‘Building on the Power of the Past’ the production and politics of heritage on a Dutch Caribbean Island

Abstract

ABSTRACT Lying off the coast of Venezuela in a prime ‘sun, sea, and sand’ location, Curaçao is a popular tourist destination with a complex past. Since its colonisation by the Dutch in 1634, it has seen slavery, abolition, a civil rights movement, industrialisation, and severe environmental damage. All the while it has served as an exotic escape for wealthy travellers. In 2010, a high-profile European jazz festival came to the island and drew a large, international crowd. The success of this first Curaçao North Sea Jazz Festival (CNSJF) sparked a new commercial strategy by the Curaçao Tourist Board to grow the industry and in recent years, more events began to spring up on the island. One of these was Punda Jazz Vibes, which is a free event run by local residents (by contrast, CNSJF tickets cost $195 per night). This paper examines the discourses that surround and connect these events, with special focus on the production and mediation of cultural heritage in the wider tourism infrastructure that supports them. We demonstrate the political nature of heritage production on Curaçao and show how the festivals are implicated in a long history of colonial and postcolonial exploitation, thus questioning the social impact of the tourism industry at large.