Rio Canario

Including Emmastad

The neighbourhoods Suffisant/Muizenberg (Bieu)* and Rio Canario/Emmastad have been historically linked to each other by Shell: the oil refinery bought up large parts of Suffisant/Muizenberg (and later Groot Kwartier) to house its guest workers, and later formed Emmastad out of Rio Canario for "higher" employees.

In addition there is also a physical connection, formed by the abundant rainwater that flows through these neighbourhoods.

The Rio Canario, or Rooi Canarie valley as named by the first Dutch colonists, extends from the southern foot of the high terrace of Seru Fortuna and Sint Jacob to the northern shores of the Schottegat. The rainwater collected by this broad valley flows via natural dams or tanki's and the largest dam structure ever built by Shell on Curaçao, the Dam di Muizenberg, to the Schottegat. It is one of the largest water flows on the island, and history even tells of cases of people who drowned at Rooi Canarie.

Rooi Canarie

At the occupation of the island in 1634 the West India Company already held a strip around the Schottegat under its own management. This also included Rooi Canarie, which was laid out in 1662 and is thus one of the oldest former plantations on the island. In 1700 it was described as "the company plantation Rooi Canarie with maize garden at Steene Kooral, including Stevesant alias Stuyvesant", and served as a food plantation for slave camps at Zuurzak and Groot Sint Joris. In 1700 there were on Rooi Canarie and associated grounds 86 enslaved people, 69 head of cattle, 176 sheep and 171 goats. Besides maize, beans and peanuts were also grown here, livestock farming took an important place, and at the end of the 17th century indigo was also grown as an export crop.

A landhuis never stood on Rooi Canarie, but especially the grounds of the Shell golf course still clearly show traces of an old plantation.

The plantation Rooi Canarie

The nine company plantations were all later — except Hato — sold or leased. The last tenant of Rooi Canarie was Jan Hendrik de Lannoy, who bought the plantation in 1796. His son Andries became heir to a very large part of central Curaçao. After Andries' death in 1829 the estate — despite the notorious Rio Canario lawsuit of that year — proved difficult to divide among his heirs. And so part was leased in small plots to mainly Venezuelan contract workers who worked at the refinery. Rooi Canarie and Suffisant were regarded as "difficult plantations" that formally belonged to hundreds of entitled parties but were occupied by the Venezuelan workers who, higgledy-piggledy and from every conceivable material, had built 500 wretched shacks.

The slum districts were an obstacle for the community, but Shell did not intervene and did not concern itself with what happened outside its work terrain. For lack of responsible owners the police — at that time still under unskilled leadership — stood powerless.

Revolutionary nest

The ideal breeding ground, then, for unsavoury elements. And revolutionaries, such as Rafael Simón Urbina, opponent of president Juan Vicente Gómez in Venezuela, who had gone into hiding at Rooi Canarie. Together with Gustavo Machado, a notorious communist who visited Curaçao at set times — sometimes as a tennis champion — a communist cell was founded in 1928. And participants were gathered at Rooi Canarie for a raid. On 8 June 1929, at 9.15 p.m., 2 lorries with 45 men roared through the open gate of the Waterfort — where the police post was stationed at that moment. Armed with machetes and automatic (as later turned out, unloaded) pistols. The Venezuelans then murdered three soldiers there.

Urbina wanted only weapons; otherwise he would set the refinery on fire. The ship Maracaibo was placed at his disposal and he left with 197 rifles, 4 machine guns, 38 pistols, some machetes and the governor and the police chief as hostages. The governor had, however, managed shortly before to have the Venezuelan government warned that Urbina was on his way, as a result of which the attack ultimately failed after all. Urbina and "tennis champion" Machado escaped, the hostages were back the next morning, and a state of siege was proclaimed at once. Making use of this, "the grounds of Rooi Canarie-Suffisant, the breeding ground of criminal agitation" were immediately expropriated, and both former plantations were taken away from the owners — "whoever they might be".

Money down the well

With effect from 1 January 1930, 150 hectares of Suffisant and 93 hectares of Rooi Canarie were granted to Shell on ground lease at 50 guilders per hectare per year. Thirty hectares were reserved for those who, under old rights, were allowed to remain on the plantation; the government moved the rest to nearby Dein, and by 25 April 1931 the clearance was completed.

The De Windt family refused to sell the piece of land to the government and was put under pressure to accept as compensation 300 guilders and a smaller piece of land at Stenen Koraal. In protest Petrus Frederik de Windt, alias Papa Andries, threw the money into the well at the Medemapark at Suffisant.

Guest workers

By 1937 Rooi Canarie had been practically entirely incorporated into Emmastad, the village that Shell had built near the refinery for its employees. Shell already owned the adjoining Asiento and Valentijn and had always wanted to add Suffisant and Rooi Canarie to expand its housing stock and installations.

When the oil refinery was established on Curaçao in 1918, local labour proved inadequate, so contract workers were recruited from Bonaire, Suriname, Venezuela, the Netherlands and later also the Windward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, St Kitts, Saint Lucia, Anguilla and Barbados, and Portuguese from Madeira. They were first accommodated, by nationality, in scattered barracks, but during the second expansion period of the refinery were concentrated in enormous barracks at Suffisant.

