Aruba

The ongoing news story of Natalee Holloway's disappearance on the island of Aruba has incidentally highlighted an area of ignorance for me. I had vague memories of having heard of the island before but had no idea where it was. Knowing from the reports that it was in the Caribbean, I put it tentatively in that long string of islands from Hispaniola to Trinidad, the Windward and Leeward Islands. Most European countries have had an interest in these islands at one time or another and it seemed likely that the Dutch might have one or two of them therefore. And there are plenty of them to go around, little scraps of land that were up for grabs in the early years of New World colonization.

But the question has nagged at me; it was a hole in my geographical knowledge that I should do something about. The matter of Dutch involvement needed to be cleared up as well. There seemed to be a strong connection to the Netherlands still and I wondered if Aruba might be a remnant of Dutch control in the same way that the Falklands are for the British. Then Curacao was mentioned in the reports and this really had me interested. Curacao is a much more renowned name in history than Aruba and yet again I found myself with only a vague idea of its position on the earth's surface. Google beckoned.

And now I know that Aruba and Curacao are two of the Dutch Antilles Islands, an archipelago running just north of Venezuela in the far south of the Caribbean. I found a map of Aruba that also gives an idea of its position relative to better known areas of the world. My geographical perspective shifted quickly to accommodate this new information.

Scanning the place names on the map, I could find none that I remembered from news reports but there were interesting hints at other things: Gold Mine Ruins, Petroglyphs and Huliba Caves & Tunnel of Love.

Digging a little deeper, I found this description of the island: "Aruba is among the most southern of the Lesser Antilles islands (ABC islands = Aruba, Bonaire & Curacao) and is the farthest west of that group. It's a mere 15 miles (24 km) from the coast of Venezuela. On a clear day the Venezuelan mainland is visible from the south-eastern coast, and about 42 miles (67 km), or 20 minutes by airplane, to our nearest Caribbean neighbor, Curacao.

"The oblong island is fronted by heavy surf and a jagged coast on our northern, windward side and by seven miles (11 km) of honey-colored sand beaches on the southern leeward coast. It's some 75 square miles (193 km2) in area and measures about five miles (8 km) at it widest point and 19 miles (30 km) in length."

There remained the matter of Aruba's relationship to the Netherlands to be sorted out. On the same site, there is a short history of the island but it is vague on the present arrangement between the island and the Dutch. It was not until I extended my research into the neighboring island of Curacao that I found an answer.

In the summary of Curacao's history, I found this: "After WW II, Curacao joined the rest of the Caribbean in a loud clamor for independence. What it got instead was a measure of autonomy as an entity within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Curacao, along with Aruba, Bonaire, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten, became the Netherlands Antilles, with the administrative center in Willemstad, where it remains today. Aruba later separated from the other five islands. Today, the kingdom has three partners: The Netherlands, the five islands of the Netherlands Antilles, and Aruba."

It seems that Aruba is in some sort of partnership with the Dutch Antilles and the Netherlands, an unusual arrangement at a time when almost all colonial possessions have been granted independence. But it does explain how the legal system has remained the same as Holland's, a fact repeated again and again in the news reports.

So my curiosity regarding Aruba is satisfied and another little snippet of geographical information stored in the files. I must admit, however, that I also looked at Bonaire and it looks the most pleasant of the ABC islands...