fig. 5. Ajoupa-type elevation of floor, half-hipped roof (i.e., pitched roof with modified angle adjusting steepness), and dormer window. Wattle-and-daub construction visible on side wall, Compte de Lopinot House, Lopinot, Trinidad. Photograph by author.
The View from French Windows While forced Amerindian labour was directly followed by African slavery in most Caribbean colonies, African slavery was almost non-existent in Trinidad until the late eighteenth century (Besson 9). Thus no other event in Trinidad history had so profound an effect on the country’s demographics and its architecture as the Cedula de Población issued in 1783. By this action, the Spanish Crown welcomed Catholics to under-colonized Trinidad where their professed faith would afford them discounted prices on land (Williams 40-41). White and free-coloured planters and merchants from the French West Indies responded especially well to the Spanish invitation to set up in Trinidad. They came with their African slaves from Martinique, Guadeloupe and Haiti
(Besson 8-11). The impact of the Francophone arrival on the rudimentary planning grid of Puerto de España and other towns, and on residential architecture throughout the country would be profound (Lewis 56-76). Up to this point, stubborn interactions between the pre-existing Amerindian and Iberian forms resulted in a kind of wattle-and-daub or tapia ajoupa, for increased solidity. The experiment with jalousie shutters had begun timidly in these mud and fibre structures. Spanish ajoupas were often attached to corrals for the few cattle and horses a Spaniard might own. Country houses and ‘town’ houses were much the same in the first centuries of colonial Trinidad. Towns sometimes could only be distinguished by a slightly higher density of structures and/or the occasional cabildo hall (Lewis 51-60). To the elevated, wattle-and-daub Ibero-Trinidadian house,
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