To­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brates a great land­mark in our her­itage–54 years of in­de­pen­dence–and we should be proud of the great progress this coun­try has made dur­ing that time.

The T&T Guardian wants all our read­ers to cel­e­brate to­day but we can­not be en­tire­ly proud of some of our his­to­ry.

When a close rel­a­tive grows old and their care be­comes chal­leng­ing, the choice be­comes sim­ple.

Place the per­son in pro­fes­sion­al care and let some­one else han­dle it or dou­ble down and find a way to man­age the prob­lem with the re­sources avail­able.

When it comes to the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and more specif­i­cal­ly the ar­ti­facts that re­main stand­ing as a re­minder of that past, the over­whelm­ing choice has been to let his­to­ry fend for it­self and the re­sults have been dis­as­trous.

There is no el­der care home for age­ing build­ings, ar­ti­facts and mon­u­ments.

Each na­tion meets the chal­lenge of pre­serv­ing por­tions of its built his­to­ry ac­cord­ing to its means and its in­ter­est in do­ing so.

In Chi­na, en­tire vil­lages and towns have been razed to sup­port that na­tion's en­thu­si­as­tic em­brace of cap­i­tal­ism and moder­ni­ty.

Cu­ba, with far less avail­able in its cof­fers, has cho­sen to pre­serve its built his­to­ry care­ful­ly and craft a na­tion­al nar­ra­tive that em­braces every­thing that has made the coun­try what it is to­day.

Those are broad brush strokes and in both na­tions, there are no­table ex­cep­tions that prove the rule.