Tucacas

The story of Tucacas reads like a local "krioyo" novel, including historical and cultural ingredients such as the mysterious neighbourhood name, the plantation past, a formerly enslaved woman with various possessions, female ownership and transfer of land, unclear family ties, changing surnames, blurred cadastral boundaries between neighbourhoods, typical cultural customs and practices connected with Tera di famia and (interracial) love affairs that forge links to surrounding neighbourhoods, such as Vetter, Ma Louisa, West Groot Sint Joris and Rust en Vrede.

The name Tucacas

It is assumed that the word Tucacas stems from old, vanished languages spoken by the indigenous Caiquetio peoples. They lived both on the ABC islands and along the Venezuelan coast, so that names and place designations could easily spread through trade and migration. An official meaning of the word Tucacas is, however, not known.

In addition it is also possible that the name blew over to Curaçao via Sephardic-Jewish trade routes. The ancestors of these Jews, originating from Portugal and Spain, had fled because they were forced there to convert to Christianity.

Sephardic Jews settled on Curaçao from the 17th century, coming from the Netherlands. They had a large merchant fleet and maintained intensive relations with the Venezuelan coastal region, including the region around Tucacas. Thus in 1693 Tucacas, in the present state of Falcón, became an important intermediate station for trade, agriculture, cacao, salt extraction and coastal shipping. In Tucacas various copper mines were also to be found.

Marqués de Tucacas

Curaçao families and Jewish trading houses had structural economic and social ties with this coastal place, and the name occurs several times in archive documents of these families. The Jewish leaders were even referred to by the Spaniards as Marqués de Tucacas and Señor de las Tucacas, and the commercial centre was generally known in the region in the 18th–19th centuries. The Jewish settlement Tucacas was, however, destroyed by the Spaniards in 1720.

Caribbean atmosphere

Tucacas was moreover a location to which many enslaved people fled, and characteristic of the town nowadays is its colourful Caribbean architecture. The village is further popular for its crystal-clear water with white sand, coral reefs, colourful underwater world, mangroves and popular little islands, such as Cayo Sombrero.

So how the name precisely ended up on Curaçao is unknown. But it fits into a broader pattern in which Curaçao knoekjes, terrains and neighbourhoods received names from foreign places with which people traded or had family ties. It is thus historically plausible that the name Tucacas, of Caiquetio origin, combined with the Venezuelan proximity and the Jewish trade and migration relations, ended up in the oral tradition of Curaçao. Even if there is no direct written source that explicitly confirms it.

Tucacas on Curaçao

And so, north of Santa Rosa, lies a piece of land that is officially called Tucacas. Also written as Tocaca, Toccaca, Toekaka, Tokaka (1826) or Tucaca, because over time not only the ownership but also the name changed: Tokaka became Tucacas. Despite this name change the area remains recognisable as one coherent whole.

It is officially described as "a property situated north of Noord-Santa Rosa and west of Rust & Vrede, a good 9 hectares in size".

The Werbata map gives a more precise description of the location: it is bounded in the north by the former knoekjes Sint Christoffel and Rust en Vrede, in the east by Ma L(o)uisa, in the south by Kent U zelf and in the west by a piece of land that was also called Rust en Vrede* but later Tucacas Chikí (see Werbata map). According to the zone division on Curaçao the bario Tucacas belongs to the zone Santa Rosa.

Legal status

In the Plantation Register of the cadastre of the Stichting Kadaster en openbare registers Curaçao, Tucacas is further registered under no. 125 as follows:

"A plantation called 'Tokaka' (Tucacas), 91,770 m² in size, in the name of M. Martha (deceased), with the special notation 'No title of acquisition known in the public registers at the office of the above-mentioned foundation'."

Maria Martha was born on Curaçao on 19 January 1814 and died on 23 March 1903.

"No title of acquisition" is a legal term to indicate that in this case Maria Martha is still the owner of Tucacas, although she died long ago. It is a sign of informal transfer within families that is not always fully recorded in official registers.

This of course raises the question who is nowadays the owner of (the land of) Tucacas.

Tera di famia

Tucacas is a so-called "Tera di famia", family land, a cultural-institutional form of land ownership that commonly occurs among citizens of Afro-Caribbean descent. It occurs throughout the Caribbean and thus not only on Curaçao.

Family members, usually closely related to the deceased owner, live close together on family land, a situation that often goes back to the period of the abolition of slavery in the first half of the 19th century.

By descent all descendants of the original owner inherit ownership of the land as a group.

On death the land is not divided among the heirs but is held jointly by all rightful heirs as a shared right to the whole parcel. Rightful heirs, at least as they are regarded by the family, and this is not always identical to those designated by the authorities as owner.

