By Miranda La Rose
A former tobacco and cash crop farmer, carpenter and fisherman, 90-year-old Leonard Bartholomew Torres has been at the heart of the development of the village of Laluni and seeing its transformation from dense forests to a thriving agricultural community. Laluni is seven miles from Kuru Kururu on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway.
At present, the oldest resident in his community, Torres was one of ten tobacco farmers who in the early 1970s was allotted lands along the forested Laluni Creek that they had to cut down and clear to cultivate tobacco for the Demerara Tobacco Company (Demtoco).
Unintentionally, he is the only former tobacco farmer from Santa Rosa, Moruca, Region One (Barima/Waini) who has remained in Laluni and made the place his home. “My wife and I never intended to make this place our home. It was supposed to be temporary,” he said during a recent interview at Laluni.
