Trinidad was the first Caribbean island to be populated, having been settled by Amerindians from South America as early as 5000 BC. The first incomers were peaceful farmers and fishers who called their new home “Ieri”, the land of the hummingbird, but were joined after 1000 AD by more warlike tribes.
When Christopher Columbus “discovered” Trinidad in 1498, the Amerindian population of some 35,000 had created a structured society, with organized villages along the coastline presided over by caciques (chiefs) and a self-sufficient economy that exploited the abundant natural resources and extensive trade with the South American mainland. Sighting the three peaks of the Trinity Hills, Columbus named the island Trinidad, landing at Moruga on the south coast. Despite an initial skirmish with the local tribes, Columbus’s sailors considered them the friendliest in the Caribbean islands. This didn’t suit the Spanish slave traders who followed hot on Columbus’s heels; despite protests from Spanish priests such as Bartolomeo de las Casas, they exaggerated the Amerindians’ occasional ritual cannibalism to justify enslaving them.
The first permanent Spanish settlers came to Trinidad in 1592, establishing the small town of San José – present-day St Joseph – complete with governor’s residence, cabildo (council chamber) and church. Although this fledgling capital was sacked in 1595 by Sir Walter Raleigh as he headed for South America in search of El Dorado, it was quickly rebuilt, and the colony survived, despite its vulnerability to foreign attacks and pirate raids, growing tobacco and cocoa for export to Europe. In 1687, Capuchin monks arrived from Spain, setting up several missions around the island. Alongside the proselytizing, the missions were also a means to control the Amerindians through the encomienda labour system, a kind of semi-slavery in which they were forced to work on plantations and build more churches.
To evade this threat to their way of life, some Amerindians moved to the interior, while others fought back – in 1699, Amerindians in San Rafael rebelled against Spanish missionaries attempting to forcibly convert them and subject them to encomienda. Three priests and then-governor José de León y Echales were killed, and the reprisals were savage: Spanish troops slaughtered the region’s entire Amerindian population in what’s now known as the Arena Massacre. Amerindians were further threatened by European diseases to which they had no resistance, and by the end of the eighteenth century, some three centuries after Columbus’s arrival, the indigenous population had been all but wiped out.
Despite all the depredations they visited upon the Amerindians, the Spanish had neither the desire nor the resources to develop Trinidad, treating it as little more than a convenient watering-hole en route to the riches of South America. Their governors were left to do as they pleased – illegal trading of goods and slaves was commonplace – and due to its poor defences, the island suffered repeated attacks from French, Dutch and English pirates. When Don Pedro de la Moneda arrived from Spain to take up the governorship in 1757, he found his St Joseph residence practically in ruins, and decamped to Port of Spain.
The Banwari Trace archeological site, on the southern fringes of the Oropuche Lagoon in southwest Trinidad, can lay claim to being the oldest human settlement discovered anywhere in the Caribbean. The site is thought to have been occupied by the so-called Ortoiroid peoples (the name taken from the nearby Ortoire river) for two thousand years (between 5200 and 3200 BC). Excavations by members of the Trinidad & Tobago Historical Society in 1969 uncovered a huge array of artefacts buried in a midden that have provided valuable information on the migration patterns of Amerindians from the South American mainland to the Caribbean, as well shedding light on the lifestyle and diet of Trinidad’s First Peoples.
The most significant discovery was a human skeleton, known as Banwari Man, found lying just 20cm below the surface in the typical Amerindian crouched burial position, and estimated to be around 5000 years old; the remains are now kept at the Department of Life Sciences in the University of the West Indies’ St Augustine campus. Other artefacts unearthed in the midden include sharpened animal bones and bevelled peccary teeth thought to have been used as fish hooks or to tip hunting spears; conical pestles and grinding stones used for preparing plant-based foods; stone tools, from knives to scrapers; and a host of shells (shellfish having been a mainstay of the Ortoiroid diet).
Eventually, though, the Spanish realized that if they didn’t develop this neglected colony, somebody else would. Issued in 1783, the Cedula of Population was designed to encourage fellow Catholics – French planters suffering Protestant discrimination in British Grenada and Martinique – to settle in Trinidad; the amount of land they were allocated depended on the number of slaves they brought with them. Immigrants of mixed European/African race (termed “Free Coloured” by the Spanish) who brought slaves could also receive land (though only half as much as their white counterparts), thus opening the way for the development of a property-owning middle class of non-whites, whose ancestors still run much of Trinidad’s big business today.
