A Brief Overview of the History of Arima's Indigenous People

Maximilian C. Forte, 1998, 2001, 2006

I have not encountered a significant amount of material related specifically to Arima's pre-Columbian history. In the case of colonial history, much more is known. What I shall present is merely a brief summary that can help to guide readers toward an understanding of some of the background of the modern day Carib Community as presented on this website.

First of all, the most significant part of Arima's colonial Carib history is that the town itself emerged as a Catholic Mission town for Amerindians. Starting in 1786, Arima was to be the last surviving Mission town, according to most writers. Amerindians of various previous missions were gathered there in order to be placed under the supervision of a Catholic priest and to work in cultivating cocoa. The impetus to move Amerindians into Mission towns really gained momentum after the 1783 Cédula de población. That act established that French planters and their slaves, from other Caribbean islands, could come to settle in Trinidad as long as they were Roman Catholic--the intention being to convert Trinidad into a sugar-exporting colony, sugar being the most lucrative commodity at that time. In addition, cocoa itself had suffered a number of serious declines, not least of which was a major cocoa epidemic in 1725 that caused the virtual collapse of Trinidad's export base. Lands had to be cleared of their original inhabitants in order to make way for the new influx of planters setting up large plantations. Missions thus served both religious, political and economic purposes.

Most of the early Amerindian residents of the Arima Mission, relocated from the previous missions of San Agustín, Tacarigua and Arouca, were speakers of Nepuyo, classified by ethnolinguists as a branch of the mainland Cariban language family. There is little to indicate their chosen ethnic affiliation. With time, residents of the Mission were referred by those in authority first, generically, as "indio," and later "Carib."

By the end of the 1700s, the Amerindians in Arima were ostensibly converted to Roman Catholicism, and according to records cited by Father Harricharan, they even "clamoured" for, specifically, a Capuchin priest. Baptismal registers show that all the names of Indians were Spanish, many if not most surnames bearing religious meaning, the English translations being: Of the Cross, Of the Light, Of the Ascension, Of the Resurrection, Of the Kings, Baptist. First names were commonly Maria, Rosa, Juan, and Jose. I must also add that few of these names are prevalent among the modern day Arima Caribs, the dominant families in the organized Santa Rosa Carib Community bearing surnames such as Calderon, Torres, Lopez and Hernandez--the largest number of registered members being members or relatives of the Calderon family.

One of the dominant rituals to emerge in the Arima Mission was the Santa Rosa Festival. There has been some dispute as to how this festival, and the figure of St. Rose of Lima, came to dominate Arima's religious and cultural landscape. Among some members of the organized Santa Rosa Carib Community one can hear a legend of how St. Rose of Lima appeared to three male Carib hunters in the area of Arima now called Santa Rosa (Heights) and exhorted them to convert to Catholicism. A number of symbols and relics were generated by this event. Others go so far as to claim that St. Rose was actually born in Arima, which is not supported by any historical evidence and yet remains an important and inspiring myth for some Carib members and for some local song writers. Others claim that the "Cocoa Panyols" (mixed African, Amerindian Spanish cocoa estate labourers who immigrated from Venezuela) were responsible for bringing St. Rose to Arima, which is an assertion of fact that has found its way into Church hymns. The point here is that St. Rose emerges as a contested piece of religio-cultural property, a special emblem of whatever group (whether they be Caribs, general parishioners, or Dominican priests), in a society dominated by inter-ethnic competition and often invidious comparisons.

The meaning, message, and persona of St. Rose is contested by all the participants, whether it be the parish priest who likes to emphasize the fact that she was a member of the Dominican Order (like the priest himself) whose colours were black and white, or the Santa Rosa Carib Community which emphasizes her closeness to Amerindians in Peru and depicted her colour as being pink. This opposition is transformed into a juxtaposition of images of St. Rose herself, to be found on the grounds and inside the modern day Church of Santa Rosa de Arima: the Carib statue of St. Rose, held inside the church, showed her in a pink and black mantle and with a crown of flowers; the statues commissioned by the church, housed in its own little garden space, wears black and white, and banners of St. Rose hung in the church show her wearing a crown of thorns (sacrifice, mortification of the flesh, Christ-like), while the Carib Community always depicts her as only wearing a corona of roses (pink, white, yellow and red) as does the statue they carry in the main procession on the Festival Day.

Photograph on the left depicts the Church's own statue of St. Rose, in the "correct" colours of her Dominican Order. This statue resides outside and to the left of the Church, shown in the photograph to the right.


The Statue of St. Rose belonging to the Caribs' Santa Rosa Festival, carried in procession after the mass said for St. Rose in August of each year (this has recently been replaced by a plastic replica with different colouring).

Though they emphasize that they do in fact recognize that the Santa Rosa Festival is a Catholic feast, the leaders of the Carib Community feel that it is a tradition of special importance to the Caribs since for a long part of the Festival's history, from its inception, the Caribs were central to preparing for and participating in the Festival. This what we may call a tradition for the Amerindians, one seized upon by certain Carib leaders as a tradition that must so be maintained simply because it is one of their vehicles for communal cohesion and identity.

By the mid-1850s the Mission itself was undermined by British colonial policy. A prohibition against "outsiders" living in the Mission, put in place by Governor Ralph Woodford, clearly began to suffer disregard by this time. Baptismal registers show a huge influx of altogether new family names, and, given the racial designations of the baptized as noted by the priests in charge, most were not Carib and eventually most were not even Spanish. Also, new groups began to enter Arima from the 1840s onwards: both African and East Indian indentured workers and no more than a handful of Chinese immigrants. Lands began to be formally regulated and commoditized, with Carib descendants losing out in the process. Arima itself began to slowly "modernize" with a railway system in place by the end of the century. Cocoa and coffee continued to be economic mainstays of the area. By the 1880s, some local writers observed, the Santa Rosa Festival had largely ceased to possess any notable kind of Amerindian cultural input--some local historians even going as far as saying that no Amerindians remained at all. Writing in the 1990s, another local researcher has made the remark that by 1900 "not a single pure-blooded Amerindian existed"--a remark that is not only difficult to prove (indeed, no evidentiary basis is outlined to support that researcher's conclusion) but that is also posed in the unfortunate terminology of racialism. What is known is that as late as the 1870s, priests had specifically noted at least seven Amerindian individuals amongst those baptized--presumably, as has been the custom for far too long in Trinidad, the basis for their observation would have been the perceived phenotypic "purity" of the individuals they baptized. I would assume that these individuals would have lived until at least 1900.

By the 1960s, according to the current Carib leadership, the Santa Rosa Festival had gone into decline and disarray, the Carib community having seriously dwindled and apathy set in amongst the youths.

Much more in depth information is presented in Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs (University Press of Florida, 2005).