Chapter in Book
Title of chapter: Historical Aspects of Forced and Free Black Migrations in the ABC Islands
Book: Many Rivers to Cross: Black Migrations in Brazil and the Caribbean. Elaine P. Rocha (Ed.). Vernon Press, 2024.
In the chapter Historical Aspects of Forced and Free Black Migrations in the ABC Islands, Marco Aurelio Schaumloeffel examines the ABC islands – Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao – located in the southern region of the Caribbean archipelago. These
slands, although they “functioned as an entrepôt for enslaved Africans, and the
slave traders operated there as “middlemen” in the lucrative business of human
trafficking”, were not drawn into the plantation economy. Schaumloeffel starts
with a discussion about the importation of African people from various regions
during the period in which the Dutch were heavily involved in slave trading,
moving onto the arrival of Portuguese-Brazilian Sephardic Jews and their
enslaved workers, which had a great impact in the islands. After the abolition
of slavery, black people started to move from the islands to the continent, but
the migrations increased during the twentieth century when workers moved
from the ABC islands to parts of the British and Spanish Caribbean. He shows
that movement in the region did not take place in only one direction, as people
from other islands moved to Curaçao and Aruba, attracted by economic opportunities after oil was found in the region. This intra-Caribbean migration
had a huge impact on the cultural identity of the region.