To implement the Cedula, Spain despatched a new governor, José Maria Chacón, in 1784. The economy flourished under his energetic administration, and people of French and African descent came to dominate the population. The island’s culture also became increasingly French: it was during this period that Carnival was introduced, the French language created a local patois, and a society based on aristocratic principles of birth and connections developed.
As the repercussions of the French Revolution gave rise to civil and international wars throughout the West Indies, many more French – both republicans and royalists, white and mixed-race – sought refuge in neutral Trinidad, but to Chacón’s alarm, they brought their ideological conflicts with them. Increasingly anxious, the governor reported to Madrid that some of the newcomers’ radical ideas were encouraging the slaves to “dream of liberty and equality”.
Keen to augment their sizeable list of Caribbean colonies, the British seized upon the idea that Trinidad had become a nest of republicans and “bad people of all descriptions”, despatching an invasion fleet under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1797. The island had few defences: just five ships compared to the British force of eighteen, and only two thousand soldiers – many of whom had deserted – against seven thousand. The Spanish surrendered with hardly a shot fired, scuttling their own ships in Chaguaramas harbour, and Chacón was recalled to Spain in disgrace.
Abercromby’s terms of defeat were lenient – residents could retain their property and Spanish law would remain in force – but his choice of governor, Thomas Picton, was not. Left in charge with near absolute powers, Picton instituted a reign of terror, deporting and executing suspected subversives (mostly slaves and “Free Coloureds”) on the flimsiest evidence, with confessions frequently obtained under torture. Followers of African religious traditions were persecuted especially harshly; those suspected of practising obeah (see below) were hauled before a tribunal, and whipped, hanged, mutilated or burned to death if found guilty. By 1802, Picton’s activities had become an embarrassment to the British government, then facing an influential anti-slavery lobby at home, and he was demoted.
Trinidad presented a unique administrative conundrum for the British, however. Their other Caribbean possessions were governed by colonial assemblies, but this wasn’t an option for Trinidad – any such body would inevitably be dominated by planters, who would never agree to share power with “Free Coloureds”, despite the fact that many of the latter were substantial property owners and thus difficult to exclude from government under British law. The island therefore remained a Crown colony, governed by French and Spanish law, with directions issued straight from the colonial office in London.
A retention of African animist traditions, obeah (from the Ashanti obayfoi, meaning witchcraft or magic) is the belief in a spiritual power that can influence events in the temporal world, curing disease, providing good fortune or wreaking revenge. Though dismissed by most as mumbo-jumbo, obeah still lingers on in Trinidad and Tobago via common superstitions and practices passed down over the generations. In rural areas, you’ll often see blue bottles placed over front doors or in gardens to ward off the evil spirits known as jumbies or protect against the evil eye or maljo (mal yeux), and there are still those who enlist the services of an obeah man (or woman), also known as an ojhaman or seer-man in the Indian community, usually a respected figure dispensing herbal medicines rather than a sinister character cooking up bubbling potions under a full moon. During the plantation era, every slave community had a herbalist who doled out concoctions for all kinds of ailments, and elements of these traditions remain strong in Trinbagonian attitudes to health. As spiritual and physical problems are seen as being connected, practitioners might prescribe plants, herbs, roots and barks alongside shop-bought substances such as red lavender to be infused into the skin through a bush bath, said to get rid of “blight” or maljo or turn around a run of bad luck; or advise an internal cleanse and purge by way of a dose of cooling herbs such as wild senna, caraili, mauby or pawpaw bark, followed by a cleansing dose of aloes or castor oil. Less commonly (as such practices are illegal in Trinidad and Tobago), special circumstances such as a case of unrequited love or a feud may see an obeah practitioner paid to invoke or dispel a curse, which is done through a ritual to bring on the desired effect – called “working obeah” – that is reversible only by a more powerful practitioner.
