Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Nes­tled deep with­in Trinidad’s North­ern Range, just a 20-minute dri­ve from the bustling East­ern Main Road, the vil­lage of Lopinot feels like a place where time stands still.

There are no fu­el sta­tions here, and the re­lent­less hum of mod­ern com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion has been de­lib­er­ate­ly kept at bay. In­stead, vis­i­tors are greet­ed by the rush of the Arou­ca Riv­er, the canopy of sprawl­ing im­mortelle trees, and a his­to­ry that is as dark and com­plex as the award-win­ning choco­late pro­duced from its soil.

For Don­na Mo­ra, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Lopinot Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion and man­ag­er of the Lopinot Choco­late Com­pa­ny, this vir­gin val­ley is more than just a home; it is a liv­ing, breath­ing mu­se­um.

As a cus­to­di­an of Lopinot’s her­itage, Mo­ra stands at the in­ter­sec­tion of eco-tourism, an­ces­tral folk­lore and a painful colo­nial past.

A lega­cy built on co­coa and slav­ery

The sto­ry of Lopinot is in­sep­a­ra­ble from the man who gave it its name: French Count Charles Joseph de Lop­pinot de la Fre­sil­liere.

Hav­ing fled the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and trav­elled through Louisiana, the Count even­tu­al­ly ar­rived in Trinidad in 1800. By 1806, he had been grant­ed 478 acres of land by the British Crown.

Over­joyed, he named his es­tate La Re­con­nais­sance (an old French term for grat­i­tude) and trans­formed the lush, moun­tain­ous ter­rain in­to one of the fastest-grow­ing and most lu­cra­tive co­coa es­tates in the re­gion.

How­ev­er, the wealth of La Re­con­nais­sance was built on the backs of en­slaved Africans.

The phys­i­cal ar­chi­tec­ture of the es­tate still bears wit­ness to this bru­tal re­al­i­ty, most no­tably in a struc­ture that leaves mod­ern vis­i­tors speech­less.

“We have a jail­house in a co­coa plan­ta­tion that’s a shock­ing thing,” Mo­ra ex­plains, not­ing the dis­be­lief of in­ter­na­tion­al tourists and lo­cal school­child­ren alike.

“He was al­so bril­liant; he had a co­coa house on top of the jail­house, so the en­slaved still had to dance the co­coa with shack­les on their feet.”

To­day, the Lopinot Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion works close­ly with his­to­ri­ans, the Min­istry of Tourism and ad­vo­cates like Shaba­ka Kam­bon of the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project to en­sure this his­to­ry is not glossed over but con­front­ed and un­der­stood.

As ar­chae­o­log­i­cal digs in the es­tate’s ceme­tery con­tin­ue to un­earth zemis—cer­e­mo­ni­al arte­facts from Trinidad’s First Peo­ples—the true age and spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance of the val­ley are com­ing to light. The Gov­ern­ment has in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in restor­ing the Count’s es­tate house, but Mo­ra and her team have their eyes set on an even high­er tier of preser­va­tion: of­fi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ing the Lopinot His­tor­i­cal Com­plex as a Unit­ed Na­tions World Her­itage Site.

Leg­ends of para­nor­mal ac­tiv­i­ty that refuse to die

Be­yond its agri­cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance, Lopinot is ar­guably the epi­cen­tre of Trinida­di­an folk­lore and the su­per­nat­ur­al. The val­ley’s iso­la­tion his­tor­i­cal­ly prompt­ed el­ders to in­vent cau­tion­ary tales of the Soucouyant, Douens and La Di­a­b­lesse to keep chil­dren from wan­der­ing in­to the dense for­est. Ac­cord­ing to Mo­ra, the tac­tic was a com­plete suc­cess—no one has ever been lost in the Lopinot woods.

But lo­cals ar­gue that these sto­ries have tak­en on a life of their own.

From sight­ings of a face­less, short man dart­ing across the es­tate bridge to the leg­end of the Count him­self roam­ing the prop­er­ty on horse­back in the rain, the su­per­nat­ur­al is wo­ven in­to the vil­lage’s dai­ly fab­ric.

Re­cent­ly, the val­ley’s haunt­ed rep­u­ta­tion gained fresh ev­i­dence. Adon­ai, a well-known vi­o­lin­ist who per­forms with so­ca star Machel Mon­tano, was film­ing a video at the es­tate, play­ing the clas­sic tune Bring Back the Old Time Days. Dur­ing the record­ing, a strange, glid­ing anom­aly was cap­tured mov­ing be­tween the trees—a video that has since cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly on YouTube.

“He con­tact­ed us and said, ‘Miss Mo­ra, we cap­tured a ghost,’” she re­calls.

