested that the population was as follows:

Spanishwhite - 126

Coloured- 245

Slaves- 310

Amerindians(Carib) - 2000

Withthe Cedula of Population of 1783, a dramatic change took place. The island, though a Spanish colony,received a French population. These French, made up largely of the petitnoblesse of France’s southern provinces, brought with them many slaves. Theycame mostly from Dominica, St. Vincent, Martinique and Grenada. Amongst themwere a great number of people of colour, who were not enslaved. Those were thedescendants of earlier French settlers and African slaves. The institution ofslavery was then seen by Europeans and Africans, by Christians and Muslims, asan economic reality. It meant that these free black people who came to Trinidadpossessed slaves as well.

Thepopulation of Trinidad just before the British conquest in 1797 was as follows:

Spanishwhite: 150

Spanishcoloured: 200

Africansenslaved: 300

Amerindians:1127

Frenchwhite: 2250

Frenchcoloured: 4700

Africanenslaved: 9700

Beingalmost entirely Catholic in their faith, the French in Trinidad just like theSpaniards observed Lent and celebrated Carnival. It is said that the Frenchcombined an aristocratic tradition and their natural tendency to “contagiousgaiety, brilliant verbal sally and comic buffoonery” in their version ofCarnival. This gave the festival a different flair altogether. Historians saythat this period of Trinidad’s development, that is, the 1790s, was marked by acertain degree of racial ease. In as much as both the whites and the freecoloureds were sharing the frontier town experience, having freshly immigrated,there was an atmosphere of modest mingling. In fact, there was a lot ofso-called ‘miscegenation’ taking place! It was only with the advent of theBritish conquerors that this changed.

Carnivalcelebrations of the turn of the 19th century were enjoyed by both groups of thepopulation. But what of the several thousand slaves?

Portof Spain had then a large slave population which acted as domestics. What ofthe hundreds of slaves who moved about on their masters’ business, asmessengers, sailors, wagon drivers, etc.? According to tradition, they took nopart in Carnival. A memory by Ofuba the chantwell, a slave who sang “Neg deyepolla” has been preserved, picturing a slave peeping from behind the door atthe Carnival fête of the French masters (“Nègre derrière la porte”).

Bythe 1820s, during Governor Woodford’s term, the free persons of colour weresubjected to very stringent regulations, and although it was not forbidden towear masks, they were compelled to keep to themselves and never presumed tojoin the amusements of the privileged class.

TheCaribs were moving in their own world, their own time and space. Their rapidlydiminishing share in the population did not share in the realities of theEuropean and African immigrants, who in turn may not have noticed themparticularly.

Adescription of a Carnival ball has come down to us. Mrs. Bruce’s ball in 1831was attended by “the beauty and fashion of Port of Spain, composing a motleyassemblage of elegantly dressed ladies, largely Swiss damsels, Frenchmarquises, English noblemen, grooms, postillions, priests and friars” (thelatter costumes have been banned since then). The French also disguised astheir servants and slaves, their husbands and mistresses. One costume was thegraceful and costly one of the “mulatresse” of the time, whilst gentlemenadopted that of the “nègres du jardin” (in Patois ‘neg jardin’) or field labourer. In that costume the gentlemanoften figured in the “bamboola” in the “giouba” and in the “calinda”, allpopular local dance steps of the era.

TheFrench would often unite in bands, their faces blackened with soot,representing different estates. Lionel Fraser, who wrote a history of Trinidad,relates:

“Inthe days of slavery, whenever a fire broke out upon an estate, the slaves ofthe surrounding properties were immediately mustered and marched to the spot,horns and shells were blown to collect them and the gangs were followed bydrivers cracking their whips and urging them with cries and blows to theirwork. After emancipation, the negroes began to represent this scene as a kindof commemoration of the change in their condition and the procession of ‘cannesbrulées’ used to take place on the night of the 1st of August, the date ofemancipation.”

Inlater years, the practice of cannes brulées was used at a different time ofyear to inaugurate Carnival. With emancipation, social life was altered betweenthe free black people and the slaves. The ancient lines of demarcation betweenthem as classes were obliterated. Fraser remarks:

“Asa natural consequence, the Carnival degenerated into a noisy and disorderlyamusement of the lower classes. The earliest record of an attempt to regulateor control Carnival appears in 1833. An attempt was made by Mr. Peake(assistant to the chief of police) to check the shameful violation of theSabbath by the lower order of the population who are accustomed about this timeof year to wear masks and created disturbances on a Sunday.”

Peakearrested several people. On returning to his home, he found that all hiswindows had been broken.

Electricity

2011-12-15T05:37:00.000-08:00

Thefirst time the topic of electricity was ever raised in public in Trinidad, wason the 8th November 1850. This is recorded in José Bod's "Trinidadiana".A small assembly of refined, bespectacled, bearded and well-dressed men met atthe Juteau Hall on upper Duke Street, Port of Spain, to listen to a lecturedelivered by Dr. Arthur Jennings Humphrey on the subject of electricity andmagnetism. A somewhat esoteric subject for the time! Humphrey would have spokenof Benjamin Franklin, one of the more splendid examples of the Age of Enlightenment,a famous American statesman and scientist. Franklin was the 15th child of afamily of 17, born in Boston in 1706, who in 1746 commenced his famousresearches in electricity. He brought out fully the distinction betweenpositive and negative electricity, proved that lightning and electricity areidentical and suggested that buildings may be protected by lightningconductors.

Humphreymay have told his enthralled audience of the Scottish engineer James Watt. Bornin 1736, Watt was the first person to talk about horsepower. The Watt, a unitof power, is named after him. Watt described the steam locomotive in one of hispatents and obtained patents for the sun and planet motion, the expansionprinciple, the double engine, the parallel motion, a smokeless furnace and thegovernor. James Watt died in 1819.

Anotherremarkable man of the Age of Enlightenment was the Italian nobleman CountAlessandro Giuseppe Anastasio Volta. Volta was born in Como in 1745. He was aphysicist and the inventor of the electric battery. He developed the theory ofelectric current and discovered the electric decomposition of water, theelectrophorus, and electroscope, and made investigations on heat and gases. Hisname is given to the unit of electrical potential difference, the Volt.

Humphrey’saudience contained perhaps many people of French descent. Those would havewarmed to the orator’s mention of André Marie Ampère, the French mathematicianand physicist, whose name was given to the basic unit of electric current(ampere or amp). Born in Lyon in 1775, he had a distinguished academic careerand laid the foundations of the science of electrodynamics through histheoretical and experimental work of the magnetic effects of electric currents.

Thesubject of magnetism, particularly “animal magnetism”, was one that bordered onthe occult in that hazy world between science and alchemy. Franz Anton Mesmer,born in 1734 near Konstanz, studied and practiced medicine in Vienna. About1777, and after dissecting hundreds of innocent frogs, he began to develop theidea that there exists a power which he called animal magnetism. He travelledto France, where in collaboration with another medical doctor by the name ofJean Valleton de Boissière, he perfected his theory. To this day, Mesmerism orto mesmerise means to cast a spell on a person or hypnotise them. Anton Mesmerused magnetised iron rods to heal hundreds of people of a range of ailments. Hein fact refused to sell his secret for £20,000!

Atthis point, Humphrey’s audience hung on to his every word. The great-grandsonof that Dr. de Boissière, himself a doctor, and many of his other descendantslived in this island. The ideas expressed by this man of vision wereremarkable, even fantastic. There was a sense of the young French novelistJules Verne and his futuristic writing about Dr. Humphrey. As the eveningclosed and the oil lamps grew dim in their chimneys, his small audiencedispersed. Outside, the huge full moon was rising over the Laventille hills.The little town of Port of Spain was already half asleep, after all, it wasclose upon 9 o’clock. Did the people of the audience imagine what impactelectricity would have on the lives of their children and grand children?

African Songs to Calypso

2011-12-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

When the African slaves began to arrive in small quantities, that is, before the French people brought them in greater numbers in the 1780’s, they had found a form of singing. They took up local songs and of course sang their own songs too. Sampson says “they introduced more pep, more vigour, more liveliness and more animation”.
Mitto Sampson was able to draw from the memories of “old timers”, such as famous sportscaster Ken Laughlin’s father and Tony de Boissière, who knew a lot about the French Creole tradition of the origins of calypso.
Long ago, in the 1780s, a certain Frenchman by the name of Begorrat had a big estate in Diego Martin. There were many caves up in the mountains, and “Lawa” (King) Begorrat used to hold court in one of them, “to which he would adjourn with his favourite slaves and guests on occasions and indulge in a variety of entertainments,” says Mitto. Well, that is putting it mildly!
In Begorrat’s courtly cave would be his African slave singers of “cariso” or “caiso”, which were usually sung ex temporare and were of a flattering nature, satirical or directed against unpopular neighbours or members of the plantation community, or else they were “mepris”, a term given to a war of insults waged between two or more expert singers.
Gros Jean, or Big John, was a slave belonging to the Begorrat family. He was the first of these bards or “chantwells” to be appointed master of caiso or “Maît Caiso”.
Begorrat was a man who had many wives. Whenever he was vexed, the women would send for Gros Jean to sing him back to serenity. Begorrat, it is said, liked to think of himself as a monster, pitiless, destructive, and terrifying. A patois song he liked went like this:

Begorrat est diab’la, c’est un
Begorrat est diab’la, c’est deux
Begorrat for, cruel et mauvais
Begorrat roi-la dans son pays.

Gros Jean and Begorrat had a close relationship, so close that one of the wives of Begorrat poisoned Gros Jean. It is said that when Begorrat heard the news of his death, he first fainted, then raged and cursed, then swore. He did not eat for three days. He had Gros Jean’s body wrapped in a flaming red cloth and put a gold cross on his forehead, and buried him in the family grave on the estate. Another chantwell on the estate sang:

Gros Jean, you have a voice like thunder
Your voice can raise my mother from the dead.

So So also had a real good voice and succeeded Grow Jean as Maît Caiso. Begorrat discovered him and promoted him to this high position. It was said of him that he had a taste for “wrinkled and decrepit women ... and making his house a cross between a hospital and a house of refuge”. Thus, bringing into the vocabulary of Patois the word “so so” for one who seeks lovers amongst the aged, he was known to be a good, generous and sometimes quite religious man. Begorrat had him sing terrible songs against his enemies, and in so doing met his death in a terrible manner that may not be described in theses pages. It is said that one of his murderers confessed on his deathbed, naming two others, Fouchet and Dardaine, who in turn were tortured to death in revenge.
The third great calypsonain that we know about is Papa Cochon (Daddy Pig). He is remembered perhaps more as a notorious obeah man. He had the power of finding gold. There was quite a quantity of buried treasure around Trinidad in the 1800s. People who had money, gold, silver, precious stones, would bury it in times of danger or if they had to go away for a while. Then, for various reasons, they would leave it. Sometimes they were killed or died otherwise. Papa Cochon, through his dreaming ability, is reported to have discovered large quantities of pirate gold for his masters on Manzanilla Beach and at Mucurapo. He whistled, and the birds flew to him. He prayed snakes to death and mad dogs grew docile in his presence. He is reputed to have saved the lives of many. He would concoct a potion made from the blood of a young female slave, the brain of a black cat, sea water and two dead crapauds. He could transfer the suffering from one person to another. While preparing for his obeah work, he ate snakes and dogs, slept in graveyards, allegedly to hold meetings with the dead. It is thought that he belonged to Henri “Diable” Boissière. When they came to Begorrat’s court to sing against rival chantwells, Begorrat always got predictions from Papa Cochon. One day, Papa Cochon was invited to sing at the estate of a certain French family whose name begins with “L”, and was never seen again. Rumours had it that he had been locked up in an underground room and starved to death.
On this manner ended the life of the third great calypsonian, Papa Cochon, arch gossiper and scandal monger, impostor and chantwell. It was said by Mitto Sampson that his scarlet life hung like a black cloud over the period of slavery.
The fourth famous chantwell, Danois (the Dane), was not a slave. He may have come from the Virgin Islands. We are now in the 1850s, and from then on, many chantwell’s names have come down to us. Possum, son of the slave Ofuba, Hannibal the Mulatto, Surisima the Carib, of whom we spoke earlier, and Cedric le Blanc, the famous white calypsonian. Picong was always on the rough side. Zandolie, for example, sang:

Hannibal, your mother was a prostitute
I am singing the truth.
Hannibal was born in jail.

