Aruba

From 1636 to 1986 Aruba was part of the Netherlands Antilles, administered by the government center at Curaçao. Until 1954 the islands were officially referred to as "Curaçao and its dependencies." The dependency on Curaçao has always been a source of resentment for Aruba. In several aspects, Aruba was different from the five other islands of the Netherlands Antilles, even in comparison with Curaçao and Bonaire, although Aruba and these two islands have in common the spoken Papiamento, a Portuguese-based Creole language familiar to the Criolo of Cabo Verde.

In colonial times, slavery in the salt pans of Bonaire was the backbone of the local Netherlands Antillean economy, with Curaçao serving as a shipment point for the slaves. Sugar plantations with slave workers were the principal source of internal revenue. Slavery was rare, however, on Aruba. Aruba's first inhabitants were the Arawak Indians; the European colonists are believed to have mixed with the indigenous population. The Arawak legacy is considered to constitute a component of the Aruban culture. In general, the Aruban population is light-colored, except in the southern cone of the island, where black immigrants from other Caribbean countries came to work in the oil industry. Aruba shares with the other islands of the former Netherlands Antilles a fixation on color and race. Although never explicitly mentioned, the dominance of the "black" governments in Curaçao after 1954, when the Antilles acquired political autonomy, increased antagonism against "colonialist Curaçao."

In 1986 Aruba, at the behest of a political movement insisting on autonomy vis-à-vis Curaçao, seceded from the Netherlands Antilles. Aruba became a separate, autonomous "country" within the kingdom of the Netherlands under the Dutch crown. The status aparte granted by The Hague applied to the period between 1986 and 1996, after which Aruba had to become independent—a condition imposed by the Dutch government. Even in 1986 it was clear that Aruba had only agreed with this commitment in order to get its autonomy. Once it had been achieved, independence was not longer a case, and the Netherlands accepted this fait accompli: After 1996, the kingdom of the Netherlands no longer insisted on independence and Aruba continues to be incorporated in the kingdom.

Aruba's economy was dependent on the oil industry for more than fifty years. In 1928 Standard Oil built a refinery on Aruba to process Venezuelan oil. The island economy prospered, and oil processing was the dominant industry until the mid-1980s, when the refinery was closed. After its secession from the other Antilles, Aruba's economy was stagnant, even moribund, for a couple of years. Unemployment rose, a considerable portion of the population migrated, and the number of inhabitants diminished from 65,000 to 50,000. Then the government opted for a huge investment in mass tourism, trying to appeal to U.S. visitors. The effort to finance the hotels and other infrastructure for tourism also attracted illicit funding and drug money. In the 1990s the governments in The Hague and of Aruba (collaborating with U.S. customs and other agencies) were able to curtail considerably the influence of illicit financing and drug-related activities. An elaborated triangular system of cooperation and control was established.

In the meantime, Aruba's tourist industry has been thriving, and the island enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the Caribbean region. Poverty and unemployment rates are very low. About half of the Aruban GNP is tourism related. Yearly, more than a million tourists from the United States, Canada, and the European Union visit the island. As of January 2007, the national population exceeded 100,000 inhabitants; 33 percent were immigrants from the Caribbean island states and Colombia.

See alsoCuraçaoxml .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Oostindie, Gert. Paradise Overseas; The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and Its Transatlantic Legacies. Oxford: Macmillan, 2005.

Oostindie, Gert, and Inge Klinkers. Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Politics in a Comparative Perspective. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003.

                                        Dirk Kruijt