Cities of the Dead: Architectural Motifs and Burial Practices in Curaçao’s Religious and Ethnic Communities more

In this study we analyze the cemeteries of Curaçao, a small desert island in the Dutch West Indies near the coast of Venezuela that was once a crucial player in colonial smuggling and the slave trade. Our study compares the island’s Jewish (Spanish-Portuguese), Protestant (primarily Dutch), and Catholic (Afro-Curaçaoan) cemeteries. Following the work of Dickran and Ann Tashijian, Keith Cunningham, Lynn Gosnell, Suzanna Gott and others, we interpret these stones within the religio-cultural context of the people who used them. We argue that whereas ethnic cemeteries in the United States often emphasize the distinctiveness of the communities, Curaçao’s cemeteries emphasize both ethnic distinction and ethnic elision. The permeability of racial and religious boundaries in the cemeteries reflects the island’s complicated racial history and is an important reminder of how race is often constructed differently outside of the United States. This permeability should not be confused with social equality: indeed, as racial categories became more fluid following emancipation, islanders used other categories such as wealth and status displays to reinforce social privilege within (as opposed to between) ethnic groups.