An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

South of San Fer­nan­do, in a belt of rolling coun­try bor­der­ing on the Oropouche La­goon man­grove swamps was the dis­trict of South Na­pari­ma. Around 1810-20, two large sug­ar plan­ta­tions–Welling­ton and Wood­land–were es­tab­lished on these lands. The soil was ex­ceed­ing­ly rich and those for­tu­nate enough to have prop­er­ties here, reaped rich an­nu­al har­vests as LAA De­V­er­teuil re­count­ed in 1857."Not on­ly do the canes ra­toon in this soil for many years, but it does not seem to be favourable to the growth of rank weeds; from three to four an­nu­al weed­ings on­ly are re­quired to keep the cane-fields clean and in good con­di­tion. The canes gen­er­al­ly do not grow to a very large size; but from 20 to 30 shoots from the same."

Ini­tial­ly tilled by slave labour, the es­tates of South Na­pari­ma strug­gled af­ter Eman­ci­pa­tion un­til the in­tro­duc­tion of in­den­tured work­ers from In­dia who be­gan ar­riv­ing spo­rad­i­cal­ly in 1845 and in earnest af­ter 1849. From 1860-66 and end­ing around 1880, an in­cen­tive of �5 in lieu of a re­turn pas­sage to In­dia was of­fered in or­der to en­cour­age the In­di­ans to set­tle and cre­ate a peas­ant class.Around 1875-80 a num­ber of labour­ers whose con­tracts had ex­pired, be­gan to farm the land as­sid­u­ous­ly, pro­duc­ing prodi­gious quan­ti­ties of rice, ground pro­vi­sions, veg­eta­bles and wa­ter­mel­ons. Much of this food found a ready mar­ket some four miles away in San Fer­nan­do.

In time, the vil­lage they found­ed be­came known as Cooliewood.

Dire need for a South road

An­oth­er small­er ham­let be­gan to sprout down­hill to the east around 1900, even clos­er to the bor­ders of Welling­ton Es­tate.This was the birth of Debe, al­though it was then con­sid­ered amal­ga­mat­ed to Cooliewood. There were no pub­lic ser­vices in the area and the vil­lages were al­most en­tire­ly com­posed of In­do-Trinida­di­an agrar­i­an peas­ants.Ow­ing to the quan­ti­ty of food be­ing pro­duced here, as well as in Pe­nal some five miles south (which had be­gun as a set­tle­ment in much the same fash­ion around 1900), there was a dire need for a prop­er road to get the crops to mar­ket.

To this call, the wealthy planter and own­er of Palmiste Es­tate, Sir Nor­man La­m­ont, lent his voice, and in 1912 he an­nounced:"To­wards one oth­er mat­ter I have al­so been able to make some progress, though I am not able to state def­i­nite­ly that the work will be un­der­tak­en. I re­fer to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of our hav­ing a di­rect road from San Fer­nan­do to the south, which would run through Palmiste and Canaan by means of a bridge near the mouth of the riv­er Cipero."His Ex­cel­len­cy the Gov­er­nor him­self came to see the pro­posed route, and the mat­ter is now un­der his con­sid­er­a­tion. If the road is made, it will, in my opin­ion, be of great val­ue to all the peo­ple on this es­tate, as giv­ing them a short and di­rect road to San Fer­nan­do for their mar­ket­ing."

A train track­through the swamp

This road was not com­menced un­til 1915 and even­tu­al­ly be­came the San Fer­nan­do–Siparia Erin Road. This was not to say, how­ev­er, that Debe was bereft of trans­port. In 1912 the Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way (TGR) ex­tend­ed a line to­wards the set­tle­ment in an in­fra­struc­ture ex­pan­sion dri­ve to reach Siparia which hap­pened in 1914. A sta­tion was put up at Welling­ton Road with a cross­ing gate cut­ting off traf­fic on the SS Erin Road when the train was mov­ing across.The project of ex­tend­ing a line through the swamps of Debe was con­sid­ered to be one of the great en­gi­neer­ing feats of the TGR since a mas­sive em­bank­ment had to be con­struct­ed all the way to Pe­nal. Bits of this earth­work and an old bai­ley bridge are still vis­i­ble off Su­chit Trace.

Debe had a Pres­by­ter­ian church and school since the 1920s which were on a steep in­cline just south of the vil­lage. Ow­ing to se­vere earth move­ments, the old school was aban­doned and a new build­ing erect­ed a short dis­tance away in the 1990s.

Fa­mous for dou­bles, aloo pies

As ear­ly as the 1950s, the Welling­ton Road junc­tion of Debe was be­com­ing fa­mous as a spot for In­di­an del­i­ca­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly dou­bles and aloo pies. From the 1940s un­til it closed in the late 1990s, Hum­ming­bird Cin­e­ma op­er­at­ed near this place, show­ing In­di­an pic­tures as its sta­ple fare. In 1962 Dr Er­ic Williams man­dat­ed that the name of the orig­i­nal set­tle­ment, Cooliewood, should be changed to Gand­hi Vil­lage, both to ho­n­our the most fa­mous In­di­an states­man in his­to­ry and to erase the deroga­to­ry na­ture of the name.To­day Debe is a bustling com­mer­cial area, very dif­fer­ent from its hum­ble ori­gins.