Under the law Tucacas is a long-undivided estate: a property (terrain, plot, building) whose last known owner in the official registers has died and where since then no separation and division of the property has been carried out. In other words: the inheritance has not been settled.

Tucacas in the archives

The oldest known written mentions of the area that would later be called Tucacas date from the end of the eighteenth century. Archive documents speak of a piece of land with the name Tokaka that in 1790 is transferred from the late Pieter van Eijken to Cornelis van Eijken. The designation "late" makes clear that this is not a free sale but a transfer within the framework of an estate.

Genealogical research shows that Pieter and Cornelis are almost certainly the same persons as the brothers Van Eijken who were baptised in Leiden in 1734. This establishes that the original Van Eijkens were white Dutchmen who settled in the colonial society of Curaçao — an example of how European names mixed with local family histories.

A second early transfer follows in 1804, when Tokaka is again transferred after a death, this time to Carel Gillebrodus Meijer. These early mentions show that Tucacas existed as a recognisable piece of land before 1800 and was part of a network of family ownership and estate settlement. Also a confirmation that Tucacas is clearly not a modern neighbourhood name but is rooted in an older parcel history.

An area in motion

From 1811 the history of Tokaka becomes more visible in the archives. Conveyance deeds from that year and later contain more extensive descriptions of the terrain, the buildings and the surrounding grounds. In the course of the nineteenth century Tokaka changes owner several times, but strikingly the parcel keeps circulating within a relatively limited circle of persons and families.

According to a notarial deed of 14 August 1837 the terrain becomes the property of Juana Goestina (also written 'Augustina'), an enslaved woman who was declared free and had various possessions, such as the nearby Plantation Vetter and thus also Tucacas.

On 3 March 1845 Tucacas finally comes into the hands of her daughter Maria Martha. This transfer underlines that female ownership and transfer played an important role in the history of this and many Curaçao kunuku areas, but often remains underexposed in neighbourhood histories.

Maria Martha

Maria Martha (1814–1903), officially owner of Tucacas, plays a crucial role in the history and socio-cultural development of the bario. Most residents of the neighbourhood are in fact direct descendants from her two marriages.

As owner of Tucacas she marries for the first time in 1840, to a neighbour, the fisherman Johannes Clement, alias Johannes van Eijken, a surname that had earlier occurred as owners of Tucacas. This Johannes van Eijken is a son of Maria Louisa, alias Ma Louisa, owner of the adjoining grounds east of Tucacas, which still bear her name.

First marriage

From this marriage of her son with Maria Martha a daughter was born, namely Ersilia Martina.

Ersilia had 7 children who lived in Tucacas, of whom three had settled in Ma Louisa from the beginning. To this day it still happens that, outside the cadastral boundaries of Tucacas but bordering the grounds of Ma Louisa, parcels occur with Tucacas as their address. And conversely people from Ma Louisa still settle in Tucacas. The sharp boundaries on official cadastral maps have in practice blurred because of the historical bond that arose as a result of Maria Martha's first marriage.

East Tucacas

Striking, and not known, is why this large group of descendants have Martina as their surname and not Van Eijken like their progenitor. Among families around Tucacas it is often seen that the official surname drops away and a female middle name is used as a surname. Perhaps this fits within the Curaçao tradition in which family names often descend from mothers or grandmothers, as also appears from a CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics) analysis: Martina, Martha, Francisca and Maria are typical matronyms, i.e. arisen from female first names.* The Martinas are in any case concentrated in the east of Tucacas and, besides in Ma Louisa, sometimes also live in the adjoining Kent U Zelf.

Ersilia's third daughter, Paulina Ermita, was a single mother of eight children. When she has already passed sixty she marries a neighbour, Emilio Pieters, also in his sixties and owner of the well-known Hòfi Pieters in West-Groot Sint Joris. And on their wedding day he also recognised all eight of Paulina's children, and they received his surname.

Maria Martha's second marriage

When her first husband dies in 1842, Maria Martha marries for the second time in 1849, now to Alexander Carlo (Karel). The couple have 5 children:

• Poulina Denisia Pedro
• Phelipe Antonio Pedro
• Antonia Elisa Calvo
• Romano Nicolaas Karel
• Maximi Vincent Karel

The eldest daughter from this second marriage, Poulina Denisia, marries Clement Martes, the boy next door and son of Guillermo Martes. Guillermo was in 1869 the last owner of the adjoining knoekje Rust en Vrede west of Tucacas, also known as Tucacas Chikí. A villa district now lies here, first called Santa Rosa Resort, later Liverpool Resort.

This couple have 7 children, whose descendants concentrated mainly in the west of Tucacas. They bear mainly the surname Martes, a name that was passed on within this branch of the family for generations and still occurs frequently today in the western part of the neighbourhood.

