RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ce­dros's rich his­tor­i­cal lega­cy con­tin­ues to be un­der threat with the bull­doz­ing of 700 plus acres of land to fa­cil­i­tate hous­ing.

Hav­ing al­ready lost the gi­ant cedars which gave it its name and the re­cent bull­doz­ing of the cen­tu­ry-old Brazil­ian nut trees, parts of the sprawl­ing co­conut es­tates of Ce­dros are now be­ing ploughed down.

The bull­doz­ing ex­tends from Granville to Gal­far where six hous­ing projects are tak­ing place si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly by dif­fer­ent de­vel­op­ers. Lands at Green­hill and Gal­far are be­ing sold on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket for $50 (or US$ 8.30) per square feet.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view, one of Ce­dros' tour guides Ed­ward Mar­celle said the bur­geon­ing land de­vel­op­ment brings hope to the peo­ple of Ce­dros who are suf­fer­ing from un­em­ploy­ment. With the clo­sure of Petrotrin and the fall of the co­conut and fish­ing in­dus­tries, Mar­celle said the on­ly ven­ture of­fer­ing hon­est em­ploy­ment to the re­gion was the ex­pan­sive land de­vel­op­ment. Those who can­not find work of­ten fall prey to the traf­fick­ing, bur­geon­ing drug, guns and con­tra­band trade.

Mar­celle said while the area re­mains de­pressed, tourism bears greater po­ten­tial for the com­mu­ni­ty pro­vid­ing that the relics re­main af­ter the land projects are com­plet­ed.

He re­vealed that there were over 20 his­tor­i­cal sites in Ce­dros that were in dire need of preser­va­tion. Apart from the pop­u­lar Green­hill fort with army bunkers, the tomb­stones of French planters Jean Cav­alan and his broth­er Michel Cav­alan at the N`En­vi­guse Es­tate and the rav­ages of the co­coa and cit­rus in­dus­tries, Mar­celle said there were sites in Ce­dros which re­main un­doc­u­ment­ed.

"The old light­house that lies in­tact be­neath the sea off the Con­stance Es­tate is one of these sites that has tremen­dous tourism po­ten­tial," Mar­celle said. While mass land ero­sion has been wide­ly re­port­ed in the coast, few re­ports of land ag­gre­ga­tion have been cov­ered.

Mar­celle said the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty of Gran Chemin in Ica­cos should be marked as a his­tor­i­cal site as there is ev­i­dence of Sal­adoids ar­ti­facts there. The Sal­adoids were the pre­de­ces­sors of the Tain­os who lived here be­fore the ar­rival of Christo­pher Colum­bus in 1498.

Mar­celle said Gran Chemin in Ica­cos may be con­nect­ed to Gran Chemin in Moru­ga be­cause there was ev­i­dence of a coast­line road in those days which has long dis­ap­peared.

"The same Mount Carmel cel­e­bra­tions held in June used to at­tract pil­grims from all the main Catholic cen­tres in the coun­try and are held in both ar­eas. We had Span­ish styled build­ings and Amerindi­an arte­facts. Pieces of Sal­adoid stones and pot­tery have been found there," Mar­celle said.

The Con­stance Es­tate is al­so rich in arte­facts as well.

"There are chim­neys where they used to house sev­en dis­til­leries for mak­ing rum. We had all the cop­pers for boil­ing and mak­ing wet sug­ar. The St Quintin Es­tate al­so had a chim­ney," Mar­celle added.

Cav­a­l­os Se­bastien, the own­er of Co­lum­bia and St Quintin Es­tate once had a Great House at the Columbian Es­tate but this was burnt in the 1950s, Mar­celle said. He lament­ed that sev­er­al colo­nial hous­es have al­ready been de­stroyed, long be­fore the plough­ing down of the co­conut es­tates be­gan.

"We still have the Borel House stand­ing, which is a still a Tapia house made with com­pressed mud and grass but we lost the old bar­rack hous­es and the colo­nial house on Per­se­ver­ance Es­tate," he added.

On the St Marie Es­tate, Mar­celle said an­cient con­crete cis­terns which stored wa­ter for the bar­rack hous­es dur­ing in­den­ture­ship are still stand­ing.

Mar­celle said the old po­lice sta­tion at Bonasse Vil­lage still had his­tor­i­cal arte­facts which were at least 130 years old.

"St Marie Es­tate still has a few old hous­es that are in­ac­ces­si­ble. It was the biggest pri­vate land­hold­ing in the West In­dies. It com­prised 6,000 acres from the sea in Gal­far to the sea in Bonasse. It was owned by the Singh fam­i­ly," he re­vealed.

The St Marie es­tate play­ground was made fa­mous by the St Marie Crick­et Club which pro­duced Vic­tor Mar­shall in the 1950s, and Mar­celle not­ed that Cap­tain Chari­ta Sinanan was the long-stand­ing cap­tain of the club when Vic­tor made the Trinidad team.

He not­ed that in­side the Iros forests in Chatham there was the Bourg Con­go, a French vil­lage which housed a slave pe­nal struc­ture.

