Trinidad’s peasantry was founded on ex-slaves withdrawing from sugar estates

Evidence

“The peons [backwoodsmen of mixed Spanish-Amerindian-African descent from Venezuela], the African immigrants, and the black ex-soldiers, and their descendants, were important groups in the island’s peasantry in the nineteenth century. But the peasantry in Trinidad originated with the withdrawal of ex-slaves from the sugar plantations after 1838. Perhaps around 7,000 ex-slaves left the estates to become stallholders. Of these, about five-sixths became owners of between one and ten acres of land, growing chiefly provisions and cocoa, and often giving casual labour to the estates during crop.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2312

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: This is a concrete case of land-and-self-subsistence as post-emancipation Black strategy — resonates with the ‘trees as infrastructure’ article’s theme of self-sufficient land-based practice.