A small, but very sig­nif­i­cant sto­ry re­lat­ed to a move to give le­gal pro­tec­tion to el­e­ments of the Cedar Grove Sug­ar Es­tate in Palmiste, south Trinidad, is an ex­treme­ly im­por­tant ini­tia­tive to pre­serve his­tor­i­cal relics of an era which has passed.

Not too long ago, there was se­ri­ous and wide­spread con­cern, even con­ster­na­tion, over the right and wrongs of the re­moval of Colum­bus’ stat­ue from its pedestal at In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain. In the past, there were screams about the break­ing down of the Grey Fri­ars Church on Fred­er­ick Street and oth­er such build­ings and sym­bols of the na­tion’s colo­nial past.

This ed­i­to­r­i­al is not about en­ter­ing in­to that ar­gu­ment, but rather to strike a note on the need to pre­serve, in one form or an­oth­er, that which we in­her­it­ed from the past, and that which re­mains of great val­ue to stim­u­late con­scious­ness of the achieve­ments of our an­ces­tors.

As im­por­tant as it is for this and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to know some­thing about sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ments of our past, the fact re­mains that mov­ing for­ward must be based on the plat­form al­ready es­tab­lished for this gen­er­a­tion to build on. Start­ing from scratch is not a wise op­tion.

In this re­gard, it is al­so im­por­tant to un­der­stand what was neg­a­tive for the gen­er­a­tions of the pe­ri­od. Such in­for­ma­tion can serve as ex­am­ples to be avoid­ed by the present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

All around us in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there are ex­am­ples that re­quire re­search and an un­der­stand­ing of the phys­i­cal arte­facts, many of which are in a state of de­cline. Let’s take the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah as a glar­ing ex­am­ple of a phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment which pro­vid­ed the ba­sis for great sport­ing achieve­ment in horse rac­ing, crick­et and foot­ball. Apart from be­ing a bur­ial site where the bod­ies of the orig­i­nal own­ers were buried, the Sa­van­nah was a sug­ar cane es­tate from which the orig­i­nal pop­u­la­tion of that ur­ban vil­lage of Bel­mont was de­rived.

Facts like these need to be known, so too the his­to­ry of the old and de­cay­ing parts of south-east Port of Spain which con­tain many el­e­ments of our past wor­thy of be­ing iden­ti­fied and pre­served. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, too many have al­ready van­ished with­out trace and knowl­edge.

In the west of the city, there are the his­to­ry and el­e­ments of New­town, Wood­brook and St James, from which mid­dle-class and work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ties grew and con­tributed to the city of Port-of-Spain, its ar­chi­tec­ture and the squares and parks which are be­ing ne­glect­ed and de­stroyed.

As a his­to­ri­an of our liv­ing con­di­tions, ac­tions and recog­ni­tion, Michael An­tho­ny has writ­ten per­sua­sive­ly about the for­ma­tion of San Fer­nan­do, in­clud­ing sig­nif­i­cant ac­tions by cit­i­zens, which re­main sto­ries of great val­ue.

The Her­itage Fes­ti­val of To­ba­go, cre­at­ed by Dr J.D. El­der, his­to­ri­an-so­ci­ol­o­gist, con­tin­ues to give in­for­ma­tion­al pride to the con­tem­po­rary gen­er­a­tion.

The ques­tion is rel­e­vant as to whether we have made full use of that which has been re­trieved from all across Trinidad and To­ba­go, and whether we have utilised it to in­form and in­spire, es­pe­cial­ly the young, for them to build on.

One oth­er ma­jor ben­e­fit to be de­rived from re­triev­ing and spread­ing in­for­ma­tion about the past, is that it will in­form our so­ci­ety of di­verse peo­ples of the con­tri­bu­tions made by all those who ar­rived.