Though life for the slaves on Trinidad and Tobago’s estates was no less brutal than in any of the British colonies, the islands never developed into the full-blown plantation societies of Jamaica or Barbados. Rather than the massive estates established elsewhere, plantations in T&T were relatively small-scale, and the British touted Trinidad as a “model” colony thanks to the introduction of a few tentative measures that attempted to curb the worst of the planters’ abuses. Nonetheless, it was a miserable life for the Africans, who resisted by organizing secret societies with their own militias and carrying out several rebellions.
The British abolished the slave trade in 1807, though this meant nothing to those still toiling on T&T’s estates; and even after the Act of Emancipation in 1834, freed Africans were required to serve as apprentices for a further six years. When the apprenticeship system was abolished in 1838, many former slaves moved to urban areas, leaving the planters desperately short of labour, and the British government sanctioned the immigration of indentured labourers from India as a means of easing the situation on the estates. In May 1845, the first 225 workers arrived aboard the Fatel Rozack; by 1917, when the indenture system ended, some 145,000 Indians, mainly from Calcutta, had come to T&T. Fleeing poverty and the increasingly harsh British rule, the immigrants were signed up to work for five years in return for their passage home. (In 1854 the indenture was extended to ten years, and after 1895 the immigrants had to pay a proportion of their return passage.)
Though indentureship was better regulated and monitored than slavery, the working and living conditions of labourers and slaves were practically indistinguishable. Indentured workers lived in unsanitary single-room barrack houses where disease was rife, and plantation owners failed to honour pledges on wages and working conditions. Nonetheless, many stayed on at the end of their indentureship, accepting land in lieu of a passage home. Known then and today as “East Indians” to differentiate them from the “West Indians”, they formed the lowest rung of society, working in the agricultural sector scorned by ex-slaves and establishing tight-knit communities that maintained the religious and cultural traditions of their homeland (much to the resentment of the African population, whose ancestors had been afforded no such indulgence). The white ruling class, however, painted the Indians as heathens and barbarians – in 1884, 22 Indians were shot dead by police and hundreds wounded as they tried to enter San Fernando during the annual Hosay festival parade, while East Indian children were considered illegitimate until 1945 as Muslim and Hindu marriages were not recognized.
Despite this persecution, Indian immigrants contributed greatly to Trinidad’s developing national identity. Just as the Europeans had brought Carnival, which was taken up and enriched by former slaves, Indians introduced their own festivities and culture. Muslims introduced Hosay, Hindus brought the festival of light, Divali, while Indian foods such as roti and curry have become staples for all Trinbagonians.
Trinidad and Tobago’s ethnic mix was further enriched by immigrants arriving from other parts of the world. Several companies of black American soldiers who fought for Britain in its 1812 war against the US were given grants of land in southern Trinidad, where they founded villages named after the units in which they had served while, after emancipation, freed slaves from other Caribbean islands were attracted to Trinidad by the relatively high wages for labourers. Africans liberated by the British Navy on anti-slave patrols settled in urban areas, becoming craftsmen and construction workers and establishing strong communities that maintained their own cultural institutions and heritage. The first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1853 as part of another attempt by the government to meet the continuing labour shortage on the plantations. The plan failed on account of the high transport costs and an appalling mortality rate among the immigrants; those who survived tended to become shopkeepers, and their descendants constitute a small but visible minority today. Portuguese labourers were also brought to the country in the mid-1800s, but the practice was short-lived as the employment of Europeans in manual work was seen as a threat to the established racial hierarchy.
The stuff of many a spooky tale, as well as a good few vintage calypso tunes, jumbies – the local name for ghosts – are still very much part of the folklore of Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean. The characters below represent some of the most enduring characters.
Douens The malevolent spirits of unbaptized children, these sinister genderless waifs have backward-facing feet and hide their featureless faces beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. They lurk in places where real children play; superstitious parents never call their child’s name in the open, lest the douens remember it and lure the child away.
La Diablesse An attractive female devil, La Diablesse wears the floppy hat and flowing gown of French colonial times, and lures men deep into the forest, never to return. At fetes, her frenzied dancing outshines the other women and attracts the men. The only way to distinguish her is by her feet; one is normal, the other a cloven hoof.