One of their children was Norberto Pablo Martes, born in 1893 and manager of the very well-known Hòfi di Shon Pa in Tucacas. Shon Pa also had a brother, Cristoval Flores,** grandfather of the well-known singer and musician Rignald "Mister Icho" Alexina of the musical group La Perfecta.

Another child from this second marriage of Maria Martha is Romano Nicolaas Karel, born in 1857 and married in 1904 to Barbolina Nanooi.** One of their nine children is Marcelino Cleto Karel (Mai Spiro), born in 1902, the other well-known hòfi manager in the neighbourhood. Before the marriage Barbolina already had children, who were also recognised by Karel at the marriage.

Two generations

And so it happened that two generations of descendants of Maria Martha — from both her marriages — unaware of their descent, grew up together in the neighbourhood. The Martinas from East Tucacas and the Martises from West Tucacas did know that they were related, but not how exactly matters stood. This would only come to light at the time of the court proceedings concerning Tucacas as an undivided estate and the accompanying family-tree research.

Original terrain

People often know surprisingly little about the neighbourhood in which they live or grew up. Street names, parcel boundaries and neighbourhood names are experienced as self-evident, while their origin often goes back centuries. Especially in neighbourhoods that arose from old, long-undivided estates — tereno di famia — that history is not always visible, let alone known. Tucacas is a striking example of this.

In early 19th-century sources Tokaka is not designated as a plantation but as a kunuku or kanoekje: a relatively small agricultural parcel, often with a simple dwelling. Such parcels lay in the outlying area, surrounded by savannah land* and were bounded by trankeren — enclosures of stone, cactus or pita — and natural landmarks.

Spatial planning

The landscape consisted of open terrain, crossed by paths and roads. The precise boundaries were less important than the actual use and the mutual agreements between neighbours. This way of using land has left lasting traces in the later spatial structure of Tucacas.

Whoever walks through Tucacas today sees a residential district like so many on Curaçao: no planned spatial organisation, houses of family members built close together, irregular parcel boundaries and buildings that seem to have taken shape over generations.

What one does not see directly is that this area has its roots in a much older landscape and legal reality. Land here was not strictly demarcated as later in the cadastre, but described by use, neighbours and landmarks in the landscape. The boundaries of Tucacas are in practice experienced differently than on paper, and the neighbourhood today bears traces of a past that was never strictly recorded but was passed on from generation to generation.

Precisely because of that, an important part of the past of Tucacas has disappeared from collective memory.

Hofjes, dams and water

Tucacas lies in a valley, so that all the rainwater from the surroundings flowed westward. This natural location made the area ideal for water catchment for the production of vegetables and fruit.

Tucacas had at least five official dams, recognisable by numbered dam heads. Two of these dams lay at the hofjes of Shon Pa and Mai Spiro, thanks to their favourable location in the lowest part of the valley.

Before piped water existed, residents depended on the wells of these hofjes — especially that of Shon Pa, which lay at the level of the present Kaya Matrimonial at Santa Rosa.

This changed when the government laid out public water tap points, the well-known tanki di awa. By the road, close to the house of Tan Chichi, was such a tanki di awa where residents could fetch water for the household.

Unfortunately, as a result of the dispute over the ownership of Tucacas as tera di famia within the families, many dams have been destroyed and the original structure of paths and partitions has disappeared. That this did not go without consequences became clear when hurricane Tomas passed over the island: the water could no longer be caught and drained in the traditional way.

Management of Tucacas

By tradition, the person who possessed a copy of the deed of purchase was the manager of the land. He could, at his own discretion, give family members permission for, for example, house building or demarcating a plot. This sometimes led to friction through arbitrariness, a well-known phenomenon in old tereno di famia areas where formal cadastral boundaries were lacking and authority rested mainly on family agreements and oral tradition.

Shon Pa should traditionally have become the keeper of the deed of purchase of the family land, but refused because he had no children anyway and management of the survey letter would bring many disagreements.

The survey letter (meetbrief) therefore ended up with a son of one of the elders of the neighbourhood, Tan Chichi, a decision that not everyone was happy with in hindsight. As a result a large transmitter mast now stands on the Tucacas terrain, of which not all family members had been informed in advance.

The arbitrary allocation of terrain only came to an end when a family tree was drawn up in connection with court proceedings concerning the undivided estate Tucacas.

Striking characters

Marcelino Cleto Karel a.k.a. Mai Spiro was very progressive for his time and planted in his hofje and kunuku according to the phases of the moon. Because he often worked in his kunuku in the evening at full moon and therefore looked like a spiritu — a ghost — he was called Mai Spiro by the youngsters of the neighbourhood. He was slight, always wore dark glasses so that you could not see his eyes, and children were afraid of him. Mai Spiro himself lived in the adjoining Abrahamz.

