By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 06, 2024
If you are travelling from Port of Spain to Arima and pass through Tacarigua and make a left turn onto Richard Street, you would be heading to the Northern Range. It will take you to a semi-urban community, Paradise Gardens, that sits at the base of that magnificent mountain. Sometimes its serenity feels like paradise as the soft, refreshing breezes that caress the community.
Continue reading Living and dying on a river bank
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 11, 2023
In 2013 the people of Tacarigua waged a valiant struggle to prevent the UNC government from establishing a sporting complex on the Orange Grove Savannah, now called the Eddie Hart Savannah. The plan, developed by Sport Company of Trinidad and Tobago (SporTT), a limited liability the Ministry of Sport set up to act as its key implementation agency, called for building a 25-metre swimming pool, a cricket ground and football field, a pavilion, a 400-metre running track, and a car park.
Continue reading Protecting our historic legacy
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 21, 2023
Apart from the years that I have spent abroad, I have lived most of my life in Tacarigua, a village that is located about ten miles east of Port of Spain. In 1976 Lance Murray, an official of the Trinidad Sugar Estates (known then as the Orange Grove Estates), sent Fr David Benjamin, the pastor of the St Mary’s Anglican Church, a letter offering the church an opportunity to purchase a plot of land adjacent to the church. Elated by the possibility of expansion, the members of vestry voted unanimously to accept the offer; they built a parish hall on the land.
Continue reading An apology
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 07, 2022
PART VI
On June 27 I received the following e-mail from Margaret Heath, a relative of William Hardin Burnley (WHB). It read: “I thought you might be interested to know that my brother, as executor of my mother’s estate, has just informed me he has consigned a trunkful of extensive family papers that belonged to William Burnley and his son, Frederick Burnley, to Paul Laidlow, Auctioneers, Carlisle, to be included in their sale of July 1st/2nd.”
Continue reading Out of the cane fields of Tacarigua
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 31, 2022
PART V
Last Wednesday, I had lunch with Caroline Elkins, the author of the very important book, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire. A founding director of Harvard’s Center for African Studies, Elkins is also a professor of history and African and African American studies at Harvard University. As a product of a colonial education, I was particularly impressed with the depth and thoroughness of her study.
Continue reading Out of the cane fields of Tacarigua
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 24, 2022
PART IV
I began this series with the truism that the little people who come out of the cane fields and the rice paddies are the salt of the society. They are the ones who do what they must do to enhance the society because they believe they are a part of something bigger than themselves, something called community.
I started with Ulric “Buggy” Haynes, and went on to speak about Vernon Scott, William Holder, Cecil Boyce, and the other members of the Tacarigua Village Council who gave their time and energy to their community, without any financial reward.
Continue reading Out of the cane fields of Tacarigua
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 17, 2022
PART III
On May 8, 1982, I delivered a lecture, “The Village Council as an Organ of Popular Democracy”, at the Tacarigua Village Council on the eve of its 350-year anniversary, the village having entered its name into the island’s vocabulary in 1634 when it was identified as one of the four encomiendas at the foothills of the Northern Range.
Most of the Amerindians in the village came from around Lake Tacarigua in Venezuela, which explains the origin of the village name. Years earlier, I had visited Lake Tacarigua in search of origins even though I spoke little Spanish.
Continue reading Out of the cane fields of Tacarigua
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 10, 2022
PART II
The Tacarigua Village Council was inaugurated on May 23, 1946. Vernon Scott, the principal of Tacarigua EC School, was the first president of the council. Since then, a long line of villagers presided over the council and worked tirelessly, without pay, to keep the centre going until today. David King, a life-long member of the Village Council, defined the Village Council as “the eyes and ears of the community. It’s designed to secure social and cultural amenities for the district”.
Continue reading Out of the cane fields of Tacarigua
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 03, 2022
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to always remain a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero
PART I
I want to congratulate Ulric “Buggy” Haynes, a recipient of a Hummingbird Medal. Not only is Buggy deserving of this award, but it’s the kind of story we need to tell our children about the heights great men have reached and kept. His is part of a larger story of community that the Ministry of Sport and Community Development (S&CD) should keep in mind.
Continue reading Out of the cane fields of Tacarigua
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 27, 2021
My mother, Carmen Cudjoe (nee Batson), was born in Belmont in 1909. After spending her childhood years there, she moved to San Juan where she met my dad, married him, and moved to Tacarigua. Although my mother attended only primary school, she read constantly and wrote with eloquence and grace. In Tacarigua she was the secretary of most of the voluntary organisations there, such as the Garden Club and the Village Council.
Continue reading Suffer the little children