We can grumble that Dutch heroes like Jan Pieterszoon Coen and Peter Stuyvesant have fallen off their pedestals because of slavery and mass murder, but just look at the tough heroes we get in return. Boni, Baron, Tula – black rebels who fought against slavery. Until recently they were dismissed as terrorists and troublemakers.
On Thursday, Curaçao celebrated Dia di Lucha pa Libertat (Day of the Freedom Struggle), a holiday to commemorate that on August 17, 1795, the enslaved Tula led a revolt against the Dutch oppressors. The uprising was quickly crushed, Tula was publicly tortured to death, but the symbolic value of his rebellion is great. Tula became an inspiration for later resistance heroes such as Anton de Kom, Jerry Afriyie and knight Mitchell Esajas. On 3 October, the anniversary of Tula’s death, the Dutch government grants him rehabilitation.
The celebration was the reason for the documentary on TV Tula is alive! The singer Izaline Calister follows the route of Tula’s rebel army on Curaçao. Along the way she tells the story to her band leader Thijs Borsten, who serves as a white guide who takes the white viewers by the hand. She meets local musicians with whom she sings songs about the rebel. They come from her music theater program Tula Alive! They are songs of struggle, songs about the hard life, and about the meaning of the uprising for black people today. She sings in Papiamento: “Tula, you taught us to fight / To fight for our self-esteem / But look, how ironic / We don’t fight…” She has to break off the song because she is full. An islander assures the singer that a Tula also lives in her.
The island trek mixed with the song cycle is an original way to tell Tula’s history. In the meantime, we hear from islanders how much Tula is still alive there, and we can marvel at the rugged beauty of Curaçao. In a Catholic church, Calister sings a song about the religious paintings hanging there. Why is everyone in the paintings white? Didn’t Tula teach us that we are all descended from Adam and Eve? Despite everything, Calister is optimistic about the fight against the aftereffects of slavery. Every generation is a bit freer, she says. Her daughter is a little more free than she is. Telling about the past is important in that slow, delayed liberation.
Dancing in a wheelchair
In the documentary A way to B (NPO2) Jos de Putter and Clara van Gool make a portrait of Liant la Troca, a Spanish dance group that consists largely of people with a physical disability. Dancers in wheelchairs, a blind dancer, a dancer without legs. During a consultation with his partner, choreographer Jordi Cortés Molina can be heard saying: “We need more two-legged people.” When you think of dance you tend to think of people with perfect body control, but when you look at this dance group you see how self-evident this form actually is. The dancers with a disability have a personal, unique dance language of beauty that touches you directly.
The elegantly filmed dance scenes – the camera dances along – are alternated with domestic scenes in which the dancers show themselves to be exceptionally resilient. Their disability is not the problem, they say, but how the outside world reacts to it. The man without legs says that the doctor did not dare to show him to his mother after the birth. “Like I was a monster.” If he had been conceived during this time, he argues, he would never have been born, as his mother would have had him taken away prematurely. “I am a 21st-century abortionist not aborted.” The most beautiful scene is the one in which the legless dancer dances a duet in the living room with his wife, who is wearing a steel corset. You feel the love flowing, for each other and for the liberating dance.