La Gahou Also known as lugarhoo, this spirit feeds on fresh blood. Iron chains slung about its body rattle and drag along the ground, and its sheaf of sticks functions as a whip; it can alter its form (usually becoming a jackass or dog) as well as changing size from minute to monstrous. A pair of scissors opened to resemble a cross and a Bible placed at the head of the bed are said to force the beast to revert to its human form.
Mama D’Leau Spirit and protector of rivers and lakes, Mama D’Leau sits naked at the edge of rivers, incessantly combing her long hair. Beneath the water, she has the lower body of a snake, which she uses to pull passing men to a watery death.
Papa Bois Tall and strong, his hair entwined with leaves, Papa Bois is guardian of forest trees, birds and animals. He imitates animal calls, leading hunters deep into the bush to become hopelessly lost.
Soucouyant This female vampire lives in villages as a reclusive old woman. At night, she sheds her skin to travel the country in the form of a ball of fire searching for victims, her skin kept in an overturned mortar bowl until her return at daybreak. She can only be stopped by dousing the skin in salt, which prevents her from re-entering it, or dropping piles of rice in homes and at crossroads; she is compelled to pick each pile up one by one until sunrise brings about her discovery.
Except for a handful of Jews who arrived during World War II, the last group of immigrants to join Trinidad’s melting pot were the Syrians who came in 1913, seeking refuge from religious persecution in the Lebanon. Though they only account for 0.1 percent of the country’s population, their business acumen has given them a high profile, and they remain a tight-knit and influential community today.
Centred upon the acceptance of a synthesis between the spiritual and temporal worlds, and the belief in spirits or gods which organize and animate the material world, T&T’s African-based religions combine Christianity with elements of traditional West African belief systems brought to the island by enslaved peoples.
The most visible sect is the Spiritual Baptist faith, which was established in the late nineteenth century by American ex-slaves who had fought for the British in the War of 1812. Then known as Shouter Baptists thanks to their propensity for loud and demonstrative worship, the sect was frowned upon by the British, who banned membership through the Shouters Prohibition Ordinance of 1917. Years of campaigning finally saw the law repealed in 1951, an act that’s commemorated in the Shouter Baptist Liberation national holiday on March 30.
A well-organized faith, Spiritual Baptists have churches throughout Trinidad and Tobago which, as well as the usual pews and altar, feature a centre pole decorated with flowers, jugs of water and candles to harness and attract the spirits. Services usually involve purification rituals designed to cast out jumbies (evil spirits;) that might be lurking in the church: lighted candles are placed in front of doors and windows, incense is lit, brass bells are rung and perfumed water strewn about. Bible readings precede chants and handclapping, which intensify as a kind of hyperventilation known as adoption brings about spirit possession, accompanied by bell-ringing and chanting called trumpeting the spirit, the origin of the “shouter” tag. Those who “catch the power” may gesticulate, speak in tongues or relay the spirit’s message in plain English. The characteristic white robes and colourful headwraps worn by followers (which signify their dedication to a particular saint or spirit) are a notable part of the Trinbago Sunday scenery; you may also see outdoor baptisms, where white-clad converts are ritually dipped into rivers or the sea.
A Yoruba religion driven underground during British rule, Orisha (also Orisa or Shango) centres upon worship of several deities – orishas – who are seen to have a distinct influence upon the living and must therefore be (depending on the situation) respected, pacified, praised, worshipped or feared through ritual dances, chants, drumbeats, offerings and prayer. Each orisha’s personality is described in stories that reveal their activities on earth, with each assigned an individual drumbeat, colour, day of the week, favourite food and liquor, sacrificial animal (usually a chicken or goat) and an association with a Christian saint; this last tradition allowed Orisha to be syncretized with Christian festivals when the faith was outlawed. Orisha worship takes place in a palais, usually an open-roofed structure decorated with the symbols of individual orishas – daggers, cutlasses, hammers, jugs of water and ritual items such as olive oil for anointing, and offerings of flowers, fruit and foods. Known as feasts, most ceremonies take place over several days, and begin with the specialized drum patterns that summon the deities. Drumming, dancing, chanting and hyperventilation encourage possession of devotees by various orishas, while food or rum may be offered to honour the spirits that descend.
