Michelle Loubon

The his­toric Gan­teaume Tombs in Ma­yaro be­long to one of Trinidad and To­ba­go's old­est, wealth­i­est and most in­flu­en­tial lin­eages. It has links with more than 20 promi­nent fam­i­lies with an­ces­tries through Eu­ro­pean, North and South Amer­i­can, Asia and the Caribbean.

LiTTscapes au­thor, Dr Ram­per­sad and a group of peo­ple on the in­au­gur­al LiT­Tour– Jour­neys Through the Land­scapes of Fic­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go, came across the de­faced and van­dalised tomb while on their way to meet with the Ma­yaro His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety to of­fer them ideas for restor­ing and re­sus­ci­tat­ing the old Ma­yaro Post Of­fice which is rep­re­sent­ed as a key lit­er­ary house in LiTTscapes–Land­scapes of Fic­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go as the set­ting of sev­er­al of the nov­els and short sto­ries of Michael An­tho­ny, who ac­com­pa­nied the tour and led them to the tomb.

Call­ing for ur­gent move to re­store the tomb, Ram­per­sad not­ed that the ne­glect­ed tomb is lo­cat­ed in the Ma­yaro-Guayagua­yare dis­trict that sup­plies Trinidad and To­ba­go with most of its oil and is a sad tes­ti­mo­ny to na­tion­al at­ti­tudes to her­itage and cul­ture and his­to­ry.

"To me, the sto­ry of this ear­ly colo­nial pe­ri­od–of the neu­tral­is­ing of Span­ish, French and British an­i­mosi­ties to­wards each oth­er in Trinidad-is one of the defin­ing mo­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go's ex­em­plary mul­ti­cul­tur­al jour­ney," Ram­per­sad added in her post­ing on the tomb en­ti­tled, "De­faced and Van­dalised" in her blog, Demokris­sy.

The lin­eage rep­re­sent­ed by the tomb­stone

Ram­per­sad al­so not­ed that "the lin­eage rep­re­sent­ed by the tomb­stone of the first fam­i­ly of Gan­teaumes in Ma­yaro in­cludes ad­mi­rals and cap­tains, planters and slaves, leg­is­la­tors, min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment and the church, cler­gy­men, busi­ness­men, judges, me­dia moguls, der­by win­ners, sports­men in crick­et and foot­ball, his­to­ri­ans, bankers, in­sur­ers, ed­u­ca­tors, se­nior civ­il ser­vants, na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al award win­ners among them with blood ties to our Span­ish, French, British African and Asian colo­nial his­to­ry, Ram­per­sad states, "These de­scen­dants in­clude not just the Gan­teaumes as busi­ness mag­nate Pe­ter Gan­teaume; cler­gy­man Fa­ther Gan­teaume and crick­eter Andy Gan­teaume; but al­so the Seigerts (the found­ing fam­i­ly of the world-fa­mous An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters), the Pan­tins (in­clud­ing de­ceased Arch­bish­op An­tho­ny Pan­tin, Fa­ther Ger­ard Pan­tin and Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Clive Pan­tin), Ros­tants, Bessons, de Ver­teuil, de Sil­va, de la Bastide, Ques­nel, and de Mon­teau among them. It al­so bears re­la­tions to Span­ish/Venezue­lan lin­eages of the Tor­res, de Fre­itas and Car­val­lo and British her­itage as the Hamel-Smiths as well as Agos­ti­nis, O'Con­nors, Guis­sep­pis/Giusep­pis and Cipri­a­n­is and Scotts and those of Chi­nese lin­eage as the Chens among oth­ers."

Michael An­tho­ny ex­plained that the de­faced Gan­teaume tomb­stone marks the graves of Ma­yaro's first ad­min­is­tra­tor un­der the British, Fran­cois Alphonse Gan­teaume and his fam­i­ly. He was the grand­son of the man cred­it­ed as the Eu­ro­pean found­ing fa­ther of Ma­yaro which al­so had vi­brant na­tive peo­ples com­mu­ni­ties at the time of his en­try.

He was a French planter who was ship­wrecked on the coast en route to Venezuela from Mar­tinique in 1794 dur­ing Span­ish colo­nial rule, and was grant­ed land un­der the 1783 arrange­ment be­tween French and Span­ish rulers to pop­u­late Trinidad called the Cedu­la of Pop­u­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Ram­per­sad, "Such de­face­ment is ex­act­ly the kind of ac­tions that we, through our LiT­Tours, LiTTscapes and LiT­Tevents, are hop­ing to ed­u­cate and sen­si­tise our pop­u­la­tions against. "If peo­ple un­der­stood their her­itage and how such her­itage el­e­ments can al­so bring sus­tained eco­nom­ic val­ue to them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties they may be less in­clined to de­stroy them. They might even be less in­clined to com­mit oth­er kinds of crimes as well," states.

She added, "The hand­ful of us try­ing to put to­geth­er the scat­tered frag­ments of the head­stone, had no per­son­al re­la­tions to those buried there.

This en­cap­sules the sad state of her­itage con­ser­va­tion and the range of process­es that needs to be ad­dressed in re­vers­ing this-from lo­cal/com­mu­ni­ty/fam­i­ly sen­si­ti­sa­tion, to in­volv­ing lo­cal, na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties. I have vis­it­ed so many tombs and sites like these across the globe which func­tion as vi­tal el­e­ments of com­mu­ni­ty in­te­gra­tion, sol­i­dar­i­ty."

She said LiT­Tevents are func­tions with a dif­fer­ence which amal­ga­mate built, nat­ur­al, cul­tur­al and lit­er­ary her­itage in­to stage or per­for­mance ac­tiv­i­ties avail­able and cus­tom made on re­quest for any oc­ca­sion for those who want to add that touch of dif­fer­ence to Christ­mas, cor­po­rate, dis­trict or even fam­i­ly func­tions and LiT­Tours can al­so be cus­tom made to var­i­ous in­ter­ests on re­quest.

(For more on LiTTscapes, LiT­Tours or LiT­Tevents, email lol­leaves@gmail.com or call 1-868-377-0326 and de­tails in the blog by Kris Ram­per­sad Demokris­sy: www.kris-ram­per­sad.blogspot.com. (Quotes and pho­tos reprint­ed with per­mis­sion)