TRINIDAD,PROVINCIADEVENEZUELA?
IS TRINIDAD a province of Venezuela? It was for a long time.
The excellent book by Trinidad and Tobago's own Dr Jesse Noel entitled Trinidad, Provincia de Venezuela,
published in 1972, tells the full story with academic integrity and flair. The island province of Trinidad was created in 1525 as part of the Spanish Empire. It was colonised by its first Spanish governor between 1529 and 1535. Its capital was San José de Oruña (known today as St Joseph). Subsequently, there were many administrative changes (too lengthy to relate here) until the province of Trinidad was re-established in 1731, and the island was then governed directly from Caracas until the British occupation of 1797. Even after the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 that recognised Trinidad as a British colony, it was governed for several decades under existing Spanish law. What was once a province of Venezuela, governed from Caracas, is today the Republic of T&T. Let us not forget our history. It can tell us a great deal about our present course and maybe our future.
From my home in Port of Spain on a clear day I can see the coast of eastern Venezuela. So too can many Trinidadians who live on the west coast of this island. Venezuela is seven miles away from our last offshore island Chacachacare, and one hour by boat. It is much closer to Port of Spain than is Tobago. Residents of the coastal agricultural and fishing village of Macuro in the Venezuelan state of Sucre, see the city lights of metropolitan Port of Spain, with its shopping and entertainment complexes, as a major attraction. It has always been their city as well.
Macuro is a long way from nowhere in Venezuela. It is on the tip of the Paria peninsula that stretches out almost to Trinidad. It can be reached by a two-and-a-half-hour boat ride from Guiria, a town deeper into the shores of the peninsula. To leave Macuro, one must take the boat back to Guiria. Venezuelan cities like Porlamar on Isla Margarita, and Puerto la Cruz in the northern part of the Peninsula, as well as Maturin, the capital of the state of Monagas, are distant places. Caracas could as well be on another planet. Residents of Macuro and Guiria cannot see those cities. Port of Spain is what they see and know and that is where they are accustomed going.
Close cousins
Of all the states in eastern Venezuela, the coastal communities of Sucre are closest to Trinidad both in geography and culture. The carnivals of Carupano (on the Caribbean coast) and Guiria are home to steelbands, calypso tents, and soca fetes. In addition to baseball and football, some residents also play a hybrid version of cricket called 'batinball'. In years past, the residents of those towns listened to Radio Trinidad or 610 Radio from Port of Spain, and they watched TTT. Many speak Trini accented English because of parental heritage. Links with Trinidad have been strong for many generations. There are relatives on both sides of the Gulf of Paria. We are siblings and close cousins, not distant strangers.
For many decades (absent a few occasions when there were fishing or maritime disputes) the citizens of T&T and Venezuela could move freely between both countries. No visas were required. Families from Guiria and Carupano would take a boat ride for a weekend to see some movies in cinemas such as Roxy and De Luxe, or fete in T&T's pre-Carnival or listen and dance to paranda (parang) at Christmas time. The Christmas parang season is a cultural asset that Trinidadians and Venezuelans still share enthusiastically. Those families from towns such as Tucupita and Pedernales in Delta Amacuro, or El Tigre in the state of Anzoátegui, had at least a fourhour trip by boat or ferry to shop in Cedros, Chaguanas and San Fernando. At one time there was a regular ship service between Trinidad and Ciudad Bolivar (known then as Angostura) on the Orinoco Delta. Ordinary folk on the Venezuelan side of the Gulf of Paria could have their cake and eat it too: live in Venezuela but shop and party in any place in Trinidad.
'I is not a Spanish!'
From the 1920s through the 1990s young Venezuelans, some with Trinidadian heritage, attended St Mary's College, Fatima College, St Joseph's Convent, or other Catholic private schools in Trinidad. They studied English in Port of Spain or San Fernando. Until about 1960 it was not unusual to hear Spanish and French Patois spoken in downtown Port of Spain, Arima, Santa Cruz, or San Fernando. Venezuelans with work permits were employed here. In the 1930s many of our Trini fathers went to Venezuela to work in the oilfields of Maracaibo. They made money and returned to Trinidad, no doubt leaving behind some Trini-Venezuelan children that many of us may have never met.
In Trinidad during those decades Venezuelans were regarded as people from the Main (aka South American Mainland), or as 'Payols' (abbreviation of español). During the 1950s the two cultures were complementary. Trinis danced to Latin music. The big Latin orchestras in Trinidad were 'Pal' Joey Lewis (from PoS) and the Dutchy Brothers (from San Fernando). Imbued with the Latin culture, some Trinis overshot the runway by trying to put Spanish hybrid endings to English words (roughly similar to the youngsters today trying to sound Jamaican).
