Hybrid cultures and alterity: The case of Aruba from an inter-American perspective.

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Without a doubt, one of the central discussions in the Social Sciences and Humanities is the concept of culture. Nevertheless, as (Canclini, 1981) points out, all disciplines have different approaches to the topic which makes the analysis more complex.

So, why to use such a controversial concept? In part, this is due to the fact that imaginary or collective representations such as the ideas of nation and nationality, have been (re) constructed, promoted, and justified around it. In the Aruban case, this can be exemplified through the different images that people have of the island, where it can vary from a positive one related to multilingualism, openness, caribbeaness to a negative one relate to social exclusion, for example, the idea of the “Chocolate City,” [that] speaks [of] the radicalized and color exclusion around national identity in Aruba”. (Sharpe, 2014, p.126). Also entangled with the idea of race as an important element of social stratification established since the colonial times.

In this way, culture not only becomes a space of consensus or social integration, but also a space of conflict where the production of this is involved in relationships of asymmetric power, domination, and resistance. Therefore, one of our theses in the Aruban case is that culture is a clear example of the tense relationship with the colonial past and present as well as the forms of resistance or normalization of it, in other words, that have multiple signifiers and meanings, which is reflected for example:

• In the language policy promoted by the Aruban government, which has had great progress as the Ministry of Education, Social Affairs, and Infrastructure (2007) states:

Prior to this historic year [1986], Aruba was part of the Netherlands Antilles and its Department of Education was limited to executing policies developed at the regional (Netherlands Antilles) level. This deeply rooted colonial heritage was underscored by the education inspector Tirso Sprockel during the CLAD conference in 1970 in Curaçao when he stated publicly that “…our education system is a carbon copy of the Dutch system”[…]the ultimate goal of the SHO policy plan was to achieve better results for students[…]and ground the new system in the most recent and up-to-date educational thinking of the late 1980s. (pp. 11-12)

Nevertheless, this language policy, in many occasions is disconnected from the perception of the Aruban population that perceive the Dutch language as a hegemonic one, at least in educational terms, as one of the interviewees says: “In primary school, everything is in Dutch[...]you never learn Papiamento, you always learn Dutch [...]the thing with Dutch is that it is something that everyone should learn, but no one understands why” (D. Harms, D., Interview, Jan 8,  2018)

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Even though Papiamento was not included until 2003 as an official language, many of the experts and Arubans reaffirmed that one of the most strongest forms of the preservation of the language, resistance or counter-hegemony is the use of it (Papiamento) in the daily life of the population on the island, regardless the social strata.

• On the other hand, it can be observed that in Aruba there are forms of cultural and/or social assimilation especially in relation to the United States and European countries, as one of the interviewees discussed:

we also have a lot of Dutch culture, American culture, we celebrate Halloween, Valentine’s day, Thanksgiving [...] from the Netherlands they celebrate Saint Nicolas and his Black Pete, [which] is a racist tradition with a racist root, been Black Petes, slaves and the white San Nicolas...we celebrate it here in Aruba because we are part of the Netherlands (D. Harms, D., Interview, Jan 8,  2018)

These forms of assimilation can have two effects: a) (re)production of racist practices or what Quijano would call colonialism of power and b) strengthening the sense of otherness and alterity, where the "self" becomes the dominant culture (the Netherlands represented by Saint Nicolas) and the other, the subordinate culture (Aruba through Saint Nicolas’s black Pete).

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On the other hand, the second thesis we argue is the fact that in the Aruban case we cannot talk of culture from an ethnocentric perspective but from its multiplicity as Van Heekeren, (1963) expresses “it is obvious that in Aruba influences have come from more than one direction” (p.21)

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In this sense, Canclini (1990) propose that nowadays, we cannot think of cultures or multiculturalism as something that is confined to a territorial space such as the Nation-State, but we must think of them from a constructivist perspective in which identities are historically constructed, imagined and reinvented, in other words, culture is not pure, but hybrid.

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On the other hand, multiculturalism must be seen from a:

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Social-spatial dimension: local, national, regional and global, in other words, the sense of belonging is multi-spatial, so it could not be said that there is something purely Aruban or that Papiamento is only connected to this island, rather we should make references to the multiple socio-space crossings that have one practice or an apparently local characteristic. (see historical context to visualize geographic entanglements in Aruba Papiamento)

 

Social-communicational dimension: this refers to various cultural support, artistic and communicational repertoires that (re)elaborate identity or the sense of belonging, in other words, there are different ways of producing and communicating culture either through poetry, music, among others. Which in the case of Aruba, it can be expressed through multilingualism, which is a normalized practice on the island as stated by Dr. Jacobs.

 

Taking into account the concepts mentioned above, Papiamento becomes a fundamental example to understand the concept of the hybrid cultures of Canclini, since it is through this language that we can visualize the socio-spatial and communicational cross between different regions: Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Aruba, Africa, Venezuela, Colombia, among others. Although, it is worth noting that this crossing was the product of different and often unequal processes (see historical context) that produced different forms of Papiamento according to the level of colonial influence in the different islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao).

 

In conclusion, we can say that the Aruban case, especially Papiamento, represents an exemplary case of cultural hybridization, as well as the complex relationship between the colonial past and present in which forms of hegemony are produced, such as the persistence of Dutch in school curriculum and counter-hegemony, which is present in the daily life of the Aruban population.