Curaçao

The island was home to the Caquetío, an Arawak people; the Spanish, arriving in 1499, deported most of them to work on Hispaniola. The Dutch West India Company took Curaçao in 1634 and made its deep natural harbour a stronghold and a trading hub. From 1662 the company made Curaçao a centre of the Atlantic slave trade — a transit market where enslaved Africans brought from West Africa were held and sold on to Spanish and other colonies, a role central to the island's early wealth and to Willemstad's growth.

A Sephardic Jewish community, arriving from Amsterdam and Brazil in the seventeenth century, became prominent in trade; its Mikvé Israel-Emanuel synagogue, with a sand-covered floor, was completed in 1732 and is the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas. After emancipation in 1863, the island lived from salt, phosphate, and shipping until 1915, when Royal Dutch Shell built a large refinery to process crude from the newly discovered Venezuelan oilfields, transforming the economy and drawing migrant labour.

Curaçao was the seat of government of the Netherlands Antilles. Discontent with the island's subordinate relationship to the Netherlands, racial discrimination, and layoffs at the Shell refinery led to the riots of 30 May 1969, "Trinta di Mei", which began at the refinery gate and became a turning point in Curaçaoan politics. When the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved in 2010, Curaçao became an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with its own parliament and government while the Kingdom keeps defence and foreign affairs. Shell left in the mid-1980s, selling the refinery to a government consortium that leased it to Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA; refining stopped at the end of 2019, when the lease expired and United States sanctions had cut off the crude supply, and the plant has stood idle since. The island is working out what to do with it, and has also taken in Venezuelans who have left their country's crisis next door.

Curaçaoan culture is Afro-Caribbean at its core, expressed through Papiamentu — spoken with pride and used in schools, media, and politics — and through music and festival. Tumba, an African-derived rhythm named after the drums that carry it, is the sound of the Carnival road march; tambú, a drum-and-chant form that began among enslaved Angolans in the seventeenth century, was long opposed by the Catholic Church and restricted by permit laws before its revival from the 1970s; and the Seú, once a march through the fields at harvest time, now parades through Willemstad.

Society is diverse and layered — Afro-Curaçaoan, Dutch, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish, Latin American, Portuguese, Lebanese, and Asian communities have all left a mark on the food, business, and street life. Roman Catholicism is the majority faith, with Protestant and Jewish minorities.

Family, the neighbourhood, Carnival groups, and the corner bar-shop organise daily social life, and there is a strong storytelling tradition around the trickster figure Nanzi, the spider, brought from West Africa.

About 155,000 people live in Curaçao, most in and around Willemstad, which is split by its harbour channel into the Punda and Otrobanda sides. As Dutch nationals, Curaçaoans hold EU citizenship and many move to the Netherlands to study and work, so the island has both emigration and, more recently, significant immigration from Venezuela.

The economy leans on tourism — including a large dive and cruise sector — financial and business services, a large online-gambling sector, ship repair at the Curaçao Dry Dock Company, and the uncertain future of the refinery. Unemployment, the cost of living, and the strain of Venezuelan arrivals on services are recurring concerns.

Daily life is bilingual or trilingual, car-dependent outside the compact centre, and oriented to the calm leeward beaches and the annual build-up to Carnival.

Curaçaoan cooking is Papiamentu home food with Dutch, Latin, and African threads. Keshi yena — a hollowed Edam or Gouda rind stuffed with spiced meat (often chicken), olives, and raisins and baked — is the signature dish, a clever use of the cheese trade. Stobá (a stew of goat, beef, or papaya), sopi mondongo (tripe soup), guiambo (a slippery okra-and-seafood soup), and kadushi (cactus soup) are everyday staples.

Funchi (a cornmeal paste close to polenta) is the usual accompaniment, with salt fish, fresh fish, and goat as mains. Pastechi — fried pastry turnovers — are the breakfast and snack of choice, filled with cheese, tuna, chicken, or ground meat, and the market food stalls in Willemstad serve a full plate at lunchtime.

The island's own drink is Curaçao, the liqueur made from the dried peel of the laraha, a bitter orange descended from the Seville oranges the Spanish brought in 1527; the blue version is the famous one, and Senior & Co have distilled it at the Chobolobo landhouse in Willemstad since 1947. Locally brewed Amstel and other beers, fresh limeade, and strong coffee are the everyday drinks.

Willemstad's historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site: the Handelskade's row of pastel merchant houses, the swinging Queen Emma pontoon bridge, Fort Amsterdam — built by the Dutch West India Company in 1634 and now the seat of government — the sand-floored synagogue, and the Kurá Hulanda museum of the slave trade, spread across the Punda, Otrobanda, Scharloo, and Pietermaai quarters.

The long west end holds the best beaches — the twin coves of Grote and Kleine Knip (Playa Kenepa), Playa Porto Marie, Cas Abou, and Playa Lagun — and the uninhabited islet of Klein Curaçao, a day-trip by boat with a lighthouse and turquoise shallows. The Curaçao Underwater Marine Park runs along 20 km of the southern coast, and with reefs that can be reached without a boat the island is one of the Caribbean's premier shore-diving destinations; the "Blue Edge" drop-off and the drift dives off Watamula, at the western tip, are among the best-known sites.

Christoffel National Park in the northwest has hiking to the Christoffelberg, at 372 m the island's highest point, and a chance of seeing the Curaçao white-tailed deer; the neighbouring Shete Boka park has a wild coastline of rocky inlets and protected turtle beaches. Inland are the Hato Caves and, in the old plantation houses (landhuizen) scattered across the island, a network of small museums and restaurants.