Hannibal was the mulatto son of Soucoush Piwi and an African carterman. He enjoyed poking fun at black people. He himself was a dandified, fair-skinned man, with slicked-down hair, two-toned shoes, black walking stick with a silver handle, pin-striped suits and ruffled shirts. He sang:

Black and black make pure devil
Black and white make half angel.

Outside of the thin veneer of Victorian respectability, mostly imposed by the English upon themselves, Trinidad’s creole life was one of considerable social disorder. Rumours would sweep the town like the one of the nun and the leper.

Black, white and mixed-race people lived in an ongoing near orgy of six, crime, rum and ribald songs. This was placed against a highly developed sense of sin which as Catholics they cherished. All this had evolved in Trinidad from the heritage of slave dancing societies, and the relationships between masters and slaves, which eventually evolved into Carnival bands. One can say that with the arrival of the French planters, the history of Carnival may be divided into four phases, viz slavery, the time right after emancipation, the end of the 19th century and a period from the 1890s to after the First World War. Carnival in slavery days was a white people affair. After emancipation, the ex-slaves took it over, mostly with depictions of burning cane plantations. The end of the 19th century almost saw the end of Carnival, which only survived because of the pressure put upon it by the British authorities who felt sufficiently strong to want to impose their ways. The more they tried to stop it, the more is sprung to life. The advent of the 20th century gave Carnival an even more important audience. The emerging middle class loved it. In the period after the First World War, it was motorized, amplified and participated in by thousand of movie-goers. The transition from the mad old days of bambula and tamboo bamboo was made with the increasing addition of modern musical forms and instruments.
Wire masks imported from as far afield as Austria served to hide the faces of the respectable ladies. Bands were roped off to prevent intruders and eventually ended up on the backs of trucks.

Burning of Goziria

2011-12-14T11:07:00.000-08:00

An Amerindian, in fact a Carib presence, haunts the origins of calypso in Trinidad. Over the last 100 years or so, this presence has been thickly overlaid by an Afro-French veneer, displacing this strand that forms a rich and significant part of the fabric that is part and parcel of our national festival. The story goes like this.

The Caribs had all but faded away from Trinidad by the 1840s. They had been wiped out with the advent of western civilisation and their remnant had retreated to Venezuela. With the arrival of the cocoa planters of the 1870s to the 1890s, they had faded back into the wilderness of the Northern Range and had drifted into urban life. This is where we pick up a little-known story, which Mitto Sampson in his paper on calypso legends recounts.
Jo Jo was the son of Thunderstone, who was the chantwell of a band called the Congo Jockos, that once dominated upper Nelson Street. He was reputed to have lost his wife Cariso Jane to Surisima the Carib, a well-known calypso singer. Jo Jo, in his 90s, told Mitto in 1947 about Surisima the Carib. The word cariso, by which term calypso was known prior to the 1890s, is descended from the Carib term “Carieto,” meaning a joyous song. Surisima was famous also as a folklorist and raconteur. He would be paid by people to come to their homes to tell stories of long ago. He was a wayside historian in the style of the late Jose Ramon Fortune, Harry Pitts and Alfredo Codallo. Whenever he spoke, people gathered.
Jo Jo possessed the Carib tradition. Carietos, he said, could heal the sick with music, embolden the warrior and seduce the beautiful. It is said that during the reign of the cacique Guamatumane in Spanish times (before 1797), singers of carieto were rewarded with special gifts of land, and, apart from the caciques themselves, they also had the most beautiful ladies.
It is related that during the regime of the cacique Guancangari the two great singers were Dioarima, a tall, good-looking, powerful personality, and Casaripo, an “undersized weakling” who had a voice that was capable of making cowards brave, invigorating the poorly and calming the crazy.
Dioarima had two lovely daughters who were watched over day and night. One dark and windy night, a singer hid in the bushes and proceeded to sing several beautiful and hauntingly soulful songs. The songs had a very upsetting effect on the lovely daughters of Dioarima. The singer returned the following night and once again sang his haunting songs. The two girls slipped out into the night and met the singer in the high forest that surrounded the village in which they lived and went with him to Conquerabia (now Port of Spain). The three lived together for many years “in regal splendour”, and Dioarima was never able to get back his daughters.
When the Spaniards came to Trinidad, they heard of these wonderful singers whose voices spurred men to battle even in the face of fearful odds. According to Mitto Sampson, “they used bribery and clever manipulation and finally ambushed the two [singers] through the treachery of the Carib slave-woman Goziria. The singers were subjected to unspeakable tortures, and molten lead was poured down their throats.”
After Casaripo and Dioarima had been killed, the power of the Caribs began to fade in Trinidad until they were eventually conquered by the Spanish. Guandori, a famous stickman of the 1860s, was the last descendant of the daughters of Dioarima, the fabled singer. He was a great stickman in the tradition of Tiny Satan, Rocou John and Cutaway Rimboud.
“Surisima himself used to organise a procession of Carib descendants from the city of Port of Spain to the heights of El Chiqueno,” relates Mitto Sampson. “Up in the mountains of the Northern Range, they would make a huge figure of the Carib slave-woman Goziria, the betrayer of their ancestors, and burn this giant figure after much feasting, drinking and singing of obscene songs. The song remembered from those times went:

‘Cazi, cazi, cazi, cazi,
Dende, dende, dende, dariba.’”

Shiffer Brathwaite told Mitto Sampson that his father said that when the people sang this song, they remembered and felt the sorrow experienced by the Caribs for the loss and betrayal of Casaripo and Dioarima.

St. Pierre Volcano Eruption

2011-12-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

Early on the morning of the 8th of May 1902 the harbour front at Castries, the main town of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia was lightly touched by a thin drizzle that seemed to appear from a faultless sky. An iron steamer moved slowly into the channel. The sound of her engines was loud against the silence of the still sleeping town. Coming about, her engines stopped, and she let drop her anchor with a clattering roar into the still tepid sea. Her ropes appeared charred, the point burnt from her iron plates. The man at her helm appeared on the point of death, fainting, he clung to her wheel with hands burnt raw. There were on board some twenty-odd men, some were already dead, many were dying. Within minutes the Port Authority launch had come alongside. To the port officers who came aboard the Captain could only whisper “We came from hell.” His ship, “the Rodam”, was the only one to have escaped from the harbour of St. Pierre on the neighbouring island of Martinique, when Mount Pelée erupted.
The destruction of the town of St. Pierre in Martinique was the greatest single natural disaster which we have recorded in the Caribbean, and is reconstructed here from notes given to Dr. Sir Phillip Sherlock by Lately Thomas.
It was during the first week of April of 1902 that Claudette La Parde arranged to meet Charles César du Bochet on the eastern slope of Mount Pelée for the purpose of love-making. It was a clandestine affair. She, a mature matron of the town, he, hardly more than a boy. In the heat of their passion the earth seemed to move and the atmosphere burn; there was a smell of something smoldering and whiff of sulfur and brimstone. They, believing, that their love was the source of these manifestations, felt compelled to ever greater efforts. Later, as the sun slipped into the evening’s cool, they made their way back down to St. Pierre, noticing some vents and smoke holes and an even stronger smell of sulfur. All this was more than a little unusual, for the volcano had been asleep for a very long time. They naturally did not make a report, so there was nothing to alarm the people in the pretty little town of 30,000 souls that lay at the foot of the mountain. The sun had turned the sky to gold, which in turn reflected itself in the roadstead, circled by palm trees and sheltered from the boisterous trade winds by an embrace of low hills.
A couple days later, on April 23rd, there was an earthquake and a rain of cinders. Two days later Mount Pelée threw rocks and ashes in to the air. The mountain seemed restless. Claudette wrote a note to her lover, “Old Pelée is smoking again. Perhaps we started something.” The mountain was active for the first time in fifty years. A party of people who went up the mountain to the Grand Sec, a long dry hollow, found that it had become a lake six hundred yards wide with a cone fifty feet high. At one side, the cone issued a steady stream of hot water.
On the night of May 2nd, as Claudette La Parde paced her fruit gallery, anxiously waiting for her husband to leave for the Mason’s Hall, St. Pierre was shaken by a series of explosions. Flames shot from the volcano in great lightening flashes. The earth heaved with shock after shock. People grew alarmed, yet somehow, life went on all the same. The next day the mountain was quiet. Claudette complained to the baker that there were cinders in the bread!
The following day, fear grew again when news came that the Soufrière in St. Vincent was active. The fields around St. Pierre were beginning to show signs of the mountain’s power. One writer said that the soils, plants and houses were all covered with a grayish snow and that in the countryside there was a strange silence except for the animals which were restless, bleating, neighing and bellowing in despair. On Monday, May 5th, a terrifying thing happened. The sea drew back 300 to 400 yards from the shore, then flooded forward in a great wave and then quickly withdrew. A tsunami! Later the cause became known.
One wall of the Grand Sec, where the hot lake had been formed , collapsed and a torrent of boiling water and mud had rushed down the river bed, burying beneath it the ruins of the old section of the Guerin Sugar Factory at the mouth of the river, entombing Claudette and Charles Cézar where they lay. Their bodies would not be discovered for more than fifty years. The avalanche of boiling mud killed 130 people. The experts of the day concluded that the town was not in danger.
Yet, Wednesday continued to be a day of terror as people left the town in quantities in every possible means of transport. At the same time country folk from the villages and hamlets round about were pouring into St. Pierre for refuge. The local paper ran a headline “Where else better could one be than in St. Pierre”.
There was one sea captain who thought it was wise to get out. He was an Italian and his boat “Orsolina” was only half laden with cargo. The shippers protested when he said he was going. The Port Authority would not give him clearance and threatened him with arrest. But he set sail and left after telling them “I know nothing of Mt. Pelée, but if Mt. Vesuvius looked the way your volcano did, I would get out of Naples.” He left with the falling tide, leaving behind 16 ships. The only one to survive was the “Roddam.”
Early on the morning of May 8th there was an eruption at 7:25 am. An explosion which seemed to tear the heavens asunder. A black cloud turned the freshly made day back into night with a blackness so complete that people dropped to their knees, too frightened even to pray - within a few minutes, they were all dead. The earth quaked and buildings stumbled. The heat generated by the all-consuming cloud burnt everything, melting even the elaborate iron railings and causing the lead pipes to become liquid. A boiling rain dell. The inferno, spectacular, drew no description, for everyone was killed. With the streets melted, the town appeared to have slipped into the sea.
Those in Fort de France, the capital of Martinique, waited word from St. Pierre - in vain. At midday, a warship arrived to investigate. The heat prevented anyone from landing until 3 pm. Nothing, nobody was alive, not a tree, not a plant, not a human being. Burning ruins and corpses were everywhere. For three days, the rescue party worked. Only one man had escaped of all the 30,000 inhabitants of the St. Pierre.
If we read this survivor’s story in a novel, we would say that it was not true! Ludgar Sylbaris had been sentenced to imprisonment and had been locked in an subterranean dungeon without windows, with only a narrow grating in the door for ventilation. He was waiting for his breakfast when suddenly it became dark, and hot air mixed with fine ashes entered through the grating of the door and burnt him. He saw no fire, but his body beneath his clothes was bacly burned.
For three days, he kept moaning and calling, until some rescue workers heard him and released him. For several years he was an exhibit in Barnum and Bailey Circus in the United States - the only man who came out of St. Pierre alive.

Trinidad connection?
Martinique's economy was affected by the catastrophe. Several displaced people came to Trinidad, and their descendants live among us.

The Rada Community

2011-12-06T06:10:00.001-08:00

Themovement of the ship was more than he could stand. It overwhelmed the fear, thedisorientation and the certainty that his life was now forever altered. Themovement of the ship dominated his thinking. It affected him with the terrorisingsensation of perpetually dying. The motion of the ship formed the centralaspect of an association of ideas that remained with him all his life, wheneverhe smelled vomit, unwashed bodies, and odours emitted by humans when they areconvinced of their own imminent death.

