Revisiting chains of slavery: a museum in Curacao opens a window on the horrors of the African slavery trade and reflects on current human rights abuses.

• Author: Ceaser, Mike

Most businesspeople opening a luxury hotel do their best to create a fantasy world of the beautiful and pleasant. But when Dutch businessman Jacob Gelt Dekker opened the Kura Hulanda hotel in 1999 alongside Curacao's harbor in the historic capital of Willemstad, he included a chamber of horrors: Rusted shackles hang from the walls. Colonial--and postcolonial-era prints show African men, women, and children being whipped, hung, and tossed into the sea to drown. A visitor imagines he can hear wails from the very walls and earth.

That's because, while digging the swimming pool for the hotel, located in an historic but then run-down neighborhood, workers discovered that the site had been a landing place and depot used by slave traders for their human merchandise. From the early 1600s to the late 1700s, Curacao served as a transshipment port where enslaved Africans were landed, restored to health from the horrific Middle Passage, and then shipped on to the plantation economies of the Caribbean and North and South America.

Dekker, a Dutchman who had made a fortune through chains of one-hour photo shops, car rental agencies, and auto repair shops, had traveled widely in Africa and felt an affinity for African peoples and cultures, says Leo Helms, the museum's director. "It was a simple decision," to create the museum, he says. Dekker, now semi-retired, has homes in Curacao, the United States, and Holland.

The result, is a modest but wideranging museum near the entrance to the hotel complex, above the spot where slave ships once docked and cruise ships do now. While slavery provides the central theme, the museum also includes displays about the evolution of man and the rise of civilization, with emphasis on Africa's fundamental role in both processes. It also contains exhibits on African art, a section about the history of writing, and displays about slavery's long shadow, including racism and poverty. The museum's centerpiece, dominating the courtyard, is a large bronze sculpture of a woman's head formed in the shape of the African continent.

While the hotel museum may be unique in focusing on such a horrific theme, it also stands out in Curacao's mellow, sun-soaked capital of nightclubs, sidewalk cafes, and souvenir shops. A visitor can walk about Willemstad for days without encountering another reminder that the island was once a mart where Europeans grew wealthy from the suffering, exploitation, and death of kidnapped Africans. About 100,000...