Also known from the west of Tucacas was Yenchi, who had a large goat corral close to Shon Pa's hofje. After Yenchi's death there was much quarrelling about who could keep the goats.

In the east of Tucacas stands the house of Tan Marí (Maria Andrea Martina, 1870–1945), a granddaughter of Maria Martha. The house is about 400 years old and is still inhabited today by her great-granddaughter Lies Ricardo.

Right next to it stands the little knoek house of Tan Chichi (Felicia Johanna Rosalina, 1884–1978), sister-in-law of Tan Marí. Although Tan Chichi's house is smaller, it is just as old as that of Tan Marí — this is clearly visible in the front façade. Once a big dam also stood here.

From the marriage of Tan Chichi with Francisco Martes Martina eight children were born, including Boeboe di Mimina (Jockey) and Tan Petra, matriarch of the Carolina family. Tan Petra is also the great-grandmother of Alvin Eugenio Inecia, better known as Tio Ali, the well-known children's entertainer who made a name with rhythmic poetry on Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire.

Family tradition

In earlier generations, death was handled differently than now. Because of the tropical climate and the lack of refrigeration, the deceased had to be buried as quickly as possible. It was customary for a body to lie in state at home, often only a few hours, after which the funeral followed. Within families in Tucacas several cases are known in which this tradition continued into the 20th century.

'Traha den Popo'

Many residents of Tucacas earned their living as farm workers at Popo, a fairly large plantation east of Tucacas.

For household shopping people depended on Wan kibrá, or Wan Mankaron, who ran a shop in Ma Louisa. Wan was severely physically disabled and had to move by dragging himself, but that did not stop him from keeping his little shop going and traditionally offering fresh goat meat every Sunday. For the children he always had a sweet, and towards the end of the year Tambu parties were always organised in his neighbourhood.

Rust en Vrede near Tucacas

This neighbourhood, which lies west of Tucacas, reportedly owes its name to the fact that at the time of the "kabouterziekte" (gnome disease), i.e. the Spanish flu around 1918, a large number of people were buried there. The "kabouterziekte" was a contagious disease (probably yellow fever) that claimed many victims worldwide. On Curaçao many of the residents who were infected were referred to the "Leprozen Gesticht" (leper asylum) at Zakitó.

The neighbourhood was also called Pe'i Chi, after a woman of fairly large stature, married to Pe, but was also called Tucacas Chikí. Tucacas Chikí is a very water-rich area, and a big dam had therefore been built here. It was demolished in connection with the construction of the villa district, Santa Rosa Resort.

Current legal situation

With effect from April 2007 a new statutory regulation came into force in the Civil Code, aimed at making possible a solution to the problem of long-undivided estates from the past.

For Tucacas too, at the end of 2016, a procedure under that regulation was set in motion to get the land divided among the heirs and other entitled parties who qualify for it.

This will also put an end to the decades-long mutual dispute over ownership of Tucacas.

Ultimately it is the judge who determines who is entitled to a parcel of land in Tucacas.

It goes without saying that a solution to the problem of an undivided estate such as Tucacas will also mean an improvement in the socio-economic position of those concerned. The estates inhabited by them are after all upgraded in economic terms, which will also benefit the economy of Curaçao.

Footnotes (as in the source)

* Regarding genealogy on Curaçao it is known that there was a district master who — for unknown reasons — consistently omitted surnames in the registration of residents.

* Possibly there is a connection between this Barbolina and Hòfi Barbolina, which lies close to Tucacas and is managed by the Barbolina family(!). And might Cristoval have something to do with Sint Christoffel, the adjoining knoekje with a hill of the same name north of Tucacas?

(Note: the source uses the "*" marker for several different footnotes — "Rust en Vrede*", "matronyms*", "Cristoval Flores*", "Barbolina Nanooi*" and "savannah land*" — but gives only the two footnotes above.)

With special thanks to Noraly Lovert and Sigfried Martina.

With thanks to: Icho Alexina, Tio Ali, Christel Monsanto, Suzy Martina and Semiramis van der Veen.

Sources

• Ministerie SOAW: Buurtprofiel Santa Rosa
• dutchcaribbeanheritage.org
• Langenfelt: Plantages, Tuinen en 'kanoekjes' en hun eigenaren tussen 1780 en 1885
• Notarial deeds from OAC (Oud) and NAC (Nieuw Archief Curaçao)
• Brenneker: Sambumbu, various editions
• Dr. mr. Bastiaan van der Velden, Open University, Faculty of Humanities and Law, Heerlen