"There was ev­i­dence of that struc­ture with ar­ti­facts used for pun­ish­ing the slaves but all of that has been gone. The place has been erod­ed, van­dalised and ar­ti­facts have been tak­en. At Green­hill there are bunkers and at the San Jose la­goon in Ica­cos, there is great po­ten­tial for tourism," Mar­celle said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent Burt Be­har­ry said Ce­dros has been chang­ing over time but lit­tle has been done to doc­u­ment its progress. Be­har­ry said the ar­rival of the Venezue­lans in Ce­dros had changed the de­mog­ra­phy and cul­tur­al dy­nam­ics of Ce­dros.

"A lot is go­ing on in Ce­dros but peo­ple are not pay­ing enough at­ten­tion. We need to have this area de­vel­oped with bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cals and tourists," Be­har­ry said.

Fish­er­man Patrick Gualc­hand said fish­er­men were pre­pared to be part of the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion process.

"Right now we can­not make an hon­est day's work in the sea be­cause pi­rates tak­ing away our nets. We can­not go to Venezuela to fish any more. We are hap­py to have con­struc­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties with these de­vel­op­ments," Gualc­hand said.

De­vel­op­ment af­fect­ing the wa­ter ta­ble

Mean­while, coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros Shankar Teelucks­ingh said while he wel­comed the mass land de­vel­op­ment in the area, he was con­cerned that the wa­ter ta­ble was be­ing af­fect­ed.

Teelucks­ingh said the clear­ing of land at Tes­trail Es­tate in Granville was cre­at­ing some prob­lems. Teeluc­cks­ingh called on the Min­istry of Plan­ning to look in­to the de­vel­op­ment. Apart from the clear­ing of 100 acres in Granville, Teelucks­ingh said 250 acres were be­ing de­vel­oped at Gal­far Es­tate by an­oth­er in­di­vid­ual, 15 acres at Ica­cos, 100 acres at Bam­boo De­vel­op­ment, 150 acres by Bho­la's de­vel­op­ment at Per­se­ver­ance Es­tate, and 100 acres at Co­lum­bia Es­tate in Fullar­ton.

Teelucks­ingh said en­vi­ron­men­tal agen­cies must hold de­vel­op­ers ac­count­able to avoid any dis­as­ters such as what ex­ist­ed in Green­vale.

Asked what was be­ing done to pro­mote tourism and to pre­serve Ce­dros' lega­cy, Teelucks­ingh said they were in the process of de­vel­op­ing the Ce­dros Board­walk.

"We want to en­cour­age lo­cal and for­eign tourism. We want to pre­serve the shore­line and we are li­ais­ing with the Coastal Pro­tec­tion Unit for the preser­va­tion of the Colum­bus Bay and Granville beach­front," he added.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Pe­tro­le­um Ge­ol­o­gists Trinidad Chap­ter Am­rit Cooblal said Ce­dros was an at­trac­tive place for the study of his­to­ry, ar­chae­ol­o­gy, and ge­ol­o­gy.

"I don't mind be­ing part of a team li­ais­ing with the ar­chae­o­log­i­cal unit to ex­plore what Ce­dros of­fers," Cooblal said.

"From a ge­o­log­i­cal point of view, Ce­dros is the most at­trac­tive place for out­crop work. It is a great place for ge­ol­o­gists to ex­plore mud vol­ca­noes and study rocks which are mil­lions of years old."

Pre­serve our his­to­ry—Teelucks­ingh

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh said there was a need to pre­serve his­tor­i­cal sites that con­tain ev­i­dence of our an­ces­tors.

"We al­so need to be care­ful of re­mov­ing lay­ers of soil that would con­tain ev­i­dence such as arte­facts and skele­tal re­mains. These are part of our his­to­ry that should be pre­served," he said. He said many peo­ple were fo­cused on cre­at­ing res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion of the his­tor­i­cal val­ue of the pub­lic space.

"Ce­dros in the south­west­ern penin­su­lar has an im­por­tant role not just be­cause of the agri­cul­ture but be­cause of the fes­ti­vals cel­e­brat­ed here. Once the land is cleared and the res­i­den­tial area goes up, the his­tor­i­cal val­ue is lost for­ev­er. The Gov­ern­ment needs to put in place poli­cies and laws to en­sure that de­vel­op­ers and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty do not ran­dom­ly erect struc­tures and erase our his­to­ry," Teelucks­ingh said.

"Ev­i­dence shows there were ear­ly in­dige­nous peo­ple in­hab­it­ing Ce­dros. It is even more rea­son why the area should be sur­veyed and stud­ied by ar­chae­ol­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans be­fore any de­vel­op­ment oc­curs."

De­vel­op­er Deo Go­sine did not an­swer ques­tions posed to him by the Guardian. When this re­porter called him on three oc­ca­sions he said "Ma'am, I have all the nec­es­sary ap­provals. Thank you," be­fore hang­ing up the phone. A list of ques­tions was emailed to him but he did not re­ply. An­oth­er de­vel­op­er, De­oc­hand Ramd­hanie could not be reached for com­ment on his cel­lu­lar phone.