An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Last week we looked at how San­gre Grande emerged from the forests to be­come a ma­jor co­coa trad­ing cen­tre. It was a rip-roar­ing en­vi­ron­ment and was de­scribed in 1910 as fol­lows:

"I strolled about Cu­nape vil­lage, as San­gre Grande is lo­cal­ly called, to see what changes had oc­curred in four years. My im­pres­sions were that busi­ness had in­creased, judg­ing from the num­ber of fresh "shacks" that had been run up and the con­gest­ed con­fu­sion of carts, bar­rels and box­es, etc, but the pro­por­tion of loafers, that is, five to every one work­ing-man or woman, was un­al­tered.

"Every pro­vi­sion shop, and their name was le­gion, held loafers of all sorts who did noth­ing (as far as I could see), but sit round on bar­rels or lean up against the coun­ters and doors gos­sip­ing and liv­ing seem­ing­ly on the com­bined smells of the shop, which were un­de­ni­ably strong, and af­ford­ed prob­a­bly all the nour­ish­ment these idle ones need­ed. Out­side one of these tem­ples I saw a man, very drunk in­deed, and it was yet ear­ly in the day, and find­ing his face fa­mil­iar to me as that of an old wood-squar­er, I asked Har­ris, to whom he had spo­ken a few maudlin words, if he were not in that line of busi­ness. Har­ris an­swered that he was a de­tec­tive, which left me fu­ri­ous­ly to think over the Machi­avel­lian meth­ods of the Trinidad Po­lice Force.

"The mes­sages hav­ing been made we got un­der way, the faith­ful Har­ris act­ing as Je­hu. Wheel­ing to the right, be­fore the Court-House, pass­ing the Cu­nape Riv­er over the Brook­lyn Bridge, we gal­lant­ly breast­ed the hill lead­ing to the of­fi­cial por­tion of San­gre Grande. Here, near the Catholic Church I was struck by one of the first em­blems of progress, a large un­fin­ished build­ing which looked as if the de­sign­er had in­tend­ed pri­mar­i­ly to erect a repli­ca of the Taj Ma­hal, but, hav­ing changed his mind, had chopped it up in­to lit­tle cu­bi­cles like a Chi­nese gam­bling house. Har­ris, who I found was brim­ful of in­for­ma­tion, told me that the build­ing had been de­signed and erect­ed by an In­di­an fel­low cit­i­zen, a re­mote de­scen­dant of 'the Li­on of the Pun­jaub,' at least his name had the same ter­mi­na­tive Singh, who had amassed un­to him­self many shekels and was de­ter­mined to show 'dem half-bit buc­cra' of Trinidad how to build a house.

"Up past the hous­es of the of­fi­cial dig­ni­taries, DMO, War­den, etc, over the San­gre Grande Riv­er, and again up the hill where the flour­ish­ing plan­ta­tion of dear old Doc­tor Thomas is sit­u­at­ed. Here, I would have made a short call on JP, an old friend of pre­his­toric days, but he had al­so gone to chant The Maple Leaf For­ev­er. Through San­gre Chiq­ui­to on and on, ca­cao plan­ta­tions in­nu­mer­able on both sides of the road laden with pods, pur­ple, scar­let, yel­low and green... "

One of the first cin­e­mas to be erect­ed out­side Port-of-Spain was at San­gre Grande in 1919. A very im­por­tant es­tab­lish­ment in the town was the Mar­lay Store which was a very large em­po­ri­um owned by a Chi­nese busi­ness­man. In ad­di­tion to be­ing a buy­ing agent for co­coa, cof­fee and ton­ka beans, Mar­lay's al­so boast­ed a gro­cery, bar and so­da wa­ter fac­to­ry, with its own unique brand­ed bot­tles be­ing im­port­ed from the Unit­ed States.

San­gre Grande went in­to a tem­po­rary re­ces­sion when the co­coa econ­o­my tanked in 1920 but by 1941 a new source of in­come was on the hori­zon. That was when the Unit­ed States Air Force and Army be­gan clear­ing the El Mamo for­est near Cu­mu­to for the con­struc­tion of the Waller­field Air­base and Fort Read. Sud­den­ly, the area was of se­ri­ous im­por­tance. Co­coa suf­fered as labour left to work for Amer­i­can dol­lars but the rumshops and cin­e­ma had a field day since the Yan­kee boys sought en­ter­tain­ment.

The Trinidad Gov­ern­ment Rail­way end­ed its San­gre Grande line in the 1960s which in­spired the kaiso com­posed by Houn­di­ni, Ari­ma Tonight San­gre Grande To­mor­row Night. De­spite these set­backs, San­gre Grande re­mained the largest town of east­ern Trinidad. In time, its lit­tle health cen­tre was re­placed by a dis­trict hos­pi­tal which to­day has ex­pand­ed to em­brace many im­por­tant med­ical func­tions in­clud­ing on­col­o­gy. On­ly a few of the old build­ings still stand and the fate of the old colo­nial post of­fice is al­ways in ques­tion.

Hope­ful­ly one day peo­ple will re­alise the im­por­tance of his­to­ry to the na­tion and clam­our to see it pre­served.