Cerito

On the small estate Cerito ("little hill"), also called De Vrede (1858), there was formerly some farming and small-scale livestock keeping, but Cerito was known above all as a water plantation and was praised for its well water, which was of good quality. It is said to have been the first plantation on Curaçao where a windmill was introduced for pumping up well water.

Brenneker reports in Sambumbu that enslaved people from Parera were put to work at Cerito and that they had to walk to the water plantation with iron on their feet.

According to Renkema, Cerito was first mentioned in population registers in 1852, but it probably existed earlier, with a stone house that was built around 1800.

The plantation house, opposite the Promenade shopping centre and south of Bloemhof, was around 1898 a country residence for, among others, a physician and a merchant who lived in the city. It then remained for several generations in the possession of the Pietersz-Leyba family until it was sold to Orco Bank in 2007.