Interesting old film footage from Bonaire in the 1950's

[EnronX]

Found this while doing some research...there are three videos, roughly 10 minutes each showing the countryside, towns, and people at work...Watching the workers move and pound the salt by hand it really strikes home what terrible labor that must have been.

http://geschiedenis.vpro.nl/artikelen/30579380/

The videos and captions are in Dutch, so if someone has the time/ability to give a quick synopsis of what the narrator is saying in the vidoes, I'd certainly be appreicative!

Nate

 

[dvrliz1]

Excellent! I don't speak any dutch, but I can give you an idea as to what is being discussed. It is basically a documentary on Bonaire from that time. It talks about the terrain, the city of Rincon, Gotomeer (for those of you who have been here, it is the salt water lake up north on the way to Rincon, where you sometimes see lots of flamingos. It talked about its exports such as sea salt. It also talked about the catus fences, how they made charcoal (that is where the 2 guys built a fire and covered it with dirt), they talked about the goats, using the poo as fertilizer. It also talked about grain sorghum (maise), as a stable food (they used it for flour, funchi, etc.) It also featured the harvest festival (Simadan) still celebrated today in Rincon and something called Maskarade, a tradition where men would dress up so people could not tell who they are and do mischief, for example, patting a pretty women on the bottom. It also showed the now capital of Kralendijk. It also showed how they locals built their own boats and went fishing. It also showed the East coast of Bonaire.

Hope this helps. Thanks so much for providing this to us!

 

[EnronX]

Hi Liz, sorry that we missed you two weeks ago when we were on the island...we meant to get back for that rum punch get-together but we lost track of time and were too far south to make it.

I wanted to ask your about Playa Slagbaai....this year's trip we took a day to explore the park and snorkel on some of the east-side beaches. Specifically at Slagbaai we came across two large cannons that were about 150 yards offshore near the cliffs on the south side of the bay...they were in 10-15 feet of water...Are those well known? Is there a story behind where they came from/which ship? I didn't have a camera with me to take pictures, but they really were quite remarkable!

Thanks for the explanation on the video, I was very excited to find an old gem. From my research I had read that both The Washington and Slagbaai plantations supplied large amounts of goats, salt, charcoal, aloe extract and divi-divi pods (used in tanning leather), for export to Curaçao and Europe....I thought that the video was showing the northern plantations, so I'm glad you re-affirmed it.