“This is the Soul of Aruba Speaking”

Abstract

In 1951, at the onset of major decolonization initiatives in the Netherlands Antilles, thousands of residents on Aruba successfully joined in protest to defeat Campo Alegre, a proposed brothel near the Aruban oil-refining city of San Nicolas. This article considers the protest movement within the context of Antillean decolonization and argues that debates over sexual politics played an important role in popularizing an Aruban identity separate from neighboring Curaçao—then seat of the government of the Netherlands Antilles and site of the first Campo Alegre brothel. Through analysis of Aruban archival sources, this article examines how the protest movement exploited decolonization policy while also drawing on the rhetoric of leading local political parties who claimed racial and cultural superiority to Curaçao.