By Thomas Isaac
The cottages were all still lovely wooden bungalows, with jalousied windows, and often a front portico decorated with flowering plants and fruit trees around and a latrine in the backyard, with some chickens and a dog and Cat around. By the late 50s these houses began to give way to brick and concrete structures, the bricks generally built on site, and the outhouse now adjoining the building with modern toilet facilities and running waver in the house.
By the early, pre-independence period, much of nineteenth century Arima still remained, though it was already wilting under the inescapable onslaught of change and modernisation. Arima retained its semi-urban settlement feel, nestled inside a surrounding landscape of large or medium-sized plantations of cocoa, coffee, citrus, sugarcane, sprinkled with fruit trees of every conceivable tropical kind.
Beyond these were wilderness of Waller Field and still beyond numerous mountains or
lowland communities, from Valencia in the east, Cumuto-Talparo in the southeast, Paria and Blanchicheuse in the north, Carapo in the south and D'Abadie in the west. The large estates were still there, though no longer as productive and functional as before, with the coming of the Americans in the 40s. These estates generally carried the names of the owners: De Gannes, Coon Coon, Madoo, Cleaver, Cipriani, Mason, Torrecilla, Santa Rosa, Di Martini, Strictland, Mendez, Samaroo, De Verteuil, Industry, Gran Poder (Quesnel)
The names tell a lot about the history of the place; the pre-eminence of the old French plantocracy, the survival of a Spanish element, the coming of the English later and finally
the rise of a new East Indian magnate, some of whom lived along the Railway Street and Pro Queen Street areas in beautiful wooden mansions. Estate owners had already begun the flight from the land and many of the whites reverted to live in the West, renting out their lands to small local gardeners some of whom attempted to produce crops on a commercial basis for the Sunday market, a process that had begun decades before during the war period. On these small agricultural plots here soon followed dwelling houses and the rise of new residential communities, many beyond the prescribed boundaries, but all fully part of the Arima community.
During the 50s and 60s, Arima, like any of the older towns, could be clearly divided into distinct residential districts, each marked by visible ethnic and socio-economic differences. The spiritual heart and historical centre of Arima was still very much the area around the RC church from De Gannes Street to Hollis Avenue or Robinson Circular and Prince Street to Beckles Lane. During the 50s Netto Ville was built by a Portuguese businessman, Charles Gomes Netto, who served during the latter years of Crown Colony Government under Sir Hubert Rance's governor ship as legislative council's representative for the area.
The two-apartment houses were constructed in the new architectural Style to concrete and brick covered galvanised roofing Westward beyond Netto Ville there was an expanding residential area occupying former estate lands stretching westward Olton sawmill, and lands
owned by the Irish families of the Oltons and Baileys (of Brandon Bailey fame). The western boundary was the Cleaver Woods, A strip of verdant tropical forest that provided a refreshing corridor of travel on the trip from Port of Spain. To the east beyond Prince Street and the bridge over a massive concrete drain which was at some time before a small rill, lay the district called over the Bridge, populated by an original Spanish-speaking people most with family connections in the outlying villages of the Northern Range and many with agricultural small-holdings of cocoa and coffee in the countryside.
These folk were also Roman Catholic, generally fair-skinned, with Spanish first and surnames, constituting the vintage cocoa-payol population of Arima. South of the savannah on Robinson Circular lay a line of beautiful wooden bungalows built like the old estate greathouses occupied by white people, the Crows, de Gannes, etc., who were estate owners, and the descendants of those responsible for the emergence of horse-racing in the Arima savannah.
The coming of independence with its drastic social and demographic changes resulted in their departure from Arima, even though they continued to maintain the Arima White People's carnival held during the festivities at the White People's Tennis Court on Railway Street. To the south were two distinct districts, Malabar to the southeast that stretched southward along the Malabar Road to the O'Meara Savannah, and along O'Meara Road to the south-west Samaroo Village, also extending to the same Savannah.
The southern end of Malabar beyond the train line was called India, its population comprised ex-indentured workers still involved in sugarcane production, but changing gradually to vegetable cultivation, cattle-rearing and milk production. Another southern extension along Prince Street into the Cocorite Road/Tumpuna Road area also had a significant East Indian population that produced Arima's fantastic Hosein celebrations which eventually died with independence and the arrival of Better Village. Finally beyond the Arima River to the east was the village of Maturita extending down into Pinto Road towards the Santa Rosa estate
The Last 50 Years - The changing face of the Royal Borough
Thomas Isaac
Arima Borough Corporation Jubilee Publication 2012
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