Trinidadian society remained deeply stratified along race and class lines for most of the nineteenth century, with white planters firmly at the top of the heap, but in the 1880s and 1890s, reform movements began to challenge the status quo. An improved national education system and an enlarged franchise inspired the formation of political pressure groups linked to the international labour movement, from the Trinidad Workingmen’s Association (TWA) and East Indian National Association to the Pan African Association, which lobbied the British Colonial Office for an elected governing body for the island.
In 1899, Britain made ailing Tobago a ward of Trinidad, though the latter still had no effective form of self-government (for more on the history of Tobago, see chapter 5). Resentment came to a head over the introduction of new water rates, and in 1903 a protest meeting in Port of Spain’s Woodford Square erupted into a riot. Eighteen people were shot dead by the police, and the Red House – seat of the colonial government – was burned to the ground. Although Britain finally agreed to an elected assembly for Trinidad and Tobago in 1913 (albeit one with very limited powers), it was still more than ten years before the first Legislative Council convened in the rebuilt Red House.
Trinidad’s burgeoning oil industry and the aftermath of World War I further politicized the populace. High inflation led to strikes, resulting in increased cooperation between Africans and Indians, while fuel was added to the fire by Trinidadian soldiers who returned from the Great War with stories of discrimination at the hands of the British. The tide had finally turned, with socialism, national independence and the concept of black consciousness, as promoted by Jamaica’s Marcus Garvey, now firmly planted in the public mind. In 1925, TWA president Arthur Cipriani was elected to the new legislative council, campaigning hard for workers’ rights and securing some important concessions, including compensation for industrial injuries. His reformist politics had little effect on the underlying balance of power, however; wages were actually falling, malnutrition was widespread, living conditions grim and industrial accidents appallingly common. As the world economy nosedived into the Great Depression of the 1930s, Cipriani found himself outflanked by a new generation of radicals such as the charismatic Uriah Butler, who formed the British Empire Workers trade union in 1935.
During World War II, Trinidad’s socioeconomic character was altered radically by the presence of the US military, who leased Chaguaramas, the Bocas Islands and Waller Field in 1941 to provide a strategic base for their Caribbean fleet. The Americans improved Trinidad’s infrastructure and exposed the population to high-level technology for the first time, while the high wages paid for the construction of buildings and roads lured workers from the agricultural sector and led to the decline of many estates. The Americans’ racial attitudes, cruder than the more subtle prejudice of the British, and the aura of easy money that attracted many Trinidadian women, caused plenty of resentment, however, and further increased the desire for independence.
Universal suffrage was granted in 1945, and the 1946 and 1950 elections were won by political parties linked to the trade unions, but Britain was not prepared to hand over total control while radical labour politics dominated the political arena. In January 1956, a group of black intellectuals formed the People’s National Movement (PNM) under the leadership of Oxford-educated historian Dr Eric Williams. The party’s black nationalist policies and the charismatic leadership and immense intellectual authority of “the Doctor” gained widespread support among a population tired of colonial government and the divisions within the labour movement; their only serious opposition was from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), later the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) supported primarily by rural Hindus. After a controversial campaign that raised racial tension by portraying the PDP as reactionary Hindus, the PNM won a tentative victory in the 1956 election; they were to remain in power for the next thirty years, with Williams as prime minister until his death in 1981.
Many Caribbean leaders saw West Indian confederacy as the way forward for the region’s tiny territories, and initially Williams was an enthusiastic proponent of the idea. In 1958, the West Indies Federation was launched at Chaguaramas, but political rivalries and the reluctance of larger islands to subsidize smaller ones resulted in a watered-down Federation with no tax-raising powers. When Jamaica voted to leave in September 1961, Williams announced that “one from ten leaves nought”; Trinidad followed suit, and the Federation was swiftly dissolved.
The early 1960s saw the PNM adopting a radical stance, booting out the US military in 1961 and campaigning vigorously for independence, while politics split further along racial lines, with government the preserve of Afro-Caribbeans, and opposition that of East Indians. After Independence was finally granted in 1962, things further degenerated when the PNM created a new constitution without consulting the DLP. Autonomy from the “motherland” had done little to change the colonial structure of T&T’s society, and the electorate became increasingly disenchanted with their new-found “freedom”.
