Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao share one Dutch Caribbean story
The ABC islands—Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao—are the westernmost Leeward Antilles, sitting just off Venezuela yet tied to the Netherlands since an 1814 Anglo-Dutch treaty handed them back to the Dutch. Dry, reef-fringed and multilingual, they now split into two self-governing constituent countries and one special Dutch municipality.
Indigenous Arawakan Caquetio peoples lived here before Europeans. Disputed Vespucci letters credit Alonso de Ojeda with landing on Curaçao in 1499 and calling the group islands of the giants. Spain and the Dutch fought in 1634; Dutch control stuck after Spain briefly retook then abandoned holdings, and the Dutch West India Company built Curaçao into a major port.
Ending slavery in 1863 wrecked plantation economies on Curaçao and Bonaire. Early twentieth-century Venezuelan oil then remade the trio as refining hubs. From 1815 to 1954 they formed the Colony of Curaçao and Dependencies; in 1954 they entered the Netherlands Antilles with new autonomy.
Aruba left the Netherlands Antilles in 1986 after a thirty-year campaign, and when the Antilles were dissolved on 10 October 2010 Curaçao won the same self-governing status, while Bonaire became a special municipality of the Netherlands. All three remain part of the European Union, so residents carry European passports and vote in European elections, though the islands lie outside the Schengen area. Despite the acronym, the west-to-east order is Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, and the group sits on South America's continental shelf just off Venezuela's Falcón State.
The climate is an unusual hot desert, with evaporation outstripping rainfall and cactus scrub the commonest vegetation; temperatures hover around 28 to 37 °C all year. Flat Aruba is exposed to storm surges, while reefs shelter Bonaire and Curaçao and draw divers, and Aruba has set aside a fifth of its land as Arikok National Park. Most islanders speak several languages. Dutch runs schools and government, but everyday speech is mostly Papiamentu, a Portuguese-based creole made official on Aruba in 2003 and on the other two islands in 2007.
Source: ABC islands
