"Heritage is one of the ways in which a nation slowly constructs for itself a sort of collective social memory” (from Stuart Hall, 1999: Who’s Heritage?). This holds even more for Caribbean countries like Curacao, with a long history of colonization, enslavement and migration.
Cultural heritage includes the irreplaceable cultural objects and collective memories of a community as important sources of its history and culture, particularly of its identity.

 

Material and immaterial
In this context the distinction between material (tangible) and immaterial (intangible) cultural heritage becomes increasingly explicit. Material heritage is concrete (tangible) and visible and includes objects and appliances, buildings, landscapes, constructions, symbols and documents that are characteristic for a community’s lifestyles and historical phases.

Immaterial cultural heritage includes all intellectual, emotional and spiritual sources of a community’s history and culture, its relation to nature and the development of its identity. Immaterial cultural heritage is contained in a community’s language(s), orientations, stories, religion and habits.

Our cultural heritage

Our cultural heritage is to be constructed out of fragments of the cultures of the people that arrived at our islands since 5000 years ago from the South-American continent and later on from Europe, Africa, Asia and the rest of the Caribbean area.