Emmastad

Emmastad, the oldest part of the oil settlement, is named after Queen Emma, the grandmother of Queen Juliana, who died in 1934. Emmastad was built around 1920 as a company village with houses, shops and amenities. In 1915 Shell had already built the first houses for senior staff on the residential island, Negropont, quite close to the oil installations. On 9 hectares of land a Dutch village in the tropics arose here, with brick two-storey houses in streets named after Dutch painters. Supplemented with sports and medical facilities and, among other things, a school and a theatre.

The housing was later extended over the nearby Shell grounds, and by proclamation of 10 January 1929 the former residential districts Negropont, Asiento and Valentijn were renamed Emmastad. In 1937 a large part of Rio Canario was added to it too, and 220 dwellings for senior staff were built there, with school building (the present International School), sports accommodation, an open-air theatre and a cinema at Asiento.

In 1921 the social club Asiento was founded, and members, long since no longer solely Shell employees, can still use the sports facilities here or venture a dance on a late Sunday afternoon, for which one only has to pay XCG 5 entrance.

Swapping

The oil giant's policy was to build housing for its staff as close as possible to the refinery. It therefore had its eye on the nearby government grounds at Rio Canario and Groot Kwartier, and thanks to its enormous land holdings Shell could, for every hectare it wanted, swap three hectares of its plantations Brievengat and Cas Corá.

The streets in Emmastad are named after members of the royal house, and in the Bernhardlaan the two building phases can clearly be seen: on one side stood so-called green houses with roof tiles and green-painted steel window frames and cupboards in the interior. On the other side of the street stand the brown houses with corrugated-iron roofs and brown wooden frames and cupboards.

Facilities strip

The houses lie in streets that form a circular green space, with at the end a larger terrain where the deputy director of the refinery lived. This house, next to the green space with the big tree, is clearly visible, diagonally opposite the present supermarket Mangusa Rio.

The director of Shell always lived in the director's house on Negropont. The house was declared a monument and restored a few years ago. It is now the head office of Refineria di Kòrsou NV, which owns the refinery and manages it for the government.

From Mangusa Rio to the west stand in a row the various facilities for Shell employees that are still recognisable: the present Mangusa Rio was formerly the Henderson supermarket, and the present church building behind Mangusa the former billiard centre and the Jeugdhuis De Schelp (!). The present bank building was formerly also a bank, with next to it the Protestant Emmakerk, recognisable by the weathervane on the roof. It was brought into being by the influx of Protestant Shell employees. Then follows the Marnixschool, intended for children from Emmastad, and a few large block houses housing commercial businesses such as Obersi and a Chinese restaurant. It is unknown whether these impressive buildings were also built by Shell; enquiries have so far yielded no result. Then follow medical facilities, housed in the present Maternity clinic and the buildings west of it. Finally, the Shell company school was housed in the present Rio Frio building next to the police headquarters.

Wooden houses

Besides Emmastad, 70 dwellings were also built in 1938 on Groot Kwartier: Emmastad West, which are much simpler in layout, on smaller plots and less luxurious. Both wooden and concrete houses stood here. Later a number of wooden houses were moved as a whole to other barios, and only two wooden examples remain here. The streets in Emmastad West are named after Dutch naval heroes, such as Tjerk Hiddes.

Shopping strip

West of the old police building at Rio Canario there still stands a row of attached little shops. The oil workers from Suffisant passed along here on their way to work and bought a sandwich at these little shops for their lunch break at the Isla.

American camp in Emmastad

Amerikanenkamp, the neighbourhood near Suffisant where American soldiers were housed during WWII, is fairly well known. Less well known is that in the same period there was also an American camp in Emmastad. Helma Maduro-Molhuijsen wrote in De Archiefvriend that along the present Margrietlaan and west of the Regentesselaan lay a piece of domain land where barracks for American military personnel had been built. Both the refinery workers and the residents of Emmastad called this the Amerikanenkamp. The terrain was 3,000 square metres in size and was lent free of charge to the Americans "to be used as a (temporary) cemetery on the condition that it would be restored to its old state as soon as possible after the war and at the user's expense". The barracks had not disappeared after the war, however, but were used by the refinery as office space for the Shell Outdoor Department, while a large building with some barracks around it had still served as a "hotel".

The dam of Emmastad

A fairly unknown attraction in Emmastad is the dam: an idyllic natural collecting place of fresh water, just east of the pumping station. It is bounded by the asphalt lake on the south side and fed by two underground water streams from Rio Canario. It never dries up and has as permanent residents various freshwater fish and winged guests. The little lake is furthermore surrounded by enormous Barba di Jonkuman and Palu di Mangel, whose roots reach into the water. The ideal nature spot to recover quietly from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

*Muizenberg Bieu = Old Muizenberg, formerly called Suffisantdorp

Sources

• Gill: Een eeuw architectuur op Curaçao
• van Soest: Olie als water
• P. Brenneker: Sambumbu, various editions
• Langenfeld: "de plantage Rooi Canarie", various editions in the AD
• Maduro-Molhuijsen: "Het andere Amerikanenkamp", De Archiefvriend, April 2014

With thanks to: Christel Monsanto, Frensel Mercelina, Helma Maduro-Molhuijsen, François van der Hoeven, Jeroen Heuvel and Vrienden van het Nationaal Archief Curaçao.

Also read the pages of Suffisant, Sabana (di) Huncu and Groot Kwartier.