The late 1960s were marked by repeated unrest. The American Black Power movement caught the imagination of many disaffected young men and women, and in 1970 its supporters launched a wave of marches, protests and wildcat strikes that shook Trinidad to the core. Businesses and banks were bombed, and when the police shot dead a protester named Basil Davis in April 1970, 30,000 people took to the streets for his funeral. Facing a possible general strike, Eric Williams declared a state of emergency and arrested several Black Power leaders, only to be faced by an army mutiny at the Teteron base in Chaguaramas, staged by officers outraged at government heavy-handedness. It was only quashed when coastguard vessels prevented the soldiers from marching on Port of Spain by shelling the main road; rumours abounded that a bloody coup had been averted and plans had been discovered for mass executions of “enemies of the people”.
The Black Power crisis proved cathartic. Many whites had fled the country; those who remained could no longer expect the deference to which they had been accustomed, while the government encouraged locals to be trained for jobs previously occupied by expatriates. The country was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, with the PNM remaining in office primarily thanks to divisions in the opposition. “We are winning by default,” PNM minister Hector McLean observed dryly. But salvation was ahead in the form of oil. Just as the world was sliding into the oil crisis of 1973–74, vast reserves were discovered off Trinidad’s east coast, and T&T found itself swimming in money overnight. Ambitious public projects were undertaken and the country settled back to enjoy the boom years. But this sudden wealth had its downside as people got used to the easy life: productivity fell and agriculture dwindled, while corruption thrived.
When oil prices fell in the 1980s, the economy went into recession, unemployment rose sharply and inflation soared. In 1981, Williams died a disillusioned man with his policies in ruins; his former finance minister George Chambers took over the reins. As the population became increasingly dissatisfied, the opposition parties started to unify. In 1986, the PNM was ousted by the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), led by A.N.R. Robinson, who had resigned from Williams’ government in 1970 following the Basil Davis debacle. The NAR tried to resolve some of the more pressing problems facing the country, but within a year the government was breaking up into factions. Harsh economic measures, including devaluation of the TT dollar and a stringent IMF-inspired recovery programme, were widely seen as undemocratic and beneficial only to the rich. In 1990, the radical Muslim group Jamaat-al-Muslimeen attempted to overthrow the government, holding Robinson and several of his cabinet hostage. Though the coup was crushed after a six-day siege, the government’s authority was irreparably undermined, and the following year the PNM returned to power under Patrick Manning.
In the early 1990s increased oil revenues during the Gulf War helped the PNM stabilize the economy and pay off the IMF, but the 1995 election split the country down the middle, with the PNM and the Indo-Trinidadian United National Congress (UNC) both winning seventeen seats. The two NAR representatives held the balance of power, and used it to support the UNC, making lawyer and former union leader Basdeo Panday the country’s first East Indian prime minister. Although the 2000 election returned the UNC to power with nineteen seats, Panday’s government lasted just ten months; in October 2001, three UNC MPs defected to the opposition, and with their majority removed, the UNC were forced to call an election. Another hung parliament ensued, with both the PNM and UNC returning 18 of the 36 total seats each. Though the UNC won more votes, President A.N.R. Robinson appointed Patrick Manning as leader, but with no clear mandate to govern Manning called another election; in October 2002, he returned to office with a decisive majority.
In 2006, the political waters were muddied by the formation of a new party, the Congress of the People (COP), fronted by former UNC leader Winston Dookeran and representing the first credible alternative to the two-party dominance of the UNC and PNM since the ill-fated NAR. Both the COP and the UNC did moderately well in the 2007 elections, but this new split in the opposition allowed the PNM to limp to victory with just 46 percent of the vote. Though the COP didn’t gain any parliamentary seats, the party soldiered on, scoring many points among Trinbagonians for its efforts to distance itself from the race-based voting of the past (with Indians traditionally siding with the UNC and black Trinbagonians with the PNM). The UNC, meanwhile, struggled under the increasingly erratic reins of Basdeo Panday, and internal elections in early 2010 saw him replaced by Kamla Persad-Bissessar as UNC leader, marking the end of Panday’s 33-year political career and an era in Trinidadian politics.
