1media/MLKHandelskade2014 copy.jpg2018-02-08T23:12:04-08:00Conclusion10plain5973822018-03-17T13:41:34-07:00[Audio]The treatment of the historical cityscape of Willemstad shows what often happens when we honor the past – we reflect our present interests, rather than a more objective, historical, or nuanced account of the past. Willemstad’s diverse cultures have clashed and melded throughout the island’s history: Dutch colonists and settlers, Jewish merchants who moved from Spain and Portugal through South America before settling here, and Africans who arrived here as slaves – and the descendants of these cultures continue to live on the island of Curaçao, alongside newer arrivals from elsewhere in the Caribbean and South America. The buildings of Willemstad increasingly only represent the dominant cultural force of the former colonizing Dutch, which challenges the many borders that have long been contested in Willemstad.