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Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: Get Ready! introduktorio: poné Bo Kla! Whether it is celebrated or rejected, attended to or ignored, the past is omnipresent. —DaviD LoWenthaL From the air, Curaçao looks narrow and flat. It appears stark and quiet, its dry desert plains scattered with clusters of tall cacti, its shores noticeably rocky, dotted with divi-divi trees and Dutch-styled windmills. Stepping off my plane means leaving my air-conditioned reverie to enter the warm humid air that breathes the sudden realization: this is my home for the next year. I am here to study Curaçaoan culture—to scout the island for its music and the country’s African-based ritual rhythms. I slide into the back seat of a taxi. With one glance at my hotel address, the taxi driver is off, his pace brisk, braking only occasionally for the potholes and speed bumps. We are on our way to the central city of Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao. Unlike many other islands, Curaçao has not gained colonial independence. Instead, after World War II it acquired a measure of autonomy as a member of the Netherlands Antilles; and, with the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in October 2010, Curaçao became a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, to which it remains economically, politically, and socially tied.2 2. The Netherlands Antilles had comprised Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (known as the Windward Antilles, due to their location in the eastern end of the Caribbean Sea) and Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten (defined collectively as the Leeward Antilles, due to their northern location). Aruba became an independent entity in 1986 (the crusade toward gaining full independence was halted in 1990, due to internal strife among Aruban citizens). With the recent (October 2010) dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, the islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba have become“public bodies ” of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which, collectively known as Caribbean Netherlands or BES islands, are considered overseas territories of the European Union; while the islands of Cura- çao and Sint Maarten have become constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. 2 Acknowledgments 2 IntrodUctIon/IntrodUcktorIo Curaçao is the largest island of the Dutch Caribbean (171 square miles), and, with a population over 140,000, houses nearly two-thirds of the entire Dutch Caribbean population. Located thirty-five miles north of Venezuela and forty-two miles east of Aruba, Curaçao provides the perfect location for the tourist: it is outside the hurricane belt, with an average year-round temperature of 80 degrees. The city of Willemstad is divided by a port channel, Sint Annabaai (“Saint Anna Bay”), enclosed by rugged hills. One side of the harbor, called Punda (“The Point”), is a popular shopping stop for tourists —its picturesque colonial-styled buildings are topped with red-gabled, tiled roofs, and are painted in a kaleidoscope of colors, including pink, blue, green, and purple. Reminiscent of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the other Dutch cities, Curaçao’s architectural landscape provides a strange familiarity to the many Dutch tourists who head for Curaçao for their vacations each year. The other side of Willemstad, called Otrobanda (“The Other Side”), attracts the local shoppers—“it has the best deals in town,” one Curaçaoan woman later shared with me. Its maze of winding streets are flanked by rows of small, colonial houses.Although these roads appear too narrow to pass by car, they sustain heavy traffic, morning, noon, and night. Otrobanda and Punda are connected by two different bridges, Queen Emma and Queen Juliana, both named after popular Dutch royalty. Queen Emma is a wooden-planked floating bridge, ready to open and fold against the Otrobanda shore when ships enter or exit the harbor. When the bridge is open, pedestrians are forced to board ferries which shuttle them back and forth across the channel. While automobiles were once permitted to cross the Queen Emma Bridge, they are now restricted to Queen Juliana, a fourlane , 200-foot-high structure built in 1975.“The Queen Juliana Bridge is the tallest bridge in the Caribbean,” my taxi driver proudly states as he repeatedly changes gears, the taxi slowly edging its way to the top. The view from Queen Juliana is magnificent. Looking out toward the sea, both Punda and Otrobanda are visible as one collective city. The opposite direction provides bird’s-eye views of the many oil refineries set along the inner harbor coast. “Among the...

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