Thispermanent alteration of his life had occurred without warning. This itself washighly unusual, inasmuch as he was albeit his young age a highly respectedmember of the society of diviners.

Thecircumstances leading to his capture by the merchant Ahmed Abdou had arrangedthemselves as the result of his preoccupation with clandestine encounters withthe merchant’s great niece, which had turned into an obsession. The indignityof his capture and subsequent sale to the Portuguese slaver had now placed himin this perilous box, the ship, upon this vast and mindless ocean on a journeyof no return. In the midst of never-ending motion, explosions not dissimilar tothunder cracked the sky. The slaver was being attacked by a British Man-o-War!The shackled slaves were marched up onto the heaving deck and with kicks andcurses loaded into long boats that were bobbing and spinning upon this evershifting body of water to be taken to another, even more enormous ship.

Already,the Portuguese slaver was dropping to the stern of the British Man-o-War,seeming smaller by the second on the vast bosom of wetness. The British shipnow set its sails for Trinidad.

Severalhundred Africans were thus liberated on the high sea by Great Britain duringthe 1850s, when that country ran a blockade against the Portuguese slavetraders. The slave trade had been abolished by the English in 1807, and theslaves had become fully set free in 1838. Now, it became an economic necessityfor the British to force other nations to do away with slavery as well, sincesugar and other imports from slave territories like Brazil were flooding themarket at much cheaper prices than from the British colonies.

Amongstthe hapless Africans, one stood out and proceeded to make his mark on the livesof many in Trinidad. He took the name of Robert, or Jean Antoine. He was,however, known as Papa Nannee or Mah Nannee. A significant leader, he created anew home for his tribe, the Rada people, who had found their way to thisisland. They were in the majority from Dahomey in West Africa (now Benin), andmost of them had been liberated from Portuguese slave ships just like himself.

PapaNannee was not a priest, however. He was a diviner. He had been born at Whydaharound the year 1800 and upon arrival on this island, he was sent to work at anestate near to Champs Fleurs. By the 1860s, he had saved sufficient money topurchase lands in the Belmont valley, and there founded a compound dedicated tothe worship of Dangbwe, Serpent, God of Dahomey. He named the compound DangbweComme (House).

Nanneepossessed an extraordinary knowledge of the supernatural, and as he grew older,was much sought after for his advice and healing powers.

Hegathered around him a trained priest and two male ‘voduns’, or people who arepossessed by the Gods. The compound created by him in Belmont Valley Roadconsisted of a chapel, called a vodunkwe, a covered area for dancing andseveral shrines, one of which was dedicated to Papa Legba and another to Ogun,both deities of the Dahomean people.

Withina few years, the lives of many in the Belmont Valley Road area were touchedby the work of this remarkablegood and selfless man. Other African people settled there to be near to him andcompounds for Ibos, Congoes and Mandingoes (all African tribes) took root andgrew. Newspapers of the day, such as the “Chronicle”, described the Rada peopleas industrious men and women who saved their money and ran a private bank toprovide funds for those in need.

Duringthe 1870s, the colonial authorities felt the need to monitor and in fact putpressure on this group of activists. Charges of obeah and the practice of blackmagic were brought against members. In one case, Quervee, Papa Nannee’sbrother, was convicted of obeah and had been given to 20 strokes for theoffense. He appealed and won the case, receiving $10 for each lash incompensation. He was represented by the eminent barrister of the day, CharlesWarner.

TheRada compound was so successful that it not only attracted the suspicion by theauthorities, but also the envy of other religious organisations. As such, itwas raided by Catholic priests, who took away religious objects, drums andcostumes used in rituals. Dr. Bridget Brereton observes:

“TheRada were practicing the ancestral beliefs of their homeland. But to theauthorities, there was no distinction between obeah practices for money and theRada ceremonies. Any ‘African worship’ was automatically classified as obeah,and the practice of obeah had been made an offense by the 1868 Ordinance,punishable by jail and flogging.”

PapaNannee himself was also arrested at age 86 and sentenced to six months and 36lashes. He too appealed. Represented by the distinguished Q.C. Vincent Brown,he was acquitted. To the Creoles, African practices, religious or otherwise,were barbaric and obscene, in fact dangerous. To the Europeans, it wasobjectionable and alien. For the coloureds, it was a little too close forcomfort, hanging on as best they could to respectability and in perpetualpursuit of acceptance in white circles. They liked to put a great distancebetween themselves and obeah!

Notwithstanding,in time of trouble, in fear of the death of loved ones, or in desperate need,the coloured middle class often found their way back to their African roots.Sometimes a black relative of their own, or a friend of the family, had accessto people of power, invoking the old deities and bringing comfort to theAfrican aspect of the soul of the coloured people.

Folk Traditions

2011-12-06T05:53:00.001-08:00

Itis perhaps understandable, event natural, that some of the earliest and purestglimpses we have of the lifestyle in these islands in the formative years ofour history, comes form the record of the development of the folk arts:Calypso, carnival and, in another sense, folklore.

Thanksto the remarkable work done by individuals such as Andrew Carr, Harry Pitts,Mitto Sampson, Andrew Pearse and David Crowley, we have preserved a view of howit was to live in Creole society from the 1800s onwards. In this issue, wetrace the development of Calypso from the myths of calypsonian Surisima theCarib, on through to the slave calypsonians Gros Jean, So So, Papa Cochon, andOfuba the Slave, to the great ones of the mid-19th century, such as the MightyThunderstone, Hannibal, and Cedric Le Blanc.

MittoSampson achieves the hangman’s drop

Itwas, however, Mitto Sampson who, through his endeavour in collecting oraltraditions in the 1940s and 50s, saved much of the body of information thatcame down to us. Mitto Sampson was a known personality around Port of Spain. Iknew him when I was a boy; I seem to think that he lived at Gonzales. I know heused to lime on an ice box at the end of Observatory Street, opposite to theHospice. He was known as “Strong Man”.

WhenMitto was young, he was a scrawny boy. As a teenager, he took up weightliftingand became phenomenally strong over the years. “A daring acrobat, he dived fromheights into crowded streets, and he even achieved the “hangman’s drop” on his17th birthday,” reports Andrew Pearse (Caribbean Quarterly, 1958).

Mittotold Pearse in an interview how he had read of Palmer Berns who had developedhis neck to such an extent that he was able to resist the hangman’s noose. Heput himself in training, developing his neck muscles and those of his back andshoulders.

OneMonday morning, followed by an entourage of well-wishers, Mitto arrived at theWashhouse Bridge - the bridge over the Dry River on Belmont Circular Road, justafter the Hospital. Without much ado - but after saying a prayer - he tied ahangman’s “slippery knot” around his neck, tied the other end of the rope tothe bridge’s railings and jumped!

Thesmall crowd gasped at his daring and ran to the rail. Mitto was danglingseveral feet from the Dry River bed. The thick rope was taunt with hisconsiderable weight. It took several strong men to haul him up! Mitto climbedback over the railing, and under the thundering cheers of the crowd took of therope from around his bull’s neck. He had done it!

Mahalle,who had parked his invisible car nearby, immediately got in and drove off so asto inform the town of this incredible act.

Naturally,Mitto acquired the reputation of a man of power, a science man. In fact, he waswell educated. He had attended Nelson Boy’s R.C. School, Belmont Intermediateand St. Mary’s College. In true Trini style, his background was cosmopolitan -his father, an Arima druggist, was a “dougla” of mixed Indian and Africandescent, and his mother was half Portuguese and half quadroon, that is amixture of three parts white and one part black.

Mittogot his information about 19th century calypsonians from his grandmother, MmeFlorence Atherley, who was a noted genealogist and whose hobby was reminiscingabout old Trinidad. His other informant was Remmy Roberts, who at the age of93, in the 1940s, could remember well people and incidences way back into 19thcentury.

Remmywas one of the great “raconteurs”, story tellers, of his time. He was a “sweetman”, a gigolo, and a “maco” (formerly this word meant a pander or tout, butnow it has come to mean someone who minds other people’s business). He hadspent his life in the Behind the Bridge world of east Port of Spain. He hadknown the famous ladies of the night: Britan Boobooloops, Alice Sugar, MossieMillie, Ocean Lizzie, Sybil Steele to name but a few. He had met the famoushomosexuals of his day such as Papy/Mamy, Darling Dan and Ling Mama. He hadencountered badjohns like Congo Jack and Tiny Satan, and of course all thechantwells, stickmen and mad people that walked the city in those days. Remmytold Mitto who told Dan Crowley: “Son, calypso today come from the mouth, butlongtime it come from the soul.”

The British settle Tobago

2011-12-05T05:40:00.001-08:00

From the Historical Society ofTrinidad and Tobago Papers (abbreviated)

The settlement of Tobago by theBritish was not without problems. Let’s first look at the historicalcircumstances:

Publication No. 329

The Duke of Montague appliesfor a Grant of the Island of Tobago

January 5th, 1764

“In 1728, the Duke of Montaguefirst applied for a grant of the Island of Tobago in compensation for the lossof St. Lucia whence he had been driven out by the French in 1722. During theyears 1725 - 1726, the Duke and the Duc d’Estrées failed to negotiate anyagreement to divide the lands at St. Lucia and in 1730, the evacuation of bothSt. Lucia and St. Vincent was agreed upon by the French and English. By theTreaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, these two islands were made neutral. In 1763, by theTreaty of Peace, Great Britain took Dominica, St. Vincent and Tobago, whileFrance took St. Lucia. The Duke of Montague now applies for a Grant of Tobago.”

Then, a survey was made tostructure Tobago in portions that could easily be administered.

Publication No. 330

Recommendations for theSettlement of Tobago by the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations

March 26th, 1764

“As to settling the Island ofTobago, the Board of Trade represents that this island is supposed to contain140,000 acres, a valuable island with no inhabitants but a few Caribs andFrench turtlers. A survey should forthwith be made and it should then bedivided into Parishes to contain 6,000-10,000 acres and suitable lands shouldbe reserved for fortifications, navy yards and other military purposes. Townsshould be laid out of 500-1,000 acres in lots not to exceed 6 acres, each witha 60 feet reservation on the water side for wharves, quays and other publicuses; a glebe for the Minister of 100-200 acres, and 30-60 acres for aschoolmaster. Reserves of woods should be kept in suitable places sufficient tomaintain a necessary rainfall and a suitable climate. The rest of the landsshould be allotted as plantations in lots of 100-300 acres. In each parish, 800acres should be reserved for grants of lots of 10-30 acres for poor settlersnear necessary roads.”

However, when theGovernor-General of Grenada, Robert Melvill, set out to get settlers to Tobagofrom Barbados, he found that nobody was willing to go!

Publication No. 334

The Governor-General ofGrenada to the Secretary of State

Barbados, November 13th, 1764

“I arrived here after a tediouspassage on the 23rd of last month intending to have stopped only for a few daysin order to wait the arrival of the Melvillstore ship which had been separated from us; and to furnish myself with alllights which might be useful in establishing and carrying on the new Governmentand to give what encouragement I could to the disposition which I hoped to meetwith for settling Tobago. But to my no small mortification, I was no soonerarrived than informed of a universal dread and dislike of that Island,occasioned by the sudden death of almost every white person who had lately gonethither and the report of an excessive sickness prevailing among the troops.”

In the end, Melvill succeeded bypromising the would-be settlers lands on the healthy Windward side of Tobago,not on the fever-stricken Leeward side.

Publication No. 335

The Governor-General of Grenadato the Secretary of State for War

Barbados, November 20th, 1764

“Tomorrow I sail for Tobago on myway to Grenada with all persons of this place who are desirous of being thefirst settlers and hope to find Lieutenant Governor brown possessed of a veryhealthy and commodious bay which has been discovered on the Windward side.”

Upon arrival in Tobago, Melvilltakes action with regard to starting a structured settlement of Britishsubjects in Tobago.

