Trinidad and Tobago

Surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and North Atlantic Ocean, the island republic of Trinidad and Tobago is located northeast of Venezuela on the eastern Caribbean chain. The two islands are located 21 miles (1 mile = 1.609 kilometers) apart, and together constitute a nation of nearly 1.3 million people almost evenly divided between Afro-Caribbean Christians and immigrant Indian Hindus and Muslims.

Trinidad was established by Spain in 1754 and Tobago, by Dutch, English, and later Latvians in the 18th century, as part of the New World colonies. As plantation and sharecropping economies, the two islands collectively switched colonial hands more than 30 times in two centuries. Populations soon practiced African-influenced religious traditions interspersed with European Christian practices. Following slavery's outlaw and the British Caribbean's full emancipation ...