AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Re­porter

As the red, white and black flag was raised at mid­night on Au­gust 31, 1962, Trinidad and To­ba­go had al­ready de­cid­ed on a na­tion­al flag, coat of arms, na­tion­al an­them and na­tion­al flower. But there was one cru­cial el­e­ment not yet es­tab­lished: a cur­ren­cy of its own.

At the time, T&T used the British Caribbean cur­ren­cy, which was shared among sev­er­al Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries and man­aged by the British Caribbean Cur­ren­cy Board. As T&T moved to­wards be­com­ing an in­de­pen­dent, self-gov­ern­ing state, it was nat­ur­al to want an in­de­pen­dent cur­ren­cy. How­ev­er, that tran­si­tion did not hap­pen overnight.

For two years af­ter the Union Jack was low­ered, T&T con­tin­ued to use the shared British Caribbean cur­ren­cy. Be­hind the scenes, work was un­der­way to build some­thing dis­tinct­ly Trin­bag­on­ian.

Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, T&T was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing grow­ing pros­per­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the oil and gas sec­tor. As the econ­o­my ex­pand­ed, the need for an in­de­pen­dent fi­nan­cial sys­tem ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing a new­ly sov­er­eign na­tion be­came in­creas­ing­ly ur­gent.

In Ju­ly 1962, the Trinidad Guardian re­port­ed that T&T’s cen­tral bank would be es­tab­lished by the end of 1963. Then Fi­nance Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son not­ed that a Cur­ren­cy Com­mit­tee would be formed to ad­dress all mon­e­tary mat­ters aris­ing from in­de­pen­dence.

The Cen­tral Bank was of­fi­cial­ly es­tab­lished by an Act of Par­lia­ment on De­cem­ber 12, 1964. Two days lat­er, the coun­try’s first ban­knotes were is­sued.

Ac­cord­ing to Nimah Muwak­il-Za­kuri, se­nior cu­ra­tor at the Cen­tral Bank Mu­se­um in Port-of-Spain, these notes were far more than pieces of pa­per for a young na­tion find­ing its feet. They ce­ment­ed T&T’s iden­ti­ty.

“When we moved away from be­ing un­der British rule, we then had to de­cide what are the things that were im­por­tant for us. And of course, cur­ren­cy is some­thing that is in every­body’s hands every day. And it can re­al­ly bring a great sense of pride to a na­tion and its cit­i­zens, to see the things that are im­por­tant to them on their cur­ren­cy,” Muwak­il-Za­kuri said.

While na­tion­al em­blems were fea­tured on the new 1964 notes, Queen Eliz­a­beth II’s por­trait was al­so in­clud­ed, as T&T had not yet be­come a re­pub­lic.

And this cre­at­ed an in­trigu­ing com­bi­na­tion: a se­ries of sym­bols rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion­al ties to the British Crown along­side sym­bols rep­re­sent­ing na­tion­hood. The old and the new.

“The build­ing be­hind the note is the Trea­sury build­ing, which is where the Cen­tral Bank was lo­cat­ed pri­or to be­ing lo­cat­ed here in the [Twin] Tow­ers. And we on­ly had one to 20. We didn’t have 50 or 100 dol­lar notes,” she said.

“When we be­came a Re­pub­lic in 1976, just a year lat­er, we were able to re­move the por­trait of the Queen from our mon­ey and re­place it with the coat of arms, which then took cen­tre stage.”

Un­like many oth­er coun­tries, T&T fea­tures a no­tably vi­brant suite of ban­knotes. Af­ter the tran­si­tion to a re­pub­lic, $50 and $100 de­nom­i­na­tions were in­tro­duced, ex­pand­ing the cur­ren­cy fam­i­ly.

Over the decades, the T&T dol­lar notes went through var­i­ous phas­es of de­sign. Most no­table would be the grad­ual tran­si­tion in re­cent years from pa­per-based (cot­ton) to poly­mer notes.

This made the notes more durable, with stronger se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and even more de­fined tac­tile fea­tures to help the vi­su­al­ly im­paired.

The coins, how­ev­er, fol­lowed a slight­ly dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry.

“The first suite of our lo­cal coins came in 1966. So two years af­ter the notes, we had our first set of coins and that in­clud­ed the same ones that we have to­day..”

“But there were mi­nor changes up un­til 1976. The coins had far less change.”

Though coins are used less fre­quent­ly by the pub­lic, their de­signs show­case vi­brant el­e­ments of T&T cul­ture: the bird of par­adise (5 cents), the flam­ing hi­bis­cus (10 cents), the cha­co­nia flower (25 cents) and the steel­pan (50 cents). And even with the one-cent coin phased out of cir­cu­la­tion, coins re­main an es­sen­tial chap­ter of the na­tion’s mon­e­tary sto­ry.

Then there are the pieces that look like mon­ey but were nev­er ac­tu­al­ly cur­ren­cy and were not meant for every­day trans­ac­tions.

As In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions swept across the coun­try in 1962, com­mem­o­ra­tive medal­lions were pro­duced to mark the his­toric oc­ca­sion. One gold-plat­ed medal­lion fea­tured a map of T&T and was dis­trib­uted among pub­lic ser­vants and some young stu­dents across the coun­try.

In 1984, a $200 com­mem­o­ra­tive gold coin was is­sued to mark the 20th an­niver­sary of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T.

Lat­er, when the So­ca War­riors made his­to­ry as the small­est na­tion ever to qual­i­fy for the 2006 FI­FA World Cup in Ger­many, the vic­to­ry re­ver­ber­at­ed far be­yond the pitch. To im­mor­talise the feat, a spe­cial lim­it­ed-edi­tion com­mem­o­ra­tive coin was mint­ed.

These coins are valu­able for many rea­sons, but their true val­ue lies in their sto­ry­telling. At the Cen­tral Bank Mu­se­um, his­toric notes and coins are not sim­ply items be­hind glass; they chron­i­cle how the na­tion has evolved. For this rea­son, Muwak­il-Za­kuri en­cour­ages the pub­lic to vis­it and ex­plore the his­to­ry that lived in their hands for gen­er­a­tions.

“I’m al­ways amazed when peo­ple come in and they say, ‘I re­mem­ber my grand­moth­er hav­ing these notes, or I have one, and I didn’t un­der­stand the his­to­ry, but now I do.’ And you know that’s re­al­ly what we are here for. And that’s re­al­ly what mu­se­ums are here for. Not on­ly to pre­serve his­to­ry, but to in­tro­duce his­to­ry to younger gen­er­a­tions who may not know or may not ful­ly un­der­stand.”