A Photographic Genealogy of Arima's Carib Community

INTRODUCTION & CAUTIONS
The purpose of this page is to illustrate some of the main extended family lines that constitute Arima's Santa Rosa Carib Community. Visitors to this page, especially Trinidadians investigating their Amerindian ancestry, should not assume from the names and photographs presented here that if they do not look like these people, or are not related to these families, that they therefore have no Amerindian ancestry. This is only a select group of families, in one of Trinidad's 16 ex-mission towns. What is unique about this group of people is that, thus far, they have been the only ones to organize themselves into a formal organization.

These photographs are from a very special collection that is held at the Santa Rosa Carib Community Centre. They were made available for digitization, and thus preservation, by Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez, the head of the community. These images may be used, with permission of the Carib Community. In most cases, the images have been electronically restored, given their somewhat decayed state in the photo albums. Note the effort that was taken by leaders in the community, from very early on, to make and preserve a visual record of the membership of the community through time. In some cases, representatives of five generations of Carib Community members are shown.

The Santa Rosa Carib Community is primarily constituted by four main clans, together forming a phratry. This phratry is composed of a number of clans made up from lineages such as the Lopez, Campo, Hernandez and Calderon lineages. While all of the constituent parts of the phratry claim descent from residents of the Mission of Santa Rosa de Arima, usually through intermarriage (formal or otherwise) between Venezuelan Amerindian and mestizo immigrants arriving from the late 1700s

through the 1800s and residents of the mission, the Lopez lineage can formally demonstrate direct descent from the last recorded "King" of the Caribs, himself a resident of the mission. More of this information will be presented on the pages that follow. All member families of the Santa Rosa Carib Community are, in turn, married to the Lopez family. In terms of numbers, the Calderon and Hernandez lineages, whose members frequently intermarry, are the two dominant lineages. The current president of the community is himself a descendant of both Hernandez and Calderon lineages. The overwhelming majority of current and past members of this community are and were related by ties of blood or marriage.

Please be aware that much of the documentation on genealogical relationships in the Carib Community is still in process, and only a partial selection is provided on these pages. In addition, only an incomplete picture of the total membership of the Carib Community is provided here. Many prominent individuals in the history of the community, from equally prominent families, such as Boneo, Werges, Garcia, Martinez and Adonis, are absent for now. Nothing is intended by their apparent, temporary, exclusion. The digitization and restoration of the photos was conducted by anthropologist Maximilian Forte over a two year period. Information such as the names and captions to be found with the photos was often provided by Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez, along with the actual photos. Other information that is presented was found by Forte in baptismal registers for Arima, the archives of the Archbishop in Port of Spain, and in published historical accounts. You can contact Maximilian Forte by email (please do not alter the subject heading that appears when you click that link). In the future, we plan to provide a searchable, online, genealogical database consisting of the data on births and baptisms from the missions.