ISSUE 5 MARCH 2022
Spotlight on the Community
PENAL
The Heart of the Town – The Triangle at the Dial
Penal is a town in south Trinidad, with a population of 12,281. It lies to the south of San Fernando, Princes Town, and Debe, and north of Moruga, Morne Diablo and Siparia. Penal saw its inception as a village in the very early years of the 20th century, when ex-indentured East Indian labourers turned away from the cane fields of
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County Victoria, moved south into the swamplands of the Oropouche Lagoon. They were attracted to this area which offered a new life – a life of cultivating rice, cocoa and other food crops. A part of the area was above swamp level, the sort of area in a swamp that in Spanish carries a geographical name pronounced “pengyal, “and spelt “peñal.” In the first decade of the century Penal began developing to take on the outlook of a village. The 1920s met Penal not only with its vast fields of lagoon rice, bodi, tomatoes and cucumbers – and above all watermelons, which made this district so famous, but is also met with extensive cocoa fields, especially in its north-eastern areas. It was beginning
