Trinidad Phone Directory

Trinidad, which is the Spanish translation of trinity, is one of the two major islands that, together with several other small islands form the country Trinidad   and Tobago. It is the biggest from the islands that for this country and it has the largest population, too. Some of the small islands are not inhabited at all, and some are inhabited occasionally, because there are some vacation houses where people coma from time to time. This island lies in the most southern part of the Caribbean  Sea, at a distance of only seven miles. Trinidad has now a strong economy based on the extraction and commerce of natural gas, but is also base on agriculture and industry.

Trinidad was originally inhabited by some local tribes, the Carib and Arawak people. The Carib population is an Amerindian population which is supposed to have appeared in the area of the West Indies and the Northern part of South America and it is believed that they have migrated from the Orinoco River area in South America to the Caribbean  Islands about 1000 years BC. Only few of these people survived as an intact community, so there are just a few original names in the Trinidad phone directory. Most of them were killed when the Europeans arrived here, and the ones that were spared died from the diseases that were brought here by the sailors.

Even if the diseases were not that severe, a disease that was never present in these islands killed the people that had no antibody response to it. So an epidemic like measles for example could have buried a lot of natives from Trinidad. Arawaks were supposed to have preceded the Carib population, so they are to some extent their ancestors, but there was a period when they co-existed. They were described by the sailors as peaceful people, very much interested in the trade and that were going to be easy to conquer and transform into slaves.

The islands were first claimed by Christopher Columbus, which arrived here in his third voyage. He named this island Trinidad, “the Wholly Trinity”, and he started to transform it into a Spanish colony. But the island had a very long history, and it was claimed in turn by the Spanish, the English, the French, the Dutch and even by the Courlanders, which are a Latvian population living in the west of the country. Today Trinidad is a mix of many different cultures and civilizations and hosts people of many different ethnics, fact which is very easy to observe if you look in the Trinidad phone directory, which is a blend of the names of all the people that crossed this island and decided to remain here.