I recall that a group of us were liming outside Fatima College after classes one day when a somewhat plain looking young lady with a lot of bravado brushed past us on the sidewalk. In an unkind moment, one of the lads said to the young lady 'Hello UGLITA' attempting to put the best spin on a yet-to-bud beauty. Furious, she turned to him and said: 'Mister, why you call me that for? I is not a Spanish!'
The movement back and forth accelerated during the 1960s through the 1990s. Before Miami became fashionable, some Trinidadians adopted Caracas (a one-hour flight) as our larger twin city. They sought surgical procedures, not available at the time in Trinidad, at the Military Hospital in Caracas. We also did in Caracas what eastern Venezuelans did in PoS. We limed, and we shopped till we dropped-at least our spouses did! The Caracas Hilton and other hotels were invariably staffed for the benefit of English-speaking guests, by Venezuelans who spoke English with heavy Trinidadian accents.
Shared interests
As recently as 1970, when T&T was having its first baptism of fire as an independent nation under threat of a military coup, a Venezuelan naval warship was stationed in the Gran Boca, ready to assist the government of T&T. I was at an academic conference at Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas when an admiral in the Venezuelan navy called me aside at the coffee break and, drawing reference to the events in T&T, told me in very precise language: 'Mira estimado profesor, Trinidad es nuestra. (Trinidad is ours).' The message was clear and direct. The Venezuelan government would never allow Trinidad to fall into the hands of any group that it considered as a threat to Venezuela. I have never forgotten that. Being aware of the realpolitik of a neighbour of 34 million persons today, seven miles away, with shared economic and natural resource interests, has always been an understated lynchpin of T&T's regional foreign policy.
During 2020, the media headlines in T&T were obsessed about the overwhelming crush of Venezuelan economic refugees entering this small country. T&T, Curacao, and Aruba were their preferred destinations. Incidentally, these are all oil producing and refining countries considered to be wealthy by Caribbean standards. The T&T government has so far given legal status to
16,000. There are perhaps another 20,000 who are non-registered in the informal economy who hope to be legalised one day. The legal status in practical terms means freedom to work, to have access to free health care in public institutions, some emergency assistance, and recourse to the caring umbrella of charitable NGOs. Consider that, if T&T were not an oil rich province as it has been for more than 110 years, with some monetary reserves that could help to support the economic refugees from a neighbour, how much more intense would the human tragedy be?
The cruel irony is that today, Venezuelan souls are lost taking that familiar boat ride from Guiria to a former Venezuelan province called Trinidad, but frequently in the pirogues of human traffickers. The government and people of Trinidad and Tobago are battling Covid-19, but in doing the right thing to help mitigate the temporary economic distress of our siblings and cousins across the Gulf of Paria, are severely criticised. Indeed, we the Trinbagonian people are shamed publicly, in the international media and in some global forums, by the opponents of the current Venezuelan regime. It is a cruel game of political chess that, in the realm of big power rivalry, is also calculated to divide our Caribbean countries.
Venezuela is still experiencing sanctions placed on the Maduro regime by punitive global powers. Venezuela's distressed economy is also in part the victim of some nebulous economic theology called '21st Century Socialism' that came to occupy a void somewhere between Simón Bolívar and Santa Claus! The Chavista economic programmes did lift some groups out of poverty, but the price of Venezuelan largesse was just too high. It was also bad management in which politics always trumped economics (pun intended).
Harnessing Venezuelan skills
In February 2021, persons still want to move back and forth legally, but circumstances have changed. Visas are required, and T&T's borders are still closed to battle the Covid-19 pandemic, and to restrain the disciples of Venezuelan gangs that seek to develop a foothold in this former province of Venezuela.
Today, many Venezuelans are fleeing economic hardships. But let us be clear. A majority intend to return to Venezuela. As Venezuela's economy improves people will go back home. (Forget the politics for the moment-that is for the Venezuelan people themselves to resolve as they always have, without our help). Some will stay in T&T because they have built careers and raised families here. That has happened with many generations past. We should hope that some of the young ones will stay, and together with our T&T young and talented, help us to reinvent our aging and low-birth-rate nation. T&T will soon be a digitised economy driven by artificial intelligence.
We need 21st century skills. Have we created a skills bank profiling the Venezuelans that are legally here? Are we just going to condemn them to low wage service occupations instead of realising that there are medical personnel, engineers, and other technical skills among the group? Can we encourage initiatives that require their skills, or even when they return home the ability to work in this digital age for Trinbago enterprises from Guiria-as easily as from Barataria or Couva? If not, I suspect that they will continue to regard Trinidad as just another former Venezuelan province--a place to shop, party and go back home to the Mainland. But things change.
Dr Anthony T Bryan is professor emeritus of International Relations at The UWI, St Augustine.
Map of Eastern Venezuela facing Trinidad.
For many decades ...the citizens of T&T and Venezuela could move freely between both countries.
