View from Curaçao’s Tula MuseumCuraçao’s Tula and Maria
In Curaçao, as in other Caribbean islands, Africans rebelled against colonialism. “The truth is that the rebellions of kidnapped Africans began on the high seas,” said Henriquez. “The Dutch archives recorded that one in five ships experienced revolts…Rebellions were also brewing in Curaçao. The largest one was led by Tula and his lieutenants.
“Tula was nicknamed ‘Rigaud,’ after the Haitian general Benoit Joseph André Rigaud, one of the heroes of the Haitian revolution. We don’t know where Tula originally came from, but he knew about the situation in Haiti, where an antislavery revolt led in 1791 by Toussaint L’Ouverture had taken over the colonial regime. Tula, who had escaped enslavement, knew the French Revolution and the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
“A woman named Sablika joined with Tula, as did Pedro Wacao and Louis Mercier, who were Tula’s lieutenants.
“Tula, our great fugitive slave, began his insurrection on August 19, 1795, at the Porto Mari plantation and the Kenepa plantation, at half past eight in the evening, but the colonial army was very powerful, and Tula and his army were defeated. Tula was captured and his execution took place on October 3, 1795, in the Rif (the Reef), on the south coast of the island of Otrabanda.”
Henriquez said Tula’s testimonial words can be found in the archival documents. These are Tula’s words, as recorded by Father Jacobus Schinck: “We have been abused too much, we do not seek to harm anyone, and we only seek our freedom. The French Blacks obtained their freedom, the French occupied Holland, so we must be free here.”
Another self-emancipated Curaçaoan and leader of a slave rebellion was Maria, who was a cook at the Dutch West India Company’s Santa Maria plantation. Maria helped prepare newly captured Africans for disbursement to other plantations. On September 15, 1716, the slaves on the plantation revolted, killing the white personnel who exploited them as well as white women and children in the area. Within 10 days, the Willemstad military was able to put the rebellion down.
One of Maria’s co-conspirators, a man named Tromp, declared under torture that Maria had planned the uprising because she wanted revenge on the foreman, Müller, who was responsible for the death of her husband. Maria was sentenced to death and burned at the stake on November 9, 1716.
The history of Tula and other Africans in Curaçao is occasionally taught in the schools, but there is no established method for promoting this historical material. Most times, the teaching of this falls on cultural groups that specifically deal with issues of African emancipation. For now, all talks of reparations for slavery by the Netherlands appear to be based on calls from Afro Curaçaons.
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Publish date : 2024-10-02 17:11:00
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