Publication No. 336

The Governor-General ofGrenada to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations

Grenada, January 3rd, 1765

“After a tedious passage Iarrived at Barbados on October 23rd, where I found it absolutely necessary toremain for some time in order to revive the spirit of settling at Tobago, whichhad been totally quashed by the very fatal sickness that had happened on theLeeward side of it. But by proposing the Windward side (reported to be healthyas well as fertile) for the first settlement, and pointing out all theadvantages and encouragements with my best endeavours, a pretty favourabledisposition came to prevail even amongst the most considerable inhabitants atthe time of my departure. I arrived in Tobago on November 28th and joinedLieutenant Governor Brown. I was happy to find that his report was well foundedwith regard to the fertility of the soil, its being well watered, havingseveral tolerably shipping places and particularly two very good bays (vizt:Rockly and Little Hog Bays). In a bay formerly called Gros Cochon, to which Igave the name of Barbados Bay, I fixed on a very commodious place for a firsttown settlement. It promises to be safe for shipping and has a river ofwholesome water running into it. The country round is fit for sugar and allother West Indian produce and an adjoining headland projecting into the sea isan excellent and healthful situation for the placing of His Majesty’s Troops adbeing likewise very defensible by nature, is very proper for a fort orbattery.”

However, it was not easy. Monthslater, there was still no progress in establishing a proper settlement.

Publication No. 337

The Governor-General ofGrenada to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations

Grenada, April 20th, 1765

“I am sorry to inform YourLordships that by the slow progress that has been made in the settling ofTobago, owing partly to the sales in St. Vincent and to the disposition of theBarbadians being not quickly enough laid hold of, the town traced out in BarbadosBay and the adjoining lands have not as yet been cleared, so that it not onlyremains unhealthy but affords no accommodation either for the settlers or forthe public Officers.”

A year later, houses were stilllacking in Tobago, and the British government sent two ships for theadministration to live “off shore”.

Publication No. 338

Requisition for two Ships ofWar for Accommodation of Officers at the Island of Tobago

London, March 30th, 1766

“From the Island of Grenada byletter of January 27th, 1765, Governor Melvill asked for two ships of war to besent to the Island of Tobago as hulks for the accommodation of the LieutenantGovernor and other officers and settlers until convenient houses could be builtashore. This was approved and done and on March 21st, 1766 they were stillbeing used and were continued for one year more.”

Even off-shore, the climate ofTobago was still detrimental for the British settlers, and the death of theLieutenant Governor almost leads to abortion of the settlement of Tobago.

Publication No. 339

The Governor-General ofGrenada to the Secretary of State

Grenada, July 26th, 1765

“I am very sorry to inform YourLordship of the death of Lieutenant Governor Brown on the 9th instant after avery short illness. This is a public misfortune so sensibly felt and sincerelylamented by the Officers of the garrison and the few purchasers who have beenactual settlers in Tobago that it even threatens a very detrimental retardmentif not a total miscarriage of that infant Colony.”

A year and a half later, thereare still few “Residenters” at Tobago, even though many plantations have beenpurchased. The proprietors in Tobago sent a petition to the Governor General in1767, asking for proper local representation and administration. In subsequentcorrespondence, there is the first talk of a House of Assembly, but a slaveinsurrection in 1770 stalled developments in that direction, but by thebeginning of 1771, the “President and Members of the Council and theRepresentatives of the People in the General Assembly of the Island of Tobago”had been elected.

Behave Bad!

2011-12-05T05:31:00.001-08:00

In Trinidad, there is a longtradition of “bacchanal” connected to a festival or holiday. Anil Sookdeo fromthe John Hopkins University, Baltimore, in his paper “Festivals andPlantations: The Misrule of Carnival and Hosay” explains why.

In the years of theirpopularisation, both Carnival and Hosay were lower class festivals. Carnivalhad not started out as such, when it was brought to Trinidad by the Frenchplantocrats. However, after the abolition of slavery in 1834, the former slavesstarted to participate in the festival and soon take it over completely. The“jamette” Carnival dominated the pre-Lenten festivities towards the end of the19th century, leaving out the middle and upper classes completely.

Hosay, on the other hand, waslimited to the Indian indentured population. As such, it was - similar to theCarnival celebrations of the second half of the 19th century - not a festivalthat was participated in by middle and upper class creoles and the Britishadministrators. The latter had a mighty lot of difficulties with the raucousfestivals in Trinidad! Both Carnival and Hosay were oftentimes occasions ofclashes between lower class behaviour and higher class ideas of how citizensshould behave.

Anil Sookdeo puts forward tworeasons for these clashes. Firstly, the two festivals were “used as surrogatevehicles for ‘organised’ action in the interests of those excluded from powerand privilege”. The borderlines between feteing and protesting got blurred. Secondly,Sookdeo argues that there was a general atmosphere of contesting of the Britishadministration in those years, which was vented in upheavals during the festivals.

Much research has been done onthe misrule and non-conformist behaviour during Carnivals all over the world.Trinidad is certainly not alone in this. In fact, the success of Carnivalthroughout the centuries and its continuing attractiveness to people is itsbacchanalian nature. It seems to always have been an occasion of expressingoneself against an established social or political order. This is, according tosociologists, necessary to actually upkeep and maintain a healthy communityalong those very lines that are being criticised in Carnival.

Hosay

Absentee Owners

2011-12-01T06:30:00.001-08:00

In memory and honour of Dr. Philip Sherlock, whosehistorical and sociological talks on Radio Guardian made Sunday evenings in theearly 1960s very interesting!

One of the striking things about the 18th century WestIndian Plantations was that many of the owners lived in England. Dalby Thomaswhose “Historical Account” of the West Indies was first published in 1690,wrote of the West Indians of his day that “It was impossible for them to forgetfrom whence they come from or even be at rest (after they have arrived on aplentiful estate) until they settle their families in England...” This practicewas not found to such a marked extent in the French islands of Guadeloupe andMartinique, where agriculture was more diversified with a comparatively largenumber of small holders growing crops like coffee and cacao. There were fewerabsentee proprietors also in Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia and St. Vincent whilethey were French. After they were ceded to Britain in 1763 sugar productionincreased at the expense of crops like cacao and coffee, on which the BritishGovernment had put high import duties.

There were many reasons for the increase in the large numberof absentee proprietors as the years passed. Life in England was morecomfortable, and far removed from the uncomfortable fact of slavery. Many ofthose owners who lived on their plantations had their children educated inEngland, so that they grew up without any special attachment to the WestIndies. Also, some of those who owned plantations obtained them by inheritancewithout ever having seen them, while others might have taken them over as aresult of some business transaction such as the foreclosing of a mortgage.Whatever the reasons, absenteeism was widespread. When Governor Nugent made atour of Jamaica in 1803 that out of 80 estate owners in one part of the islandonly 3 were in residence. On occasions governors in some Windward Islands foundit difficult to hold Council Meetings because they could not get a quorum, andit sometimes happened that one man held several public offices because of thelack of people qualified to hold public office. The Beckford's with theirmansion at Fonthill in Wiltshire, Robert Hibbert with his Bedfordshire countryseat, George Hibbert took a lead in building the West India Docks, Charles Longwith his Suffolk home, John Gladstone of Liverpool, the Pinneys of Dorsetshirerepresent one side of the picture, the building up of a West India interest inBritain with very powerful political interests.

The other side is given in a letter written from Antigua in1787 describing how the attorneys (those who held the power of attorney fromthe proprietors and had the duty of looking after the estate) used slave andlands of the owners for their own benefit.” The Governor of the Leeward Islandsin 1811 complained bitterly that “of the few white inhabitants who remain,managers, overseers, self-created lawyers, self-educated merchants - theacquirements of education among many of this description of persons are very unequalto the task of taking a share in the governments.” The owner as well as thecountry, suffered through absenteeism, since he spent more money living away inEngland and the attorney rarely looked after the estate as if it were his own.Absenteeism therefore, by reducing a planters resources, sometimes caused himto fall into debt.

Debts there were plenty. The lavish display and stupidextravagance of some absentee planters caused a sensation in English society.Adam Smith remarked on the fact that the tobacco colonies did not send back toEngland such wealthy planters as came from the West Indies, and there wereperiods of great prosperity. In the period immediately after the war in 1748,for instance, profits were high. Even so, however, it is doubtful if theprofits in a good year rose much above 7% and the appearance of extremeprosperity is often false and unreal. Most planters were in debt. In the 18thcentury it was not difficult for a West Indian planter to borrow money on thesecurity of his land. He often had to raise capital in this way, perhaps to buyslaves or purchase additional land, perhaps to meet losses caused by poormanagement or by his extravagance. In the long run the estate might carry quitea heavy load of debt that was made still more burdensome by the bequest andannuities to members of the family. Besides, the business of the plantationswas carried on in a way that made it easy to slip into debt.

The planter had a factor or agent in England - in Bristolpossibly or London - who looked after his business and often helped with hisprivate business. He bought the supplies, salted the meat, clothing, equipmentand the like, and then had them packed and shipped to the West Indies. Often heemployed the overseers, bookkeepers and other white employees that the estaterequired, found a school in England for the planters children, advanced moneyon his behalf, and acted as his banker, lawyer and general factotum.

But its time for me to stop. If you would like me to followthis further get hold of a copy of “West India Fortune” - story of the PinneyFamily of Nevis, By Pares.

Party Politics

2011-12-01T06:17:00.001-08:00

Dr. Eric Eustace Williams foundedthe ‘People’s National Movement’ in the early 1950s. History could argue thatboth he and the political party that dominated Trinidad and Tobago for almosthalf a century had its roots ultimately in the French and Patois speaking, freecoloured intelligentsia of pre-emancipation days and in the Afro-Franco reformmovements of the later 19th century. These came into existence largely as areaction to British Crown Colony rule. Was this the genesis of party politicsalong racial lines? That these 19th century ‘movements’ did not include theslowly arriving Indians, whose indentureship kept them on the estates and whoseway of life ensured that they remained rural, that this isolation wasencouraged by the colonial government and the planters lobby even after 1917?

During this period ofindentureship and in the years that followed immediately after, significantleaders on the political stage did not come forward from the Indian community.Dr. Kusha Harraksingh attempts a definition of Indian leadership in theindentureship period, which was published in Caribbean Issues, Dec. 1976 (seepages 36 - 37), where he describes that with immigration to Trinidad,hereditary patterns of authority in family, caste and village were removed andinstitutional leaders like drivers and shopkeepers stepped into that vacuum,influencing the behaviour of other Indians.

“On the estates, the emergence ofpeople as leaders purely on the basis of personal qualities was rendereddifficult by a number of factors which generally coalesced in the atmosphere ofcoercion which pervaded the system. In reality, the estate managers chose theleaders they wanted and tried to ensure that no other worker achievedprominence as a person with influence. The Indians were always operating at aloss.”

Indian leadership seems to haveoperated through extended families, religious life and through the tradeunions, producing personalities such as Sarran Teelucksingh and Ajodhasingh bythe 1930s.

There is a real need tounderstand these 19th century reformists, what was achieved by them, the legacythat they have left behind and the people who took up the challenge.

J. B. Philippe, who may bedescribed as the first reformist to challenge the British government’s policyin Trinidad in the 1820s, provided leadership with regard to racial prejudicedirected at the ‘free blacks and people of colour’ by the Woodfordadministration, but he was not promoting the liberation of slaves.

The reformists of the second halfof the 19th century sought a franchise that would eventually produce a freelyelected legislature. They did not lobby for independence, however. They didhowever oppose indentureship. The arguments of politicians like Sir HenryAlcazar, C. Preudhomme David, Stephen Laurence and others, and of thenewspapers such as ‘New Era’ and organisations like The Workingman’sAssociation, led to the Commissions of Inquiry to investigate indentureship.They rejected the idea that Indian immigration led to unemployment. Already by1909 the reformists’ positions were hardening.

The chosen slogan for thereformist movement in 1870 was ‘Trinidad for Trinidadians’, meaning black,mixed and French creoles - the creole-born Trinidadians. Indians, however, wereseen as transients. Trinidadians were dissatisfied with the Britishadministration’s incompetent and high-handed officials and extravagantspending. The reformists felt that the use of public funds should be monitoredby the representative in the Legislative Council, elected by tax payers. Theyfelt strongly that local people with the right qualifications should man theupper levels of the Civil Service. Many of the reformists were either blackpeople or coloured descendants of the free blacks of pre-emancipation days, andthese were the people who should be elected. Sir F. Napier Broome, governorfrom 1891 to 1897, described them as “a middle class upheaval” and saw them asa bunch of lawyers and businessmen who were seeking out their own interests.

