Cedros still holding breath

Fast forward 31 years, to the present, and the 5,000 residents living along the southern most tip of Trinidad are still holding their collective breath and slowly growing blue in the face.

The highway was meant to open up the south-west peninsula. It was not just a strip of asphalt for these residents but a means of easily linking up and interacting with the people and other cultures of the country. For Cedros and Icacos residents, this was their Highway to Heaven.

And now, in 2012, while some of these same residents have since died and, hopefully gone to the real Heaven, for those still living and even for the new generation, Cedros and Icacos are the communities that time forgot.

When Newsday embarked on a trip to Cedros and Icacos at the weekend, we saw communities where — in this present technological age — the main means of survival was fishing and making coconut-oil. The area had an air of general neglect, its people resigned to their fate.

The population of 5,000 villagers live in mostly small houses of some age, along the meandering 25 kilometres roadway from the bustling Point Fortin town. Their homes and front yards are nestled in the shadows of thick bush and tall trees in which, to the back of each, the forest stretches for miles to meet the sea on either side of the peninsula.

From Cedros Village, coconut trees abound without human habitation for about four miles. It reaches the coastline on the Icacos beach where, a small community exists. The residents there open their doors and windows to the wide open seafront of the Orinoco Delta. At low tide, the Venezuelan border is visible.

Jacob Sandiford, a fisherman, shouted, “We’re closer to Venezuela than Point Fortin and San Fernando! Look! That is Venezuela you seeing there.” He then turns to inland, his eyes meeting a wall of forests. “Where is San Fernando? Where is Point Fortin? We want that highway. Things dead down here and that highway will open up untold opportunities for us and our children,” he said.

Told about the 21-day hunger protest by Wayne Kublalsingh over the Mon Desir to Debe section of the Point Fortin to San Fernando Highway, which the People’s Partnership wants to build, many residents had unkind words for the leader of the Highway Re-route Movement.

“Who is Kublalsingh to stop progress? Is 30 years now we waiting on that highway. Hydrological tests mean nothing to me. He say the highway will destroy mangroves? Well it is the lack of progress that is choking entire communities down here,” a man said.

Sandiford said that fishing and shrimping are a dying trade in Icacos. Apart from stepped-up policing of the sea by Venezuelan Guardia Nacional officers and Trinmar’s escalated marine activities off Soldado Rock, residents said their community is dying.

“People don’t come Cedros and Icacos again to buy fish like long time. We are nobody down here. All the young people here leaving and going to work and live in Port-of-Spain and San Fernando,” Sandiford said.

Edwards said he formed the Icacos United Fishermen to nurture the fishing industry as a viable means of livelihood. Aaron Beharry said his entire family was born and bred in fishing but with no customers, he asked, “What’s the use?”

“I don’t go fishing again. I am finished with fishing, because no one coming down here to buy fish anymore.” He spoke in glowing terms of the highway to Point Fortin and said that whenconstruction started in Golconda to Debe, stopped, then commenced again the people of Icacos and Cedros, looked on and prayed that construction would continue.Fisherman Ashton Ali said the highway ending in Point Fortin, would make travel faster to San Fernando. “More people will come to Cedros and Icacos to see the place; to buy fish down here. Nice you know but because getting here is so hard and takes so long, nobody knows of the value of Cedros and Icacos. There is the potential for tourism, guest houses, hotels all here once that highway is built. For us its not just a strip of road...it is a means to get going and get back in step with the rest of the country,” Ali said. “Fishing as an industry is done!”

Edwards’ wife Devica, said like other women in the community she, too, wants to learn hair dressing; nail aesthetics; costume jewelry making and other craft. “Down here all we know about is to knit fishing net, help our husbands with fishing and to pray for their safe return. That’s all there is for women in Icacos to do. We want to see the rest of the country too or are we not good enough?”

Shanti Bridgemohan, 29, knitted a fishing net on the beach while other women her age, peeled coconut branches to make brooms. As they continued with these mundane activities, women their age and even younger, in other parts of the country, were liming, studying, working...progressing.

In the fishing village of Fullerton, Curtis Sooklal said that his wife works in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Port-of-Spain. She must wake up at 3.30 am to prepare for the journey to Point Fortin, then San Fernando, then onto the water-taxi at King’s Wharf for the ride to the capital. Sooklal said his wife leaves work at 2.30 pm, after working through her lunch hour, to ensure the journey back to Fullerton.

He begged for the highway. “If six o’ clock meets her in Point Fortin, she will travel back to San Fernando, take a Penal taxi and spend the night by her father. This highway will make it so much easier for my wife to get to and from work,” Sooklal said.

He said that in 2006, when former Prime Minister Patrick Manning announced plans to rapidly industrialise the Chatham and Cedros areas, residents began to hope once again after the unkept promise of Dr Eric Williams.

“And now Manning out of Government. Now the People’s Partnership has come and not only say they will build the highway, but they have actually started the highway, we have real hope,” he said.

At the Cedros Community Centre, a group of women were seen giving away boxies of “Curry Q” meals after having over-estimated the patrons they expected to buy the food to raise funds for a village football team.

Don Austin, 74, of Cedros said he hopes to see Icacos and Cedros take their rightful place as bustling, proactive communities in Trinidad before he closes his eyes. He said that over the years, Cedros and Icacos have become communities of the middle aged and elderly since the youth have fled to San Fernando, Port-of-Spain and other parts of the country since opportunities are scarce.

“Down here the internet slow. There is hardly anyone here who are in their twenties. It’s either you are a baby, a child, middle-aged or old. The young people are leaving Cedros. And who can blame them. This highway is important for Icacos and Cedros’ future,” Austin said.

Maralyn Hudson, 66, agreed with Austin saying that she too wanted to see Cedros and Icacos come of age and begin to grow and become modern. “Too many years now of coconut trees and bush. Time for some development to take place down here. We are a part of Trinidad and its time that we too be able to come to the table and eat of the goodies just like San Fernando and Chaguanas and Port-of-Spain. For too long we have been at the door far away from the table,” she said.