Lopinot’s rich history goes back as far as 500 years before the birth of Christ, when the First Peoples settled in Trinidad and called the island Iere. More recently, the Lopinot Historical Complex, one of the more popular areas in the village, hosted hundreds of thousands of visitors, pre-covid19.
The people living in the village, however, had seen little to no profit from these visitors until the establishment of the Lopinot Tourism Association in 2014, when villagers were encouraged to learn crafts and create local dishes which not only display the village's personality but brings some form of revenue to the people there.
Now, with covid19 putting a strain on the number of visitors to the village and its heritage site, and parts of the site in need of repair and refurbishment, Lopinot residents have come together with the heritage site as their main base to industrialise the village’s rich history, natural beauty and the talents and capabilities of its people.
La Reconnaissance Estate
Lopinot got its name from the Compte de Loppinot, a French lieutenant general and knight of the Military Order of St Louis, and brigadier general of the Trinidad
militia.
Loppinot left France shortly before the French Revolution and served in the French colony of Acadie – now the combined Canadian territories of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
Researchers say after the French were expelled from Acadie, he moved to Louisiana, which was French around 1755. In 1762 the territory was ceded to Spain, and Loppinot went to Saint Domingue (now Haiti). As it was one of the sugar giants at the time, Loppinot seized the opportunity to get into the sugar business, making a great success with land, prominence and enslaved people.
[caption id="attachment_928712" align="alignnone" width="789"] Donna Mora, CEO of the Lopinot Tourism Association using a grinder to crack cocoa beans. - PHOTO BY SUREASH CHOLAI[/caption]
But then the Haitian revolution took place and he fled to Jamaica, then settled in Trinidad, where he tried to establish another sugar plantation in Tacarigua, with the permission of Governor Thomas Picton.
That also met with limited success, so the governor gave him permission to claim land in the Northern Range. After searching through the forest he came across what is now known as Lopinot.
“I am sure that when he came here there were lovely poui trees all about, and there was the quiet river nearby,” said Donna Mora, CEO of the Lopinot Tourism Association and managing director of the Lopinot Chocolate Company. “He claimed the land for his own and called it La Reconnaissance Estate, which in the old French language meant 'gratitude.'”
There he built a large cocoa estate with more than 100 enslaved people on 478 acres of land. He also had six children, who left the plantation to pursue their own lives. He died in 1819 at 42, according to the Lopinot heritage site’s record.
Centuries later, his home a