Leadership was provided duringthe 1880s by Phillip Rostant, a French creole, who during his education inIreland had taken part in Irish radical politics against British occupation inIreland. He knew the power of mass meetings and understood how the Britishgovernment would react to huge petitions containing 5,000 signatures. He washowever compromised by his heritage. He was descended from the nobility of theBourbonnais and held a deep respect for the property rights. Rostant could notbring himself to offer the vote to all people. He felt that the vote should begiven to the people who were able to understand the responsibilities ofcitizenship. But as a French creole, he shared in common with the blackintellectuals a dislike and distaste for the British administration. He wasanti-colonial and he demonstrated that he could organize public supportdramatically. This upset and startled the planters, however, who feltthreatened that the working class was listening to the beat of another drum,particularly as the drummer was one of there own.

The black leadership thatsucceeded Rostant was more moderate. They perhaps had more to lose. Sir HenryAlcazar, a lawyer with a strong grasp of local politics, was on one hand ‘blackenough’ to be accepted by the working class, and on the other sufficientlybrilliant as a thinker and as a speaker to command the respect of the Britishadministration. Alcazar was able to put it plainly in saying “it had not beenproposed to place power in the hand of the working class, but only in those ofthe wealthier middle class.”

It is out of this struggle forself-determination, framed in nationalistic sentiment, that the baton waspassed to Captain Arthur André Cipriani, who in turn supported ‘the barefoot man’ and went the nextstep to put back-bone into the new-born trade union movement, the TrinidadWorkingman’s Association, itself a product of the reformists. Cipriani washowever compromised by the fact that he was, like his predecessors, a loyalcolonial and not a revolutionary. Challenged in his old age by the young,vigorous, out-spoken and ‘man of the people’ Portuguese politician,intellectual and trade unionist Albert Gomes, Cipriani faded from the stage oflocal politics.

The Gomes years, important to thedevelopment of nationalism, stretching from the middle 1930s to the early1960s, were the period when middle-class trade unionists were allowed to playat politics by the Colonial Office. The ministerial government brought togetherGomes, Roy Joseph, Norman Tang, Victor Brian and Ajodhasingh, the ‘Knox StreetQuintet’. “We had all been elected to the Legislature,” said Albert Gomes,“from different party platforms and one of us even had socialist aims.” Playingat politics with no real agenda, this representation, meager as it was, hadbeen hard-won with blood in Fyzabad and Apex in 1937, and in the Water riots of1903, and the Canboulay and Hosay riots in the 1870s. Gomes, according to OwenBaptiste in his work on Cyril Duprey, “slammed the door on trade unionism whenhe joined the executive council of Sir Bede Clifford, governor in 1946. A yearlater, he was surprised to see that he had lost the seat in the city councilthat he had held since 1938. He no longer possessed the support of the workingclass.”

And this is where Eric Williamsappeared on the scene. He was doubtlessly the inheritor of the Afro French creole intelligentsia of theprevious century, he proved himself eminent in scholarship, in debate and hiscommand of language. He possessed the common touch, was arrogant enough to dealwith both the British and French creole establishment. He was the locus of theentire French/African colonial process. His stature was messianic. What hesaid, what he did in those formative years are cast, to this day, in iron,immutable, or so it would appear.

Dr. Williams took advantage ofthe post-war disenchantment of the ‘Gomes government’ and its loss of workingclass support. But he was now not alone in terms of locally-grown ‘genius’. Thefirst generation of significant Indian leaders on a national level was definingits role on the political scene. The Capildeo brothers, Lionel Seukaran, MitraSinanan, Badase Maraj and others ranged from the local estate life and ruralpolitics on through to the Legislative Council in the Red House. An oppositionin the waiting.

Was Williams a revolutionary? No,he was a colonial. Did he continue the reform movement? In launching thePeople’s National Movement in 1956 he said, “you ignored the warnings” and wenton to describe the then government as former “leaders of labour who have nowbecome leaders against labour”. Williams attracted black middle-classprofessionals and the black working class. The PNM, he assured them, would notbe a labour party. History may well pose the question whether it was a versionof the reformist party in the mid-20th century, a nationalist party, asocialist party? Fact is that in 1956, the PNM found its most formidableopponent in Badase Sagan Maraj’s PDP. Williams emerged victorious with 39% ofthe vote and 13 of the 24 seats. The PDP won five seats and 20.3% of the vote.The Butler party won two seats and Gomes was annihilated. The era of partypolitics had begun.

Trinidad in Hislop's times

2011-12-01T05:24:00.001-08:00

Brigadier Thomas Hislop becameTrinidad's second military governor in 1804. Sparsely populated, the census ofthe period showed a population of free persons to be 7,538, comprising 1,095French, 505 Spanish, 663 British, and 2,256 Free Coloureds. This free colouredpopulation ranged from pure African to light-complexioned individuals, whowould be taken as European anywhere on that continent.

The colonial reality, however,dictated that every black, free or enslaved, be accounted for. In terms oftheir political persuasions, the free coloureds included royalist sentiment,republican fervour, on to revolutionary zeal. Several were wealthy land andslave owners and had been from two or even three generations, other wereartisans and labourers, some did nothing at all. Because of their history onother islands where they had been fired by the prospects of what they imaginedrepublican status would mean for them, and because of their involvement inbloody revolution from Haiti to nearby Grenada, they were held in opprobriumand viewed with suspicion by the British administration.

It was felt that in the event ofan attack on the island by either republicans or for that matter the Spanish,the free coloured population could not be counted upon to support Britishinterest. One report stated: "If the inhabitants are not controlled, untoldtrouble in inevitable." It pointed out that the previous administration's"interference in the affairs of the police has produced arrogance in thepeople of colour and insubordination among the slaves". The difference innumber between white and coloured people made the Cabildo uneasy lest thedisturbances of other islands spread to Trinidad through indecisive government.the report to the Cabildo continued:

"To relax the police when westill have 5,000 of these people and daily increasing would be an act of moralmadness. Most of them are the scum of the revolution who find here a 'refugiumpeccatorum' and against whom every precaution is necessary."

They missed "the good old days"of Colonel Thomas Picton's governorship, which featured public executions, decapitations,amputations, the administering of thousands of lashes in public places on anygiven individual, and the exposing of severed heads and other human body partsat public places and at the entrances of the various towns.

That Picton did not hesitate to dishout this form of justice to the free, the enslaved, the military or thecivilians, black or white, was remarked on particularly as many of those whohad fled to the main in Picton's time were now returning to the island.

Attorney General ArchibaldGloster in writing to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, pointed out that"Both France and Spain look at Trinidad with a jealous eye and will notfail to take advantage of our foolishness. We are surrounded by the worst classof coloured persons joined to French and Spanish brigands. It they attackedwith such a host of enemies within, we are lost and with us the wholearchipelago of the West Indies."

In this period, both the civilianpopulation and the military establishment lived in constant fear that a surpriseattack on the island might force its surrender. They had considered fortifyingSt. Joseph, but abandoned that idea in favour of an older Spanish plan to turnChaguaramas into a formidable bastion in the style of Cartagena de los Indiesor those in Cuba. Point Gourde was selected as a military post. The islands of Carreraand Cronstadt were also surveyed and roads cut on them.

The fortifications were builtwith slave labour levied from the planters. Governor Hislop was not comfortable,however, with this type of defense, especially as a French battlefleet wasknown to be in Caribbean waters and was expected to attack Trinidad. He turnedhis attention to La Vigie, now Fort George.

The island, unlike its neighbourTobago where there was a fort overlooking every bay and cove, had almost no defensivearmament. There were four cannons at Fort Picton in Laventille, seven cannonsat Fort Abercromby, two in Macqueripe Bay and twelve at Fort George.

The Cabildo Building

2011-11-30T09:57:00.001-08:00

There is a little building onSackville Street, recently restored, right next to the newly built office ofthe Attorney General, that has been known for years as the cabildo building.Tradition has it that this, Trinidad's first governing body, once sat there.This is very likely, as the Cabildo sat in many places, not having a home ofits own. It met in the private residences of its members.

The building on Sackville Street,however, does not date from Spanish times, which came to an end in 1797 withthe British conquest. The Illustrious Cabildo continued up until the late 1840sand then metamorphosised into the City Council. That particular building mayhave belonged to the Senoir family, a distinguished Spanish family of Jewishdescent.

The Cabildo, as a Spanishgoverning institution, involved in administration and deliberation, is claimedby some to extend as far back as the tribal assemblies of the original Iberianpeoples in the Spanish peninsuar, prior to the arrival of the Romans. This isan interesting piece of historical trivia for anyone wishing to study theorigins of jurisprudence in Trinidad and Tobago!

Be that as it may, it started asan annual court to elect their magistrates and their municipium for the year,to manage their local affairs. This annual assembly also legalised or censuredthe proceeding of the provincial governors.

From the 400s A.D. to 700 A.D.,under the Visigoths, and from 700 to 1000 A.D., under the Muslims, theconditions in Spain favoured the risk of the warlords and the powers ofthe Cabildo waned. It was not until some 300 years later, in the 1300s, that anotable revival took place and the Cabildos were again supported by the crown.

With the discovery of the NewWorld, it was inevitable that the Spanish authorities should take with themtheir system of Government. The Cabildo was established in Trinidad in 1592.Its membership was slightly altered in 1797, when the British started to keepSpanish low in place.

The revenue of the Cabildo wasobtained from various sources, some of which have continued in practice to thepresent day. The following is a summary of the general heads revenue and theaverage yield in the early 1920s (from Dr. K.S. Wise, "Historical Sketchesof Trinidad and Tobago", Vol 3):

1. Licenses to sell spirituousliquors, which cost about $10 each year. About 50 licenses in Port of Spainyielded about $6,000 a year.

2. Licenses for billiard tables,$4 monthly. Port of Spain had four tables, yielding $192 a year.

3. Rents for stalls in the publicfish and flesh markets, yielding $1,100 a year.

4. Rents of land down the islandsfor planting cotton, provisions etc. Monos, Huevos, the Perroquets (now FiveIslands), Diego Martin Islands (now Carrera and Cronstadt) and El Pato had beengranted to the town of Port of Spain by Governor Chacon. Rent was from 4 -6reals a quarree, totoal yield about $100 a year.

5. Rents of lots in Marine Squareand in the Grass Market, yielding $1000 a year.

6. Rents of lots at the westernextremity of the town, called Puerto Cacao, granted by Chacon, yielding about$120 a year.

7. Rent of the Cocal on the eastcoast, granted to the town by the Spanish king, renting for $300-500 a year,but for a few years had been without a tenant.

8. Rents of the new lots east andwest of the new mole made by filling at the end of frederick Street and whichformed a new part of the town. Granted to Port of Spain by Governor Picton.Annual rent $50-$150, yielding $2400 a year.

9. Grant of one quarter of onepercent, on inward and outward cargoes at the port. This was collected by thecustoms officers and forwarded to the Cabildo. It had been granted by the Kingof Spain, yielding $2500-$3000 a year.

10. Payments for the use of waterfrom the public well and for the use of the pump and aquaeduct by ships in theharbour. Yield $1000 a year.

11. Fines imposed on delinquents,varied yield.

12. Tax on carts, $2 a month,yielding $1400 a year and wholly spent on maintenance of the streets.

13. Duty on foreign liquors,yielding $1000 a year.

The total annual revenue of theCabildo was thus approx. $17,000, exclusive of the various fines collected inthe Courts of the Alcaldes. The population of Port of Spain was about 7,000.

The annual administrativeexpenditure of the Cabildo was:

Escribano (Secretary) $300

Interpreter $400

Chief of Police $912

Gaol Keeper $365

Seven Police $1680

Collector, 3% on collections $800

Rent of gaol and maintenance ofprisoners unable to keep themselves $2,700

Rent of Caibldo building $960

Maintenance of properties $400

Celebration of the Feast of St.Joseph $400

"The necessary expenses tokeep the streets in order were variable from year to year, as also were theexpenses of the maintenance of slaves employed on works of publicutility," writes Dr. Wise.

