Kurá Hulanda
Gelt Dekker's Hobby Hotel annex Museum

From May 2014, Kura Hulanda belongs to the Sonesta hotel chain.

The fairy tale forest of slavery history
—P.C. Emmer, De Nederlandse Slavenhandel, p244

Tycoon Jacob Gelt Dekker is one of the many deluded people who think they know everything, just because they're rich. The man's chutzpah would, perhaps, be admirable if it was not for his highhandedness. As it is now, he just uses the island as his personal stamping ground to practice his pet theories, such as they are.

An example. Somewhere on this website I quoted an expert on a certain topic. After a while, Gelt Dekker wrote me an e-mail, not only rudely informing me my idea was entirely false and rubbish, he also told me that my so-called expert was a coke junkie and, I quote, not worth a shit. This from a guy whom I never even met personally - and I don't wish to either,
thank you so much.

It's of very little use to give a detailed enumeration of all his activities. It's also devoid of much interest.
Just a few examples so you'll be warned not to swallow all his presumptions.

Museum Kurá Hulanda

This is set in Otrabanda, as an annex to his hotel of the same name. Other museum specialists, real ones, have told me that much of the material on exhibition in there has been illegally exported from countries like Ghana. The museum purports to show us how we all are victims of the terrible practice of slavery. Fair enough, even if I personally feel that much too much of this sort of history is making the rounds these days, accomplishing nothing but increasing hate feelings of the colored part of our population against the whities. With many of our politicians thriving on exploiting and stimulating xenophobic feelings, just what we need. If you take a guided tour through the museum, you will probably be told that it is located where the slaves, upon arriving from Africa, first put foot ashore. For all I know, this is an outright lie: All history books I have read agree they arrived at what's now still called Asiento, for that very reason.

Hotel Kurá Hulanda This is part of the old barrio Otrabanda on the other side of the harbor. Gelt Dekker just bought it and, to start, ruined it as a city part by enclosing it with walls and gates. Nobody can walk through there any more as they used to. He then started restoring it with, again, total disregard for the old architecture and its urban functions. At least one unique wooden building was just duplicated elsewhere. The place is full of kitschy elaborate metalwork lamp posts, waterworks and antique cobble-stones, none of them even slightly authentic. Vegetation also is much too rich and not at all characteristic for Curaçao with its desert climate, where water is scarce and dear. It's so bad, my wife, an architect herself, who did the sound recording for our movie Edgar Palm en Otrabanda, after Gelt Dekker got through with it even failed to recognize the house where we'd shot an important scene! Worse, in this form the set-up as a hotel just eats energy, and it must be incredibly expensive to service. Gelt Dekker tries to attract the exorbitantly rich, his own kind, as clientele, but it does not look like he is very succesful. If one thing seems sure, it is that when Gelt Dekker dies, the place will be closed down and we'll all be stuck with the unpracticable remains as a monument to his folly.

it's not the mere me!
check out TripAdvisor

Search Now:

SEARCH this site or the Web





copyright notice
all material on this site, except where noted
copyright © by , curaçao
reproduction in any form for any purpose is prohibited
without prior consent in writing