This re­lent­less para­nor­mal ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ues to draw sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est. Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of a fa­mous Ghost Hunters In­ter­na­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the pop­u­lar Dis­cov­ery UK se­ries Ex­pe­di­tion X re­cent­ly ded­i­cat­ed a two-part episode (“Ter­rors of Trinidad”) to the es­tate’s lin­ger­ing spir­its, bring­ing a surge of stream­ing views and plac­ing Lopinot firm­ly on the glob­al map for dark tourism.

Keep­ing Lopinot au­then­tic

De­spite the heavy his­to­ry and lin­ger­ing spir­its, mod­ern Lopinot is a place of vi­brant com­mu­ni­ty and cel­e­bra­tion. Parang mu­sic, deeply root­ed in the area’s Venezue­lan her­itage, echoes through the val­ley, cham­pi­oned by lo­cal leg­ends like Mo­ra’s fa­ther, Mar­tin Gomez (af­ter whom the lo­cal Mar­tin Gomez Cave is named).

The com­mu­ni­ty’s agri­cul­tur­al roots re­main strong. The Lopinot Choco­late Com­pa­ny, man­aged by Mo­ra, re­cent­ly took sec­ond place na­tion­al­ly for its co­coa prod­ucts. The as­so­ci­a­tion cu­rates ex­pe­ri­ences strict­ly tied to the land: co­coa danc­ing, eco-tours and tra­di­tion­al choco­late-mak­ing.

“We like the unique­ness of it. We don’t want peo­ple com­ing in and try­ing to change Lopinot; we want it to stay ex­act­ly how it is,” Mo­ra in­sists. “Of course we want growth and de­vel­op­ment, but we don’t want out­side in­flu­ence. Every­thing we do is to cap­ture Lopinot, and we want peo­ple to ex­pe­ri­ence that.”

For a vil­lage that holds the an­cient arte­facts of Trinidad’s First Peo­ples, the heavy iron shack­les of en­slaved Africans, the rich lega­cy of Trini­tario co­coa and the whis­pers of un­seen spir­its, the ti­tle seems en­tire­ly fit­ting. Lopinot is not just a des­ti­na­tion; it is the liv­ing, breath­ing and some­times haunt­ing mem­o­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

About Charles Joseph de Lop­pinot

Charles Joseph de Lop­pinot was a French aris­to­crat and mil­i­tary of­fi­cer whose name be­came per­ma­nent­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with one of Trinidad’s most his­toric co­coa-grow­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Forced to flee the up­heaval of the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, he even­tu­al­ly set­tled in Trinidad at the be­gin­ning of the 19th cen­tu­ry. In 1806, the British colo­nial ad­min­is­tra­tion grant­ed him hun­dreds of acres of land in the North­ern Range, where he es­tab­lished the La Re­con­nais­sance es­tate. Through the labour of en­slaved Africans, the es­tate de­vel­oped in­to one of the is­land’s most pro­duc­tive co­coa plan­ta­tions and played a sig­nif­i­cant role in Trinidad’s ear­ly co­coa in­dus­try.

Lop­pinot re­mains a com­plex his­tor­i­cal fig­ure whose lega­cy re­flects both agri­cul­tur­al in­no­va­tion and the bru­tal re­al­i­ties of colo­nial slav­ery. He in­tro­duced ad­vanced meth­ods of co­coa cul­ti­va­tion and pro­cess­ing for the pe­ri­od, help­ing to es­tab­lish the rep­u­ta­tion of Trinidad’s co­coa. At the same time, his es­tate de­pend­ed en­tire­ly on en­slaved labour, and rem­nants of that era—in­clud­ing the es­tate house, co­coa house and the plan­ta­tion jail—still stand as stark re­minders of the ex­ploita­tion that un­der­pinned its suc­cess. To­day, the vil­lage of Lopinot and the Lopinot His­tor­i­cal Com­plex pre­serve this lay­ered his­to­ry, en­cour­ag­ing vis­i­tors to ap­pre­ci­ate both the achieve­ments and the hu­man cost of the plan­ta­tion era.

Time­line of key events

1800 - French Count Charles Joseph de Lop­pinot ar­rives in Trinidad af­ter flee­ing the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion.

1806 - Grant­ed 478 acres by the Crown, Lop­pinot es­tab­lish­es a high­ly prof­itable co­coa es­tate us­ing en­slaved labour.

1940s - The Gov­ern­ment takes over near­by Cau­ra to build a dam; evac­u­at­ed vil­lagers re­set­tle on the new­ly ac­quired Lopinot lands.

1970s - The Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourist Board be­gins restor­ing the old es­tate struc­tures, of­fi­cial­ly cre­at­ing the Lopinot His­tor­i­cal Com­plex.