Growing up with history

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Growing up on a Caribbean island also means growing up in a landscape where the past is never completely gone.

There is something unsettling about knowing that the lives of our ancestors were shaped by realities we would now describe as deeply inhumane. Indigenous people were displaced and exploited. Enslaved people lived and worked under a system that denied them freedom and dignity. Their history is part of ours, whether we choose to speak about it or not.

But carrying that history does not mean carrying shame. We can carry it with dignity.

And history also creates responsibility. The generations living on these islands today did not create colonialism or slavery, but neither did they inherit a society untouched by their consequences. At the same time, the Netherlands cannot simply place its colonial past behind it while the islands continue dealing with inequalities partly shaped by that history.

This is where history becomes political.

The challenge for our politicians is not simply to keep demanding compensation for the past, nor to pretend the past no longer matters. It is to understand the relationship well enough to negotiate progress in the present: better education, stronger institutions, infrastructure, economic opportunity and greater capacity to determine our own future.

Perhaps that is one of the more complicated parts of Caribbean identity. We should not become prisoners of the past, but neither should those who inherited power be allowed to walk away from its consequences.

The political skill lies in turning that shared history into greater equality, dignity and opportunity for the generations that come next.