Tambú represents a ritual from Curaçao, largest of the Netherlands Antilles, employed by the island’s African peoples as a religio-spiritual vehicle. In Dutch mainland cities, however, the Tambú has developed into a type of party music, with Curaçaoan immigrants joining other African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants to explore and express complex collective identities. These reinvented tambú parties constitute new sites of cultural reproduction as well as contestation, of solidarity as well as difference, providing the rare occasion to observe diasporic belonging among Afro-Caribbean communities in the Netherlands. These contemporary tambú parties provide a needed space to negotiate competing and overlapping identities, enabling both a specific Antillean identity as well as a more inclusive diasporic identity.
This anthology celebrates these authors as Caribbean authors, who through their translated writing enable us to become "third listeners," eavesdropping on a Caribbean conversation." (Hilda van Neck-Yoder)
The article discusses discrimination against free blacks and colored (mixed-race) people in the justice system of 18th-century Curaçao, then a colony of the Netherlands run by the Dutch West India Company. Two examples are examined, that of the Dutch prosecutor Hubertus Coerman, who complained of the situation to company directors in 1766, and the Curaçaoan free black woman Mariana Franko, who complained to the directors in the same year after being falsely accused of theft and banished from the colony. Differences between the administration of justice in the Netherlands and in the Dutch West Indies are then discussed.
Disclosure among a population disproportionately affected by HIV in the Netherlands, namely African and Afro-Caribbean diaspora, was investigated. Participants reported disclosing because they were in a close and supportive relationship, disclosure led to emotional release, disclosure could lead to emotional or financial support, they felt a perceived duty to inform, and they had a desire to educate others about sexual risk-taking. The findings suggest that stigma plays an important role in disclosure decisions among these populations.
History has produced a myriad of cultural overlays in the Caribbean and the adjacent region of South America, a legacy of centuries of intrusion by rival European empires and the consequent sporadic exchange between the European invaders of the various local territories and peoples they claimed to control. The result is a mixture of peoples, languages, religions, and all other aspects of human culture, reflected in enrichment of the respective European and African languages involved, as well as in creation of new hybrid languages. It is in this context that one can speak of "Caribbean" literature and art from Suriname and the Netherlands.
Examines the role of successive intraregional migrations on the construction of cultural identity in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. The author analyzes the Afro-Dutch experience within the broader canvas of Caribbean migration studies, and thus brings a broader diasporic perspective to current research of identity and culture, with particular reference to Curaçao. Through migrations, the island has incorporated different kinds of musical expressions of the region. Of all cultural forms, music provides an ideal opportunity to explore cultural exchanges within and beyond diasporas. Curaçao therefore offers a rare window for viewing the role of intraregional migrations in the formation of discourses on diaspora and cultural identity. Migration studies that look only at the modern transnationalistic diapora obscure the deeply rooted significance of migration on Afro-diasporic identity within the Caribbean and the cultural identity of specific island societies. Intraregional migration movements both past and present profoundly influenced the cultural identity of Curaçao and its diasporic historical vision. Curaçaoan cultural identity has not been solely shaped by the internal dynamics of a merging of African and European cultures, but also intraCaribbean interactions of the descendants of enslaved Africans.
