CHAGUANAS
EXTRACT: Towns and Villages of Trinidad & Tobago
by Michael Anthony
Chaguanas village, is one of the oldest-known settlements in Trinidad. The settlement seems to have dated from before the Spanish days. The Spaniards named the village after the Amerindian tribe that lived in the region "the Chaguanes".Chaguanas is situated "slightly to the north west of the centre of County Caroni." The village,covers about two square miles and its population can be estimated at about 6,177 in 1980,and 8,000 in 1988.
Surrounded by cane fields, and marked on the south only by the Caparo River, on its eastern side, two great highways, the Uriah Butler (formerly Princess Margaret) and the Solomon Hochoy, meet, on its western and northern side the outskirts of the village stretch to the coast, and to the fringes of the Caroni swamp.
The Chaguanas area was not used by the Spaniards, but was established as a sugarcane estate very early in the British days. Lying on the plains of Caroni the planters felt the terrain ideal for the cultivation of this crop. Some of the very first of the indentured East Indians to arrive here in 1845 came to work in the area at such estates as Felicite and Woodford Lodge.
Chaguanas soon became a centre of communication and one of the earliest roads linking north and south Trinidad passed through this village. This road was the Caroni Savannah Road, the first roadway passing through Chaguanas.
The normal form of travel between San Fernando and places in the north was by coastal steamer and naturally the sugar producing village of Chaguanas was one of the chief ports of call. Chaguanus also produced a large amount of cocoa.
With the development of the Railway and the construction of a line into Chaguanas in 1880, which was a wonderful convenience for transporting agricultural produce, as well as passengers, it transformed Chaguanas, making it the most important market town in the area.
When the coastal steamer service ended in 1928. The Southern Main Road was developed, along with other link roads into Chaguaramas. With the spread of cocoa to central areas, roads forged inland, linking Chaguanas to such interior districts as the Brassos in the Caparo valley, Tabaquite, and even as far distant as Rio Claro. By the late 1940s and in the 1950s, although Chaguanas was still surrounded by cane fields, a modern system of roadways enhanced it still as a hub of communication.
Then, the Princes Margaret Highway, now called.the Uriah Butler Highway, left the Churchill Roosevelt Highway at a point south of St. Joseph, to join the Southern Main Road at Chaguanas. In the mid-1970s the highway was lenghtned from Chaguanas to San Fernando as the "Solomon Hochoy Highway."
Chaguanas today remains a key village and the sugar industry has only recently ceased to be its life-blood. Around it are still some of its old established estates. Some of the names are: Woodford Lodge, Waterloo, Felicite, Endeavour and Enterprise. Chaguanas remains for the Caroni area the great market place.known to be one of the finest places for bargains of all kinds.
Vidia Naipaul immotalised Chaguanus in his Novel, A House for Mr. Biswas. Of course Chaguanas has given Naipaul to the world, for this writer, who was born in Chaguanas in 1932, is undoubtedly one of the great 20th, century novelists.
Referance Books:
Towns and Villages of Trinidad & Tobago by Michael Anthony
Atilla's Kaiso: A short history of Trinidad calypso by Raymond Quevedo
West Indian & their Language by Peter A Roberts
Calypso & Society in Pre-Independance Trinidad by Gordon Rohlehr
British Historians and the West Indies by Eric Williams