The records show that any moneyleft over after expenditure had to be invested in fixed property, so as toincrease the revenue in future years. In 1802, fish and flesh market was built. Later, a gaol was completed,costing $20,000. Afterwards, a hospital for those found ill in the streets wascommenced, and in 1809, $5000 was spent to repair the mole at the foot ofFrederick Street.

The houseowners of Port of Spainalso made a voluntary payment to the Cabildo for the maintenance of fireengines. This was introduced by the first British governor, Sir Thomas Picton.

The British settle Tobago

2011-11-30T09:50:00.001-08:00

From the Historical Society ofTrinidad and Tobago Papers (abbreviated)

The settlement of Tobago by theBritish was not without problems. Let’s first look at the historicalcircumstances:

Publication No. 329

The Duke of Montague appliesfor a Grant of the Island of Tobago

January 5th, 1764

Then, a survey was made tostructure Tobago in portions that could easily be administered.

Publication No. 330

Recommendations for theSettlement of Tobago by the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations

March 26th, 1764

However, when theGovernor-General of Grenada, Robert Melvill, set out to get settlers to Tobagofrom Barbados, he found that nobody was willing to go!

Publication No. 334

The Governor-General ofGrenada to the Secretary of State

Barbados, November 13th, 1764

In the end, Melvill succeeded bypromising the would-be settlers lands on the healthy Windward side of Tobago,not on the fever-stricken Leeward side.

Publication No. 335

The Governor-General of Grenadato the Secretary of State for War

Barbados, November 20th, 1764

Upon arrival in Tobago, Melvilltakes action with regard to starting a structured settlement of Britishsubjects in Tobago.

Publication No. 336

The Governor-General ofGrenada to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations

Grenada, January 3rd, 1765

However, it was not easy. Monthslater, there was still no progress in establishing a proper settlement.

Publication No. 337

The Governor-General ofGrenada to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations

Grenada, April 20th, 1765

A year later, houses were stilllacking in Tobago, and the British government sent two ships for theadministration to live “off shore”.

Publication No. 338

Requisition for two Ships ofWar for Accommodation of Officers at the Island of Tobago

London, March 30th, 1766

Even off-shore, the climate ofTobago was still detrimental for the British settlers, and the death of theLieutenant Governor almost leads to abortion of the settlement of Tobago.

Publication No. 339

The Governor-General ofGrenada to the Secretary of State

Grenada, July 26th, 1765

Indian Women

2011-11-30T09:02:00.001-08:00

Thank goodness, today we can takeit for granted to see women of East Indian descent hustle to work in their“power suits”, see them dance “Chutney” in beautiful, traditional outfits ontelevision, and enjoy their competence and leadership on many levels ofnational life. To reach there, the way has sometimes been rather thorny for thedaughters of India! Shameen Ali, in a chapter of “150 Years of the IndianContribution to Trinidad and Tobago”, gives a very interesting summary of thehistorical development of what Indian women were “permitted” to do. “Permitted”stands here in a rather wide sense: the 19th century Victorian and early 20thcentury society operated based on very narrow class, race and genderrestrictions for everybody. The women of East Indian descent, a minority in aminority in a minority, had therefore a particularly difficult situation fromwhere to fulfill their dreams and grow.

But to start on a positive note:the women who migrated from their homeland to an unknown place in the westernworld were probably the more “gutsy” ones from the start. More often than not,they had gone through hard times in India, fled from impossible familialsituations, abuse, prostitution, famine. Some had been kidnapped by recruitingofficers. Only a small minority came as wives or daughters of male immigrants.

In Trinidad, they faced thedifficult situation of being very few in a ever-growing male Indian immigrantpopulation. From the start, they had the handicap of being paid even lowerwages than the indentured men, if that is at all possible. Having come from thecaste system and an overbearingly strict patriarchal structure, they were usedto be at the receiving end of injustices, and took it in stride. Bad housingconditions were nothing new for many of them, as was a lack of medical care.

In Trinidad, those sub-standardliving conditions for the indentured labourers were, however, oftenlife-threatening for the East Indian women. Promiscuity, prostitution and“wife-chopping” were not infrequent 19th century occurrences in the Indiancommunity, isolating them even further from the Creole population (who sawthemselves as “indigenous”, albeit the fact that both Europeans and Africanshad immigrated just 3 or 4 generations earlier).

From the start, Indian women wereearning their own living, something that was not always easy for their malecounterparts to deal with. In traditional India, that was just never heard of.It lead to many conflicts, often with a violent outcome, in the Indian population,which contributed to its stereotyping by the Creole population, namely that theIndians were promiscuous and violent “wife-choppers”. As more and more Indianwomen came to live in Trinidad, this situation eased up, but the prejudicesoften remained.

In terms of religious and familylife, Indian women had several challenges to face. On the one hand, they weremuch coveted as brides, given the fact that they were few and far between.Large dowries often changed hands. On the other hand, Hindu and Muslimmarriages were not officially recognised by the British administration, whichmade children of a marriage illegitimate.

From the 1870s onwards, when manyIndian women had terminated their indentureship contracts and decided to stayin Trinidad, they became increasingly the religious and cultural backbone oftheir families, maintaining beliefs and practices. Indian villages were createdwith the land the formerly indentured received as grants instead of a returnpassage to India, and some families were now in their third generation.

The majority of Indian womenlived in rural areas, or more precisely in what was then rural. A lot of Indianvillages from 100 years ago have grown into sizable towns since! Many of theminteracted more with black and Creole Trinidadians than Indian men did. TheIndian woman selling cow’s milk was a frequent sight in the morning light, somuch so that she was depicted in popular comics. One such woman was, forexample, Valiama, who came to settle in Trinidad from Martinique with herdaughter. She spoke French and Patois, and wore foulard and madras, which madeit easy for her to interface with the Creole neighbourhoods of St. Clair whereshe delivered milk. Eventually, she was able to carve out a niche for herselfand her family in Boissière Village, and she became the mother of all thePillais!

Education was and is of coursekey in the advancement of women. Today we know that women excel in academia,but many patriarchal cultures denied girls even a basic education in thoseyears. In Trinidad, Indian girls had access to education, primarily through theefforts of Canadian Presbyterian missionary schools. Later, they would becometeachers themselves, such as Anna Mahase snr., who was the first Indian womanto become a teacher in 1918, and Florabelle Harnarayn, who was the first womanto be appointed school supervisor in 1967.

Increasingly, Indian womenentered into secondary and tertiary education. Dr. Stella Abidh was one of theseveral female medical doctors of Indian descent of the first half of the 20thcentury. She was the first woman to be appointed district medical officer forSouth Trinidad. Amongst her peers were Dr. Olga Rampersad, Dr. Pearl Ramkallop,Dr. Sylvia Ramcharan, Dr. Rosie Sheik, Dr. Indra Delipsingh and Dr. Rosie Ali.

With the introduction of thescreening of Indian movies in Trinidad from the 1930s onwards, another arenaopened up to the women of East Indian descent: public dancing and singing. AsShaheen Ali writes:

“Indian films kindled a new kindof pride in Indians for their heritage. Thus inspired, singers like RhodaAsgarli, Myroon Mohammed and Zora Seesahai emerged together with the dancerChampa Devi who thrilled audiences throughout Trinidad during the 1940s and the1950s.”

The awakening of the local performingarts, if one might call it thus, spanned in those years not only the Creoleworld in figures like Madame Chesola, who taught ladies how to dance, dancersMarie Basilon, Beryl McBurnie and Thora Dumbell, but also the women of theIndian community, who started to develop their very own Trinidadianexpressions.

It seems that the 20th centurywas marked by an ongoing challenging of traditional roles by women, be it inthe field of education, sports, entertainment, business, politics or religion.In the 1950s, Ruth Seukaran was the first woman of Indian descent to emerge onthe political arena. Indira Rampersad was the first Hindu pandita in Trindad.Many have followed in their footsteps, making history, and often making theworld just a little brighter for everyone.

They start practising again - the Steelband

2011-11-29T05:45:00.001-08:00

Take a rusty, discarded oil drum,a heavy cannon ball, a blazing fire, a hammer for the fine-tuning, plentynoise, a pair of strong arms and a pair of good ears, surrounded by a bunch of"youts" from the neighbourhood - and you get a sound that is so softand tinkling that it could be the soundtrack to Peter Pan's flying fairy. Or,it could be a thundering sound, pounding in your ears like a horde of Mongolsthundering with their horses over the steppes of Tadjikistan.

The steelband is, in the bestsense, a child of the oil age, both as a musical and as a social phenomenon. Itis a 20th century phenomenon, and as such has become a part of history. Butlet us go 8 decades back, to the 1930s.

It was a hard time in Trinidad,as it was elsewhere in the world. The great depression in the United States hadalso affected the British crown colony. The British Empire dragged on like awounded elephant. England's economy was not buoyant, which meant that herraw-material producing colonies saw their markets dwindling.

In Trinidad, thousands of peoplehad no work. Tens of thousands of others were employed at hunger wages by sugarcompanies or in the oil fields. It was hard for the local population to see theforeign managers live in relative wealth and distinctive comfort, whilstTrinidadians saw their children hungry, without shoes or not able to affordschool books.

However, people were far frombeing apathetic. For about 50 years now, the local reform movement had beenattracting brave hearts and bright minds, who tried to walk the fine linebetween illegal sedition and necessary speaking up for His Majesty's subjects.Inspired by the Russian Revolution and Marcus Garvey's black nationalism, thereform movement and the budding union movement was relevant for Trinidadians ofall skin tones and many social backgrounds, who sought social justice forthemselves and for their countrymen and women.

They called their demonstrations"Hunger Marches", bringing to a point what it was all about.Retrenchment, undignified and unsanitary housing conditions, a lack ofeducation and future prospects were things that the majority of the people hadto live with in those years (not only in Trinidad, it must be remembered, butin the western world all over). It was not only workers who took to thestreets, bringing sugar production and oil production to a halt, but alsomembers of the educated black and coloured middle classes, who had been thetrue Creole backbone of the colony for many generations.

People like Elma Francois,Captain A.A. Cipriani and Uriah Butler emerged in the political arena. Civiccourage was contagious: the calling for local representation gave birth to awhole artistic movement, a first independent Trinidadian expression, inparticular in the writing arena: C.L.R. James, Alfred Mendes, Ralph deBoissière to name just a few. A couple years later, also Albert Gomes, whoexcelled in both, the political and the writers vocation. Free-thinkingnewspapers came on the scene, first and foremost "The Beacon".

The emergence of the steelbandtowards the end of the 1930s can be seen as a noisy, rhythmical, carnevalesqueinterpretation of what was left for local people: scraps (in this case scrapmetal). At the beginning, it was not more than percussion, getting together andmaking noise with brake pads, biscuit tins and other metal pieces. But quickly,the tins got “tuned”, and the bigger oil drums started to be used.

Steelband became yet anothermusical expression of the African diaspora, and as such a part of that 20thcentury musical phenomenon that influenced popular music like no other. In theCaribbean, African musical expressions mixed with the relevant Europeanadministrative culture, creating such distinct genres like merengue and rumbain the Spanish islands, bele and compas in the French Antilles, and reggae andcalypso in the British West Indies. With the exception of reggae, it isinteresting how localised those artforms remained: just listen to your radio inTrinidad and try to find Cuban mambo or Martiniquan zouk!

Steelband, however, is not amusical genre, and was able to “travel”, so much so that the whole Caribbeannow identifies with it as a folk artform. It seems to have been just what thetourist industry and the media needed!

The emergence of the Steelband isclosely linked with Carnival. Carnival, a Catholic custom, was brought toTrinidad by the French settlers in the 1780s. At first, the African slaves werenot permitted to participate in the celebrations and masked balls of the Frenchfamilies. However, they were allowed to celebrate “canboulay”, when lit torcheswere carried through the street to mark the end of the sugar cane harvest - acustom which has been recently adopted in the popular “Crop Over” Festival ofBarbados.