Patrick Manning, too, was coming under fire both for his increasingly dictatorial style of leadership and for the PNM’s culpability in the scandal surrounding the state-owned Urban Development Company of Trinidad and Tobago (UDeCOTT). The PNM pumped millions of dollars into ever more lavish UDeCOTT projects, including Port of Spain’s waterfront complex and the National Academy of the Performing Arts, but in March 2010 executive chairman Calder Hart resigned after it was revealed that lucrative contracts had been given to a company owned by his wife’s family. The entire board were fired the following month in the wake of a Commission of Enquiry report that pointed to irregularities in numerous projects, from the TT$700 million Brian Lara Stadium in Tarouba to the TT$368 million Ministry of Legal Affairs Tower in Port of Spain. Reeling from the effects of the scandal, Manning called an early election in May 2010, with detractors arguing that he was going to the polls only to avoid an imminent vote of no confidence. The opposition were finally able to unite under the banner of the People’s Partnership (PP), with Persad-Bissessar as their candidate for Prime Minister.
A landslide victory for the PP ensued, making Kamla Persad-Bissessar the republic’s first female Prime Minister. She sought to distance the new coalition administration from the despotic ruling style of Manning’s PNM, creating a Ministry of the People to allow public grievances to be aired and announcing a raft of policies that included an assault on poor environmental practices and a rethink of water resource management. However, despite an election campaign that championed zero tolerance on corruption, the PP came under fire early on thanks to a perceived conflict of interest concerning Austin “Jack” Warner, appointed by Persad-Bissessar as Minster of Works and Transport while holding the post of Vice-President of FIFA. By 2011, allegations of ongoing corruption saw Warner resign from his FIFA position, and by 2013 he had also fallen foul of the PP, leaving to form his own political party, the Independent Liberals. In May 2015 he was indicted by the US Department of Justice, accused of wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering, though legal challenges mean he hadn’t yet been extradited for trial at the time of writing.
The PNM, meanwhile, were left in disarray by the PP’s victory. Vilified by his party for having lost the election and the ongoing corruption scandals, Patrick Manning resigned as PNM leader and was replaced by his arch-rival, Keith Rowley. Though Persad-Bissesar remained in power for a full five-year term, her administration was no less bedevilled by allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement, and the 2015 general election saw the PP roundly beaten by Keith Rowley’s PNM.
One of the most pressing problems facing Trinidad and Tobago is crime, particularly the kidnapping of high-profile businesspeople and the violent fallout from Trinidad’s uneasy status as one of the Caribbean’s main transhipment points for South American cocaine. Until the 1970s, the country was relatively free of violent crime; today, it’s a rather different picture. In 2000, 119 murders were reported in T&T; today, the figure averages at around 500 per year. Patrick Manning’s PNM government unleashed various initiatives, including a series of cripplingly expensive airships equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance gear that patrolled the skies above (and waters around) Trinidad, while the PP imposed a three-month state of emergency in 2011 to try and tackle the problem, but such initiatives have had little long-term effect, and crime remains one of the main challenges facing each successive administration.
Another matter of pressing concern is corruption, with financial scandals hitting the headlines with depressing regularity. The People’s Partnership were inevitably tainted by Jack Warner’s spectacular fall from FIFA grace, while Rowley’s PNM administration have been no less immune to allegations of corruption: detractors pointing to wanton expenses claims from several PNM ministers as well as conflicts of interest concerning the acquisition of new vessels for T&T’s ailing inter-island ferry service and in regard to construction firms appointed for new roadbuilding projects.
On a more positive note, Trinidad and Tobago continue to enjoy the status of having the most stable economy in the Caribbean thanks to the republic’s reserves of oil and natural gas, which account for around forty percent of GDP and eighty percent of exports, and provided something of a buffer from the global economic downturn; equally, T&T’s external debt is relatively insignificant compared to other Caribbean nations. The income generated from oil and gas is increasingly being used to develop other sectors, including manufacturing, finance, services and tourism, though as reserves are being fast depleted – it’s widely agreed that they’ll be exhausted within twenty years – there is a real need to diversify the economy. And despite its natural riches, T&T remains a very polarized nation, where high-tech malls co-exist with board shacks where inhabitants live without electricity or running water, and where political loyalties are still very much divided according to ethnicity. Such inequality and racial division has created an uneasy tension in this country of extremes.