An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

For a tiny vil­lage with just over a cou­ple hun­dred in­hab­i­tants, San Jose de Oruna (St Joseph) was a place with more than its fair share of tri­als. Af­ter the abrupt dis­place­ment of the abo­rig­i­nal in­hab­i­tants of the dis­trict in 1595 and two sub­se­quent raz­ings by in­trud­ers, the town was in a de­press­ing state, be­ing no more than a few shacks hud­dled about an open square. The in­hab­i­tants sur­vived on tax­es im­posed on the Amerindi­ans, who paid in pro­vi­sions, cot­ton and what gold they could muster.A sick­ly mud fort at Puer­ta de los His­panoles (Port-of-Spain) manned by a few sol­diers and a tiny two-gun bat­tery at the con­flu­ence of the Mara­cas and Ca­roni rivers called Puer­to Grande was the on­ly mil­i­tary de­fence.

Puer­to Grande was the main stopover for Ca­puchin monks, who be­gan ar­riv­ing from Cat­alo­nia, Spain in 1687 in or­der to form mis­sions for the evan­ge­li­sa­tion of the na­tives–that is, those who were left af­ter a bru­tal se­mi-en­slave­ment called the en­comien­da had been im­ple­ment­ed about four decades ear­li­er. Mis­sions were es­tab­lished across the is­land and the treat­ment met­ed out to the Amerindi­ans was less than ide­al, with heavy trib­utes to be paid and harsh pun­ish­ments com­bined with se­vere labour.It came as no sur­prise, then, that in 1699 the Tamanaque tribe at the mis­sion of San Fran­cis­co de los Are­nales (near present-day San Rafael) re­volt­ed, killing three priests and a car­pen­ter. The rebels lay in am­bush as well and slaugh­tered the Gov­er­nor, Don Jose Leon de Echales, and at least eight of the par­ty with which he was vis­it­ing the mis­sion. One man es­caped and brought the news of the mas­sacre to San Jose be­fore dy­ing of his wounds.

Mil­i­tary forces were mus­tered and aug­ment­ed by Amerindi­an al­lies and the Tamanaques were pur­sued to the east coast. Some com­mit­ted sui­cide rather than be cap­tured and those who were tak­en, were ex­e­cut­ed or en­slaved. The re­mains of the priests were re­cov­ered a year lat­er and in­terred in the parish church, from whence they were ex­humed in 1989 and tak­en to San Rafael, near the site of the mas­sacre.

At the time, a qua­si-ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal body called the San­tisi­ma Her­man­dad act­ed as the mu­nic­i­pal coun­cil and ju­di­cia­ry of San Jose. In time this gave way to a sec­u­lar au­thor­i­ty called the Il­lus­tri­ous Board of the Ca­bil­do, which not on­ly en­act­ed laws but al­so col­lect­ed tax­es and levied fines.The year 1702 was one of very grave im­por­tance, for it was the first in which a sig­nif­i­cant car­go of African slaves was land­ed in the is­land. They were put to work on the co­coa farms of the set­tlers in the re­gion of St Joseph, since dis­ease and ill-treat­ment had se­vere­ly dec­i­mat­ed the Amerindi­ans.In 1725, the co­coa crop failed and a priest named Gu­mil­la blamed the cat­a­stro­phe on the non-pay­ment of tithes. Then came a pe­ri­od of ab­ject pover­ty in the town. Things be­came so bad that the Ca­bil­do mem­bers could on­ly boast one com­plete suit of clothes amongst them and each took turns wear­ing it on meet­ing days. No funds could be found to pay for the thatch­ing of the casa re­al (gov­ern­ment house).

An ex­tract of a let­ter from the pe­ri­od re­veals the true penury of San Jose: "The im­pos­si­bil­i­ty of car­ry­ing these or­ders in­to ex­e­cu­tion, con­sid­er­ing the very small num­ber of in­hab­i­tants, and their ex­treme pover­ty; the to­tal want of mon­ey; the want of cat­tle and of all sorts of pro­vi­sions; that the in­hab­i­tants feed them­selves and their fam­i­lies with what lit­tle they can per­son­al­ly get in the woods and in the sea, and that many days they re­turn to their homes with­out any­thing to eat, which has in­duced many to leave the Is­land; that their oc­cu­pa­tion of weed­ing their lit­tle plan­ta­tions takes up all their time; that they are con­stant­ly em­ployed in mount­ing guard at the mouth of the Ca­roni (there be­ing but ten sol­diers in the Is­land) and do­ing oth­er pub­lic ser­vices, to the detri­ment and of­ten to the to­tal loss of their gar­dens; that if forced to per­form oth­er works they would leave the Is­land."It was this squalor that prompt­ed Gov­er­nor Pe­dro de la Mon­e­da to re­lo­cate his res­i­dence to Puer­ta de los His­panoles in 1857, since a house be­fit­ting his dig­ni­ty could not be found.In 1784 Gov­er­nor Don Jose Maria Cha­con de­clared Port-of-Spain the of­fi­cial cap­i­tal and 13 years lat­er watched as the is­land was seized by British forces un­der Sir Ralph Aber­crom­bie. Cor­re­spond­ing­ly, the main street in St Joseph took the name of Ad­mi­ral Aber­crom­bie.

�2 Next week we will close our lookat Trinidad's first cap­i­tal.