In­nis Fran­cis

in­nis_fran­cis@ya­hoo.com

The Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety is lob­by­ing for the Palmiste Recre­ation Grounds in south Trinidad, to be giv­en the des­ig­na­tion of botan­ic gar­dens.

Pres­i­dent of the so­ci­ety, Ter­rence Hon­ore said be­fore the group was formed 12 years ago, the grounds were large­ly ne­glect­ed and lit­tle was done to high­light the rich his­to­ry of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 hectares of recre­ation­al land. He said 22 years ago the gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished a man­age­ment com­mit­tee and in­stru­ments were put in place to man­age the park. How­ev­er, even then there was no man­age­ment of the park, and no one to de­cide on its prop­er use.

The so­ci­ety is ap­peal­ing to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to de­vel­op the park like the Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens in Port-of-Spain, re­store and pre­serve the last chim­ney nes­tled be­tween Blocks Five and Sev­en and es­tab­lish a mu­se­um to doc­u­ment arte­facts from the orig­i­nal Palmiste es­tate.

“Our group was formed in 2009, but on­ly in 2014-2016, we pulled things to­geth­er. Some res­i­dents come to­geth­er to see about pre­serv­ing the her­itage but not many peo­ple that in­ter­est­ed,” he said. “It is a tall or­der, very lim­it­ed cor­po­rate sup­port. We ap­pealed to Gov­ern­ment agen­cies like the Na­tion­al Trust. We are a group of peo­ple do­ing some­thing, to try to save his­to­ry and let the chil­dren know what hap­pened and how things went down here. We al­so have to ad­vo­cate. One Gov­ern­ment comes af­ter the oth­er and things wast­ing away, the his­to­ry dis­ap­pear­ing.”

President of the Palmiste Historical Society, Terrence Honore points to the last-standing chimney at Blocks Five and Seven, in Palmiste.

Innis Francis

Hon­ore said apart from be­ing a his­toric lo­ca­tion, Palmiste Park is part of an orig­i­nal es­tate with ponds, in­clud­ing one that is heart-shaped. “Nowhere in the world do you have a heart-shaped pond and peo­ple not mak­ing a fuss about it,” he said. He lament­ed the amount of bu­reau­cra­cy in­volved in get­ting things done on T&T. “We are good at writ­ing but we are not good at im­ple­ment­ing,” Hon­ore said, adding that the His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety was found­ed to look specif­i­cal­ly at the are its his­to­ry and pre­serve what re­mains of its his­to­ry.

He said a sim­ple act like chang­ing a street name re­cent­ly was the be­gin­ning of a loss of com­mu­ni­ty his­to­ry. Al­though the Palmiste es­tate has giv­en its name to the near­by com­mu­ni­ty, Hon­ore said very few peo­ple know of the Philip fam­i­ly’s role in the his­to­ry of the area.

He ad­mit­ted: “Be­cause the his­to­ry and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the coun­try are miss­ing from the schools, I didn’t know about these things around me un­til I got to uni­ver­si­ty, and I grew up around here. Sto­ries from here are rich sto­ries.

“Some black men came from Grena­da and built a wood­en house and the pond. Be­cause they were black they were treat­ed in a par­tic­u­lar kind of way. White own­ers, the Philip fam­i­ly, bought over the house from the black fam­i­ly. Hav­ing brought it over, the whole area be­came recog­nised by the con­tri­bu­tion made by the suc­ces­sors and no men­tion was made of the orig­i­na­tors.

“Worst than that, this fam­i­ly end­ed hav­ing two first lo­cal doc­tors trained in Eng­land and no­body men­tions that. Jean-Bap­tiste Philip wrote and made a pe­ti­tion to Eng­land, the first so­cial­ist to the British gov­ern­ment, to ad­just how they treat the French cre­oles.”

Terrence Honore looks over documents he acquired on Palmiste Park.

Innis Francis

The so­ci­ety or­gan­ised and in­stalled the first his­toric mark­er to recog­nise Jean-Bap­tiste Philip as a black doc­tor. A plaque was al­so placed in ho­n­our of his broth­er.

The group’s lat­est ini­tia­tive is to put up a mark­er to make the route of the rail­way which went through the La­m­ont Palmiste es­tate from Em­ba­cadere. Oth­er projects are in the pipeline. Hon­ore said as it is the park’s main­te­nance is seg­ment­ed. It is main­tained by the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment but the trees are un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries and the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion looks af­ter the food huts.

With sup­port from hor­ti­cul­tur­ists, the So­ci­ety has plant­ed 154 fruit or­na­men­tal and med­i­c­i­nal trees in the park.