Before the abolition of slaveryin 1834, the life of the African slaves did not take place in a culturalvacuum, however. The dominant culture of Trinidad was French, albeit the factthat the administration was British since 1797. Syncretic cultural expressionslike Shango, Santeria and Voodoo (mixed of Catholicism and the Africanpantheon) are as much part of this syncretism as are Carnival, stickfight, beledancing and other folklore that have their roots in the first decades of the19th century. Steelband can be seen as a 20th century extension of thatsyncretism, albeit with other parameters: trash from the industrial society wasused in a rebellious movement against a ruling ethnical minority.

With emancipation, Carnivalchanged dramatically. The former slaves and their offspring started toparticipate in it. The first “noisy” devices were added to revelries: kettles,salt boxes, chac-chacs etc. Carnival definitely lost its “polite” upper classtouch immediately! The Europeans started to shun this kind of Carnival, whichthey called “Jamette Carnival”, the Carnival of those beyond the circle ofpolite society. Stick fighters, shantwells, drummers, prostitutes and badjohns! This was only to change towards the turn of the 20th century, when the“upper classes” once again took part in the festival.

With this, the Trini Carnival wasquickly approaching a format that was to last for another century. Competitionswere held in the various categories, and the raucousness of the street festivaloften clashed with the ideas of the British authorities as how His or HerMajesty’s subjects should behave!

Steelband started in 1937 or1938, when “Alexander Ragtime Band” from Newtown, formerly the Calvary TambooBamboo Band, came out to play. Their leader was “Lord Humbugger” Forde. Thepans were made of paint tins, biscuit tins, linseed oil tins, carbide pans,zinc buckets and dustbin cover. Tuned into two notes, they were beat furiouslyand rhythmically together with the tamboo bamboo. What a novelty! What aspectacle! No wonder it caught!

A year later, the pan crazebrought forth many more steelbands, all from depressed areas with greatpoverty. Inspired by the American cinema, the tradition of bombastic names wasstarted: Destination Tokyo, Sun Valley, Hellyard, Cross of Lorraine, Red Army.It was the eve of World War II, which also was reflected in the steelbandnames.

From 1942 to 1945, Carnival wasbanned due to the war. It seems to have been a gestation period for thesteelband. When in 1945 victory was celebrated by the allied forces andTrinidadians had a spontaneous Carnival in the middle of the year, steelbands joinedin the street party with much refined instruments. The dudups of the pre-wardays was joined by the first tenor pans made of oil drums, called “ping pong”.

From then on, there was noturning back for the development of this instrument. Socially, the steelbandwent the way of a lot of popular music of the second half of the 20th century.Much like ragtime, jazz, rock & roll, it all started with a couplerebellious youths from depressed urban areas, and ended up some 50 years laterin dignified symphonic orchestra halls, carrying Trinidad’s indigenous musicalgenre (calypso) far beyond the island’s shores.

Spanish Times

2011-11-29T05:34:00.001-08:00

Trinidad, 1701. A great verdantforest stretches without hindrance from coast to coast, from the cloudymountaintops to the dark swamps, to the hidden places where rivers rush throughgorges, where sunlight hardly shines. Bounded by seas, each bearing a differentname, hardly populated. Now its original tribal people, decimated bydeportation, disease, despair and the sheer interface with a culture so alienthat its destruction could only be a matter of time. Existing in a surrealisticsense of perpetual impermanence, the Spanish colonists held the encroachingjungle at bay and rebuilt their ever-decaying, ongoingly biodegradable capital,set in the foothills of the island's northern fastness. A remnant colony, leftbehind one hundred years after the conquistadors had sailed away or hadsilently decomposed in their elaborate suits of armor in secret places in theisland's interior, as yet undiscovered. Another generation of bureaucrats inMadrid watched the lack of progress in this almost forgotten province. TheSpaniards of the island, still decorated with long, elaborate last names thatdescribe parts of the Iberian countryside recently taken from the Moors, pleadtheir case for fresh labour. Africans from the Guinea coast, to clear the forest,as slaves - if only to define their own roles as masters, for withoutunderlings their status vanishes just as easily as one good rainy seasondemolishes their mud and thatch existence.

they availed themselves of atreaty which was entered into on the 27 August, 1701, at Madrid, between Franceand Spain, by which it was agreed to allow the Royal Company of Guinea,established by France, to supply the Spanish colonies with 48,000 slaves ofboth sexes and all ages during ten years, commencing on 1 May, 1702, at therate of 4,800 per year.

As a result of this, the firstAfrican came here together with an inferior variety of sugar cane, whichproduced a low-grade sugar called "popalones". Hardly a dent in thewall of jungle was made. The handful of Spaniards - no one knows really howmany - struggled to maintain a sense of Europeanness, keeping between the sixor seven men a least one presentable suit of clothes, made up of many remnantsin the event of visitors from abroad.

Within a generation, even theirwhiteness was threatened. Priests came, tonsured and overdressed, zealouslygoing native, teaching medieval Latin to glassy-eyed Amerindians, who were inmourning for the passing of everything that they once knew. In mid 1716,reality crashed in the person of one of the most dangerous individuals in thispart of the world. Edward Teach, known too as "Thatch", a.k.a.Drummond, alias Blackbeard, was more myth than man and sailed a large, 40-gunship called the "Queen Anne's Revenge". He plundered a brig loaded withcocoa, bound for Cadiz, then set fire to her in sight of the little hovel thatwas known as a port of Spain. In so doing, he destroyed the wealth of theisland. A Spanish frigate came into the Gulf, "cannonaded him at adistance". It is said that he sailed leisurely for the Grand Boca. Therewas no plunder on shore.

In 1725, the cocoa crop failed.They blamed it on the appearance of a comet. the Jesuit, Fr. Gamilla, told theSpanish planters that the crop failure was as a result of their not paying theirtithes to the priests. Abbé Raynal wrote later that it was the north wind thathad done it.

In any event, the colony wasruined, if that was possible. Nothing happened for the next five or six years.Then excitement: "A small vessel belonging to the island of Tenerife withsix sailors was driven to this island by stress of weather," writes Joseph(1837). They said they had survived the days at sea driven by ferocious windsand by drinking wine. In 1730, Lieut. Governor Colonel Don Bartolome deAlduante y Rada was sworn in as Governor. He died in 1733, grave unknown. Thecommand of the island of Trinidad devolved to Don Josef Orbaii and Don PedroXimenes, Alcaldes in Ordinary of the Cabildo. The Dutch staged an invasion, butthere is hardly a record. There was no paper.

"The Crown of Spain thoughtTrinidad too good a port entirely to abandon, yet too little productive ofrevenue to care much about," writes E.L. Joseph in 1837. "Shetherefore kept at the mouth of the Caroni some twenty soldiers, and once in fiveor six ears the Viceroy sent a bishop to visit this neglected part of thediocese. A few families remained about the valleys, near San Josef, in grave,contented poverty." Many of their descendants are still with us.

The Boissière's House

2011-11-29T05:22:00.001-08:00

Driving around the Savannah inPort of Spain is a unique experience in the West Indies, for preserved are, toa degree, a parade of splendid residences that in many ways reflect themulti-cultural nature of our society. One writer, Patrick lee Fermor, wrote inhis book "The Traveller's Tree":

"The buildings around theSavannah at Trinidad are some of the most remarkable buildings in the world.The essential skeleton is the high-garbled, acute-angled gingerbread house ofthe witch in 'Handles and Gretel'. Bristling with pinnacles and weathercocks,spiked and filled along the coping. Georgian bow windows, roofed like Chinesepagodas. Pillars and porticoes from the Parthenon or Ankor buttresses, thefabric and the mosaic of Byzantium and from the steep roofs grow the spines ofHohenschwangau."

Fermor is almost incomprehensible- the words tumble from him. In comparing the mansions to the witchhouse in'Hansel and Gretel', using words describing architecture from around the world,he really describes what the magic of these buildings have done to him!

Of these buildings, No. 12Queen's Park West, the home of the Boissière family for almost 100 years, is ofspecial interest. It is the only residence around the Savannah that is stilllived in by the family who built it. John Newel Lewis, architect, remarks thatit is a classic, Trinidadian building, not in a Greek or roman sense, but inits own league and norm of excellence. Comparing it with the other houses,Newel Lewis says in his book "Ajoupa":

"This dwelling is not amansion. It is on a smaller scale and it is a simpler building, heavilyembellished."

Commonly called the"Gingerbread House" by Port of Spainers, the house's main element isits steeply pitched roof, covered by green slate. A large dormer gable is mostbeautifully decorated with fretwork. The gallery projections are incrediblybeautiful and include a whole Chinese pavilion. With this house, one feels thatthe fretwork has reached its ultimate. the wood is heavily undercut andexaggerated, so that there is an impression of lace work, resembling a womanswirling in a lacy dress.

#12 Queen's Park West was builtin 1904 by the architect Edward Bowed, a personal friend of the owner CharlesEdward Hamilton Boissière. C.E.H. Boissière was the eldest son of EugeneBoissière, a merchant of Port of Spain and a cocoa planter, a descendant of theBoissière family of Champs Elysées. Charles had built this home for his wifeAlice, née Elegon, a gift that was presented to her on their return from avisit to England.

The ceilings in the drawing anddining rooms are of gesso work, done by the Italian craftsmen who did theceilings in the Stollmeyer's house and in the Council Chamber of the Red House.The stained glass windows with their meandering strawberry vines in the littlestudy with its Chinese roof filter the morning sun and cast a soft light intothis cheerful room. The floor tiles in the study as well as the gallery wereimported from England and the large single slab marble steps at the entrancecome from Italy.

The whole effect is magical andnostalgic, with mysterious colours and a melancholy air. This house is anexample of Trinidad's visual heritage as its best.

The houses that ring the Savannahare well built and sensibly engineered. They have weathered well, consideringthat they were built almost a century ago. It is important that these valuableexamples of our heritage be maintained, so that our children's children too maymarvel at them.

St. Benedict of Nursia

2011-11-23T07:49:00.001-08:00

St. Benedict of Nursia, founderof Western Monasticism, was born in the year 480 of the Christian era. Sent tobe educated a Rome, he however by the age of 14 had become convinced that theonly way of escaping evil in the world was in seclusion and religious exercise.

He withdrew to a cave or grottonear to the town of Suiaco, where he lived for three years. The fame of hispiety spread and this led to him being made an Abbot at a somewhat early age.Multitudes sought his guidance over the years and from the most devoted heformed 12 small monastic communities. He ultimately established a monastery onMonte Cassino near Naples. Later, this was to become one of the richest andmost famous monasteries in Italy.

In the year 515, Benedict ofNursia is said to have composed his regular monachorum, which became the commonrule for all monks. St. Benedict became the patron saint for all Europe in1964. This was declared by Pope Paul VI.

Mount St. Benedict stands outagainst the green hillsides and overlooks the central plains of Trinidad from aheight of some 800 ft. The Benedictine Abbey was founded on Trinidad's NorthernRange at Tunapuna in 1912 by Benedictine monks who came from Brazil at a timewhen civil unrest compelled them to seek refuge in other lands.

In 1927, the Trinidad communityof Benedictine monks accepted affiliation to the Belgian congregation. This wasbrought as communication with Brazil became almost impossible.

True to its original rule, theorder has over the years devoted itself to imparting instruction to youths.Manual labour is as much part of the curriculum as is study in the monastery'slibrary and the usual religious exercises.

The first local vocations for themonastery were Don Placid Ganteaume and Don Maurus Maingot in the early 1920s.Over the next 20 years or so, intense work was carried out and as a result, themonastery was raised to the dignity of an abbey in 1947. The first abbot, DonAdel Best Van Duin, was installed and blessed by Archbishop Count Finbar Ryan.Van Duin served the community for some 25 years.

From a tapia hut, constructed in1912, the abbey has grown apace. Apart from the apiary and the estate which yield produce for bothdomestic and local consumption, there emerged an extensive building programmeunder the guidance of Brother Gabriel, an architect and builder, in 1952. Thenew abbey church and a greater part of the living quarters of the monks werecompleted. The creation of guest rooms for visitors as well as a rest house forpilgrim were completed in 1954.

Extensions to the abbey of aschool, a library and an auditorium were started and in 1964, work on the towerbegan. This was completed in 1976. A new road to the abbey was also built inperiod, as was the St. Bede's Technical. Over the years, the monks have taken agreat interest in the development of the seminary. School, college seminary andchurch shine like a beacon of hope in the hearts of many near to Mount St.Benedict!

