^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Santa Rosa First Peoples Community, Trinidad and Tobago

image by Valentin Poposki, 15 February 2020

Santa Rosa First Peoples Community
The flag
Festival flags
Former flag and emblem of the community

See also:

Santa Rosa First Peoples Community

The Santa Rosa Amerindian Community is the only organized area of Amerindian Survival in Trinidad and Tobago. They were formally recognized as representative of the Indigenous Amerindians of the twin-island state by the National Government in 1980. The Community consists of at least 400 members of which probably only 80 are active in this everyday life. It is urban and based in Arima. All members are identified on the basis of lineage and residence. The Lineage component is the most significant marker of belonging and elders in the Community have remarkable genealogical memory. The Community is essentially egalitarian in its decision-making. It has always had a Council of Elders who are seen as bearers of traditional knowledge. The most important event in the life of the community is the annual celebration of the Feast of Santa Rosa de Lima, the Patronal Feast of the Parish. This event is central to the Community’s sense of historical continuity and unique ethnic construction. It has been celebrated since the establishment of the mission in 1786 and in fact has the distinction of being the oldest, continuously celebrated feast in the island’s history. It has its direct antecedents in the celebrations of the Patronal Feasts of the Nepuyo encomiendas which were amalgamated at the Arima Mission. These celebrations allowed indigenous spiritual and cultural elements to survive in an almost pristine form within overtly Catholic Spanish mode. It therefore exerts a strong normative influence on the community. Santa Rosa First Peoples Community.
Valentin Poposki, 15 February 2020

The Flag

The current logo and flag. The change of the flag came after change of the name of the organization in 2013.
Valentin Poposki, 15 February 2020

image by Valentin Poposki, 15 February 2020

Festival Flags

The Trinidad Island Caribbean community, concentrated in Santa Rosa, uses a special flag. One day per year this flag adorns all the town, and is manufactured in great numbers for the occasion. The flag is vertically bi-colored, white to the hoist and red to the fly but on at least a day per year it is used also in two other colors: white and pink and white, and yellow. In the day of a great holiday in the community a queen is chosen, who parades through the streets accompanied by a red flag with yellow fringes in proportions 1:2 in one of which, in a single face, there is a white vertical rectangle (that does not quite reach the top or bottom edges) and which bears motifs, probably religious (apparently the Virgin with a child that gives the flag the appearance of being vertically divided, approximately 3:2:3 and whose white part would be adhered or sewn on. The emblem of the community also contains the red and white colors, appearing in banners; on red parts are elements of the community, and below them the name (Santa Rosa Carib Community).

white and red:
image by Jaume Ollé Casals, 23 December 2012

white and yellow:
image by Jaume Ollé Casals, 23 December 2012

white and pink:
image by Jaume Ollé Casals, 23 December 2012

Flag used in religious processions, called "Queen flag". Is a red flag, sometimes bearing a religious image within a vertical white rectangle.

image by Jaume Ollé Casals, 23 December 2012

Former emblem of the community

image by Valentin Poposki, 15 February 2020

image by Jaume Ollé Casals, 23 December 2012

image by Valentin Poposki, 15 February 2020