The tourist brochures
enjoy describing Trinidad and Tobago as a land of festivals. This is so because
from the closing decades of the 18th century, all the way through to the
opening years of the 20th, people from all over the world have found their way
here to work in various economies. Christians and Jews from Europe, Africans
with various belief systems from the western coast of that continent, Muslims
and Hindus from India, the Chinese from the furthest east, and elements of the
Ottoman Empire from the Middle East.
All of these, masters,
slaves, merchants, planters, adventurers, the hopeful, the despaired, the
indentured, the castaways, and the refugees, brought with them to these islands
their concept of the divine. Their festivals provided a focal point for the
joining together, for the communing of the beliefs.
Spanish sailors and
adventurers, euphemistically called discoverers, explorers and conquistadors,
brought Christianity and western civilisation to this hemisphere at the start
of the 16th century, much to the detriment of the original inhabitants. The
Spaniards, possessed with an overwhelming verve to conquer new lands, were
acting in the spirit that had liberated their own land from the Moors, the
Islamic invaders of several centuries before. These men, clad in the iron
mantles of the chivalric orders, had fought a holy war on the Iberian
peninsula, so as to defend Christianity and western civilisation. The
overlooked irony was that ultimately both Christianity and Islam had a common
root in the antique Syriatic civilisations of the Middle East. Notwithstanding
the wholescale destruction of the civilisations of Central and South America,
and whatever may have existed on these islands, followed quickly upon the heels
of the newcomers. The tribal people experienced very much the same treatment
that had been meted out to the Moors in Spain. A combination of expulsion and
extermination. Later, with the sincere intervention of the Spanish priest Bartolomé
de las Casas, conversion became the “viable” alternative. In Trinidad, after
several wars that held the Spaniards at bay for more than a century, the
missionaries began to establish themselves. This in itself was not an easy
undertaking. There were revolts and massacres and eventually the mass suicide
of the remnant of the more militant tribal folk. The remainder tended to drift
into the mountains and coastlines of the mainland, and to vanish almost
completely. Some were brought together at various points. Arima, for example,
received the Amerindian populations of Arouca, Tacarigua and Tunapuna; Mission
(Princes Town) the populations of Oropouche, Tamana, the Naparimas, Mayo and
the Moruga coast. Thus pacified, the lively memories of their previous
existence spent in the ancient wilderness soon passed into dream, vaguely
maintained in customs, folk art and cuisine.
The process of
assimilating new religious themes and concepts superimposed itself upon the
collective memory of this remnant of our tribal people. By the 1770s, the
purity of their bloodlines was already being altered, mixed with the Spaniards
and the liberated mestizos. Mixed with the Africans who were slowly arriving,
the “zambos” were created.
But it was with an
economy that they, the remnant of the original people of this place, were to be
eventually named. They would become the cocoa panols. Catholic,
Spanish-speaking, with Spanish names, sometimes referred to as Carib, usually
called Spanish, they were responsible for the rebirth of the cocoa economy. Cocoa
truly belongs to them. Indigenous to these forests, it was a modest crop during
the 1770s, but it became significant one hundred years later, when after the
emancipation of the African slaves and the collapse of the first French planter
economy, cocoa was reintroduced and with the active help and in fact expertise
of this tribal, Christianised, mixed remnant that could be described as our
first indigenous peasant class.
They, together with the
French Creoles, created the cocoa economy, which produced wealth and a culture,
a way of life.
Deeply religious,
devoted to the many aspects of Catholicism, devotion to the sacred heart of
Jesus, to the blessed virgin, to Mary, to the saints of the Catholic calendar,
to the church as the central institution of life itself. A commitment to the
land, to the way of life that supports the maintenance and the improvement of
the land and its crops. The sacredness of family life as reflected in the holy
family and the value of community life expressed in mutual help and support.
The cocoa panols of
Trinidad maintain perhaps to the present traditions that include fold medicine,
folk art and cuisine and beliefs and customs that go back hundreds of years.
They have maintained religious customs and religious festivals unique to themselves.
Christmas in Trinidad
draws upon the cocoa panol culture for its uniqueness. It is in Trinidad as
well as down the main to Venezuela that parang as Christmas music is
maintained. The annual singing of the glorious mysteries of the birth of Our
Lord herald the beginning of the Christmas season. The musical instruments
themselves speak of the syncretic movement that produced these people. The
Spanish guitar, the more local cuatro, the Amerindian chac-chac, the gourd,
notched and scraped, the medieval mandolin, the magic violin, the one-stringed
box bass - all sing of the coming together of many cultures, of the endeavour
of many people.
Parang at Christmas
blends the sacredness of the memory of the word that was made flesh and dwelt
amongst us to the hospitality and generosity of family life. It brings in
communality, the joy of sharing food and drink and visiting, and gives meaning
to the giving of gifts with love. The cocoa panol culture brings to us its own
cuisine. From it come pastelles, pone and paymee. Out of country life comes
sorrel and ginger beer.
The cocoa panol culture
of Trinidad with its gentle simplicity is swiftly fading to become yet another
memory of the good old days. Parang is now electrified and no longer sings of
the visitation, the annunciation and the birth of the babe. It now booms into a
more profane night, creolised and "soca-ised", to the extent that no
one notices that the stars have vanished from our once innocent eyes.
Bartolomé de las
Casas (1474 - 1566)
The 'Apostle of the
Indians'
Born in Seville, Spain,
de las Casas sailed to the New World with Columbus' third voyage of 1498, where
he would have seen Trinidad as the first land after the crossing of the
Atlantic. In 1502, he went to Hispaniola as a planter. In 1510, he was ordained
as a priest. A year later, he accompanied the conquistador Diego Velásquez to
Cuba, assisted him in the pacification of the island and was rewarded by a
commandery of Amerindians. Soon, he gave up his own Amerindian slaves in a
desire to protect and defend the natives.
In 1515, de las Casas
went to Spain, where he urged Cardinal Ximenes to send a commission of inquiry
to the West Indies. He revisited Spain to secure stronger measures and to
finally prevent the extirpation of the natives. He proposed that the colonists should
be permitted to import African slaves, which was readily acceeded to. In those
times, Spain had no qualms about subjugating African peoples, seeing that they
had successfully rebuked Islam and the Moors from that continent to the south.
De las Casas also
attempted to Castilian peasants as colonists in a model settlement in
Veneuzela, but failed. From 1522 - 1530, he spent time in a convent in
Hispaniola. Again he visited Spain, and from there traveled as a missionary to
Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Guatemala. Upon his return, he devoted four years
to the cause of the Amerindians, writing his treaty "Veynte Razones"
and "Brevísima Relación de la destrucción de las Indias" (1552).
In 1544, he was
appointed bishop of Chiapa, where he was received with hostility from the
colonists. In 1547, he resigned his see and returned to Spain. He still
contended with the authorities in favour of the Amerindians until his death in
Madrid. His mst important work is the unfinished "Historia de las
Indias".
(from: Chambers
Biographical Dictionary)