The Warners

2011-11-23T07:22:00.001-08:00

SirThomas Warner, the progenitor of one of the Caribbean’s great extendedfamilies, came out to the West Indies in the early years of the 17th century.He had been born in 1575 in Parham, Suffolk, England, and as a young man he hadserved as a captain in the bodyguard of King James I, a company of speciallychosen soldiers, whose duty it was to guard the King’s life. Later he was madeLieutenant, or keeper of the Tower of London.

Duringthat period, many young men in England were eager to follow the great sea dogslike Raleigh, Drake & Morgan to the Caribbean so as to make their fortunes,and when his friend, Captain Roger North, thought of making a settlement inGuiana, Warner decided to go with him. The settlement did not work out asexpected, and Warner instead settled at St. Christopher in the Leeward Islandson the 28th January, 1624.

Despitemuch initial hostility from the native Caribs of the island and the battlesbetween would-be French and Spanish settlers, Thomas Warner still persisted inhis ambition to create a British settlement. Sir Thomas became the firstLieutenant Governor of the Caribbean islands. He died in March 1649 and wasburied in St. Kitts’ middle island.

Warner’ssons and grandsons established themselves in the British West Indies: SirThomas Warner of Barbados, Col. Philip Warner, Governor of Antigua, WilliamWarner of Dominica, who was known as “Indian Warner” on account of his Caribblood, and Col. Edward Warner, who arrived in Trinidad in 1807 and purchasedlands.

CharlesWarner, born in 1805, was the only son of Col. Edward Warner. Charles decidedto settle in Trinidad after a visit here with his cousin Ashton Warner, who wasChief Justice of this colony during the governorship of Sir Ralph Woodford(1813 - 1828). Charles became one of the most prominent Attorney Generals inthe history of Trinidad, serving from 1844 to 1870.

Heso influenced this period while in office, that “Warnerism” became a synonymfor the policy of local government. He married twice, once to IsabellaCarmichael, with whom he had six children, and to his second wife Ellen RoseCadiz, with whom he had twelve. He endowed St. Margarite’s church. He passedlands at Belmont, where in fact the land holdings there were described as “thelands of black Warner and white Warner”.

Theblack Warners of Belmont are the descendants of Ashton Warner, born inSavannah, U.S.A., in 1750. His grandson William, who lived in Dominica and diedin 1793, was reputed to have had four sons with Mildred Johns. One of theirsons, Ashton, came to Trinidad around the time that his namesake and relativeAshton Warner was Chief Justice, and he purchased lands at Belmont, closeby hiscousin Charles Warner. Ashton married into the Zampty family of Belmont, whowere descendants of Sergeant Zampty of the Disbanded 3rd West India Regiment,which had been raised in Sierra Leone to do service in the Caribbean.

In1873, Charles Warner built his home which he called "The Hall". Thebuilding was a beautiful, two-storied property, where his children grew up.Amongst them were Archer Warner, who also became Attorney-General of Trinidad,and Sir Pelham Warner, who would later achieve international fame as acricketer. Streets in Belmont are named for them, as well as for other membersof the Warner family. Charles Warner died in 1887, and his grave can still bevisited in the Botanical Gardens.

TheHall at Chancery Lane spanned a whole block. The house comprised a splendidgarden, which included a swimming pool for the children to learn to swim and apond where they could sail their toy boats and where the morocoy could bathe.The gardener had been brought from Germany! The Hall also had what was perhapsthe first tennis court in Trinidad.

Warnerlived in The Hall in an extravagant style, and one informant told me long agothat his family was "very united".

In1886, Charles sold The Hall to Don Carlos Siegert. It became the home of theSiegert family for the next 34 years. Don Carlos kept race horses and as manyas 11 carriages of various sizes in his stables. At that time, the mainentrance was from Chancery Lane. The ground floor of the house held a largehall, hung with portraits of the Siegert family, who had come to Trinidad fromthe town of Angostura in Venezuela (now Ciudad Bolivar), bringing with them thesecret of their now famous bitters.

In1920, The Hall was brought by Charles Conrad Stollmeyer for $40,000. He andothers thought to convert the premises into a club. This was, however, not tobe, for a bad fire gutted the house. They were forced to sell the property tothe Anglican Church through Bishop Anstey. The main building of The Hall becamea guesthouse that was run by Mrs. Florence Rust. The buildings which opened onAbercromby Street were converted into classrooms.

Inthe 1950s, Trinidad witnessed many social and political changes. As OlgaMavrogordato states in her book "Voices in the Street":

"In1952, the entire property was taken over by the junior school of St. Hilary'suntil 1966, when it moved to Monte Christo, St. Ann's, to make room for theHigh School. Since that time, St. Hilary's has occupied the entire premises andthough many improvements and changes have been made, the family atmosphere ofold still remains and this is a happy school."

U-boat Gold Shipment

2011-11-23T07:09:00.001-08:00

AsWorld War II groaned painfully to an end, there remained one aspect of theGerman armoured services that was still virtually intact. This was itssubmarine service, the dreaded U-Boats. At the command of Grand Admiral Doenitz,all U-Boats were ordered to surrender; many did. Some 156 sailed into alliedports, but a large percentage of the overall U-Boat command, 221 boats, choseanother way out of the war. They blew themselves up. Throughout the Baltic Seaand across the North Atlantic, huge explosions ripped the steel hulls, sendingthe last of the "Wolfpacks" to their watery grave. But there were two,however, that did not meet their end in the frigid waters of the North Sea, foras the explosions shuddered through the deep, U-Boats U530 and U977 slippedaway, heading south, acquiring the name that haunts war historians to this day,“The Ghost Convoys”.

Thelast days of Germany's Third Reich was a chaotic time. The Russians, pouring infrom the east, swept into Berlin, defended now by mostly young lads and veryold men. As their big guns pounded the once proud city, and as lines ofcommunication and command faltered and finally collapsed, the men and women whohad run this formidable war machine fled for safety. Many were mindful of theirparts in the atrocities of this terrible war. Many were aware of what theirfate would be if they were to fall into the hands of the Soviet Army.

Someescaped through sewers, others slipped through the fog, smoke and rain-soakedclouds in small planes, taking off from the cities exploding streets, others attemptedit dressed as civilians, as women, as refugees or in the uniforms of men theyhad killed. Some headed west towards the British and American lines in thecertain knowledge of a more humane reception on being caught. Others waiteddeep in the cellars of the city for the storm of war to pass, in the hope ofliving to fight another day.

Therewere others, who for various reasons had knowledge of where great treasureswere hidden in this vast flaming rubble that once was one of Europe's greatcities. Great caches of gold ingots, literally bags of precious stones,diamonds, rubies. The trick would be to get it and get through the lines ofthe artillery and tens of thousandof soldiers.

Itis written that U530 under the command of Otto Wehrmuth and U977 under HeinzSchaffer did not obey the surrender order neither did they explode their boats. They decided instead toleave their Norwegian and North Atlantic ports and make their way to Argentina.Sailing separately, travelling at full speed, they undertook a tremendousundersea journey that took them down and across almost the entire length of theAtlantic Ocean. Lt. Commander Gaylord Kelshall in his authoritative "U-Boatwar in the Caribbean" writes:

“Itwas a world record for submarines although it has never been recognized ...

Wehrmutharrived in Mar del Plata in July 1945 while U977 arrived in August after aharrowing three month journey.”

TheU-Boats were welcomed and crews accommodated by the Argentine Navy. It must beremembered that pro-German sentiment was very strong in the South Americasduring this war, and that there was sympathy for the Fascists' form ofgovernment as existed in both Franco’s Spain and Hitler’s Germany. In addition,many Germans lived in Argentina and had done so for generations.

Inany event the United Sates was all-powerful, and both the U-Boats and theircrews were handed over to the U.S. Navy. Lt. Com. Kelshall relates:

“AnArgentine daily ran a story to the effect that U530 and U977 had been part of a'ghost convoy' which had brought Hitler, Eva Braun and Martin Bohrmann, plusNazi treasure to Patagonia and put them ashore before surrendering the boats.The Russians were keeping very quiet about what they found in Berlin, with the resultthat the British and American intelligence took the story seriously.”

BothU-Boat captains were taken into custody. A few weeks later, they arrived inTrinidad under very heavy guard at Wallerfield. From there they were flown tothe United States to be interrogated.

Itis ironical: just a year before, both these men were cruising the coastline ofthis island in search of prey for their torpedoes. The story does not end thereand then, however.

Asit was at the beginning, so it was at the end. Trinidad's wartime adventurereally commenced with the sinking of merchant vessels by a U-Boat right there,in Port of Spain harbour in the first years of World War II. Our wartimeexperience came to an end with the surrender of the last German U-Boats, againin the vicinity of our capital city. Lt. Com. Kelshall relates it thus:

“Inthe crisp morning of Tuesday, October 2nd, 1945, there was a considerablegathering of military personnel on the piers of the U.S. Naval Station inChaguaramas. They represented air, land and sea elements and came from everycommand in the Caribbean theatre. Along with American, British and localmilitary men, there were Brazilians, speaking Portuguese, Venezuelans and somefrom Central America, speaking Spanish, Free French representatives from theFrench territories, and Dutch personnel who fought in the Caribbean.

Nearthe end of the pier, a small group of important military people were gatheredaround their host, Commodore Courtlant Baughmann, commander of the U.S. NavalStation in Chaguaramas. This group clustered near the commodore came from threenavies, and for the moment they were the centre of attention.

"CaptainW. Christiansen was the official representative of the United States Navy.Standing near him were the Royal Navy team, made up of Captain J.H. Breal, withChief Petty Officer L. King and Mr. C. Penwell from the Admiralty Board ofNaval Constructors.

"English,French Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch were the normal languages of the CaribbeanTheatre, but on this morning there was an addition. Standing in the group andoccasionally exchanging comments in their native tongue were Captain Kadov andCaptain Favarov of the Russian Navy. This multinational group were known as theAllied Tripartite Committee and they represented the tail end of wartimeco-operation, which would soon degenerate into twentieth century Cold War.However, on this particular morning, they were together on the pier awaitingthe arrival of the US Navy Task Group 21.4.

"Theconflicts in both the Atlantic and the Pacific were over and the world waswinding down from the high tension of a World War, but for the Caribbean thiswas a very special morning.

"SeveralMariner flying boats from VP-213 were airborne, escorting Task Group 21.4 toTrinidad, while the remainder of the pilots from the squadron were on the pier.To the officers and men of the Caribbean Command, the arrival of the Task Groupwould be the culmination of their war and not many of them would have missedit.

"Preciselyat five minutes to seven, the bows of the flagship of Task 21.4 appeared,thrusting through the Third Boca. She was the twelve hundred ton ocean goingtug, USS Cheroke. She was especially equipped with salvage equipment andcarried a crew of experienced technicians. The two hundred and ten foot longtug cleared the Boca and turned to starboard to allow her charges to takecentre stage and a suppressed ripple of excitement greeted the bows of thesecond vessel of the Task Group 21.4, as it slid through the dark water. U530had returned to the Caribbean, - for her third visit.

"Thelong gray forward casing crept into view, glistening with spray in the earlymorning sunshine. Overhead, the engines of the Mariner thundered, as its archenemy became the second U Boat to enter the Gulf of Paria. Then the conningtower was visible, followed by the after casing, with white foaming at itsstern. Her new American passage crew were on deck, as she turned towards thepiers and the waiting crowd.

"Butshe had hardly cleared the Boca, before the bows of a second U Boat appeared.Following closely behind the Caribbean veteran U530 came the type VIIC U977. Asthis U Boat entered the gulf, a second Mariner flying boat swept over the shipsof Task 21.4 and turned south. The Mariners had escorted the Task Group alongTrinidad’s north coast and now their job was Complete.

TheU Boats had come from Buenos Aires, where they had been handed over to theAmerican crews by the Argentine Navy. The U Boats’ original crews were far awayin a prison camp and the two former commanders, Otto Wehrmuth and HeinzSchaffer were still undergoing special interrogation with their allegeinvolvement with the ghost convoy.”