As we continue our Caribbean stay, we’re trying to repair our woeful ignorance of its history. We learned a lot from a visit to the Terramar Museum here in Kralendijk. It’s small but has some very nice exhibits about the island and its history.
Though an island, Bonaire is not isolated; it shares in the history of the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. Bonaire is part of the Dutch Antilles along with Aruba and Curaçao (known as the ABC islands). Human habitation on Bonaire goes back to about 1300 BCE (it’s earlier for the other two islands). The Arawak Indians arrived from South American around 500 CE. A millennium later, in 1499, Amerigo Vespucci ‘discovered’ the island. From that time for nearly a century afterwards, Spain ruled the island. In the early part of the 16th century Spanish commanders imported animals and turned the island into a cattle plantation. The original settlement was at Rincon, located inland so as to be sheltered from pirate attacks.
For eighty years, from 1568 to 1648 – as happened elsewhere in Caribbean history – the Spanish and the Dutch fought for control of the ABC islands. Bonaire passed into Dutch control in 1636. The Dutch West India Company founded plantations here. The island’s major export was salt, which is abundantly present. Even today in the southern part of the island the salt industry continues. You can see humongous white piles awaiting processing, from many points on the island. Back then the salt was harvested by slaves; today you can see the huts built for them (see featured image, above). They are no more than four feet high with an entrance and window, and the whole thing is barely big enough for an adult to lie down in.
The Dutch lost control of the ABC Islands to the British from 1800 to 1803 and again from 1807 to 1816. In 1810, the British settled the town of Playa on the west coast. Today it’s the capital of Bonaire, Kralendijk (Dutch for ‘coral reef’).
It was not until 1862 that slavery ended on Bonaire. 80% of the slaves freed at that time belonged to the government and worked on salt plantations. The Terramar museum in Kralendijk has a small but effective exhibit on the harrowing conditions endured over the three centuries of slavery here. On top of everything else, a significant minority of those who worked in the salt mines went blind from the glare.
In World War II, when the Netherlands was occupied by the Nazis, Bonaire was a protectorate of Britain and the US. The American army built the Flamingo Airport as an airforce base. (It is the current airport.) Bonairean sailors played an important role in defending the oil production facilities of Aruba and Curacao from the German U-boats in the area. At the same time the Bonaireans built a detention camp to house Germans and Austrians whose loyalty was suspect. We wonder how many people who stay at the Divi Flamingo Beach Resort know that it sits where that camp was.
From 1954 to 2010 Bonaire was part of the Netherlands Antilles, a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. (1954 was the same year that Suriname chose independence rather than joining.) In 2010 this group dissolved, and the constituent members now have different statuses within the Dutch government. Bonaire is a ‘special municipality’ and has its own mayor and municipal council. It follows Dutch laws, however, and citizens of Bonaire are eligible to vote in parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. The island is not, however, part of the European Union and EU laws do not apply here. (Presumably, the use of the US dollar is a nod to pragmatism.)
Bonaire’s official language is Dutch, but only 15% of its people speak it as a main language. Two-thirds of its populace speak Papiamentu, a creole language that sounds a bit like Portuguese.
A local organisation, Nos Ke Boneiru Bèk (“We Want Bonaire Back”), has been trying for years to alter the relationship between Bonaire and the Netherlands. A non-binding referendum held at the end of 2015 revealed that 65% of the citizens were not happy with their current relationship with the Netherlands. Nos Ke Boneiru Bèk continues to lobby for independence. A second referendum is to be held, but no date is set, and the future remains unclear.
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