Perhaps the Shon never really disappeared from Curaçao.
I am not referring to the historical plantation owner, but to the mindset that accompanies power: the need to stand above others rather than beside them. The impulse to command instead of serve. To begin every interaction with distrust. To value status more than responsibility.
Growing up in Curaçao, I hardly questioned these things. They seemed normal. I believed it was perfectly ordinary for a salesperson selling electronics to treat me like a suspect and ask for my identification before trusting me. I assumed this was simply how business was conducted.
It wasn't until I moved to the Netherlands that I discovered things could be different.
There I learned that companies exist because of their customers. The saying "the customer is king" may sound exaggerated, but the principle behind it is sound. Without customers, there is no business. Respect is not a favor—it is the starting point.
When I returned to Curaçao after completing my studies, I encountered that familiar mentality once again. Opening a bank account often meant surrendering every detail of my private life. At supermarkets, I was asked to show my receipt after paying, while my groceries were inspected again before I could leave. Too often, distrust seemed to be the default position in our dealings with one another.
Recently, I heard a lawyer on the radio argue that businesses on Curaçao behave this way because "our people" do not always act responsibly. There is certainly some truth in that. Shoplifting exists. Fraud exists. Banks must comply with strict international regulations.
But those same problems exist elsewhere in the world.
Yet many societies have found ways to maintain security and enforce rules without treating every customer as a potential criminal. Apparently, the difference lies not only in regulations, but in the way we choose to see people.
I see this same pattern reflected in politics.
Once elected, some public officials seem to forget that they are there to serve the people. Appointments to senior government positions are announced without always explaining why those individuals were chosen. Accountability often appears to be treated as a favor instead of an essential part of good governance. Overseas trips are sometimes disclosed only when doing so offers political advantage.
Still, it would be far too easy to point fingers only at politicians, bankers, or business leaders.
Because perhaps the Shon also lives within us.
In the manager who keeps employees down because he fears competition.
In the civil servant who makes people wait simply because he has the power to do so.
In the customer who treats a waitress as though she were beneath him.
In the father or mother who refuses to tolerate any disagreement.
In the intellectual who looks down on someone with less education.
And even in those who criticize the so-called Shon mentality while casually labeling others as "Makamba," "Portuguese," "Haitian," or "San Dom," as if they were somehow less equal.
The late Frank Martinus Arion understood this mechanism perfectly.
In his novel Double Play (Dubbelspel), he gave it a face in the character of Manchi Sanantonio—a man obsessed with asserting authority, who ultimately became trapped by his own need for control. The symbolic five-guilder bill, intended as a tool of humiliation and power, ultimately became the prelude to his tragic downfall. The man who sought to project strength became the victim of his own belief in power.
Historically, none of this is surprising.
For centuries Curaçao functioned under colonial authority. After the abolition of slavery, the institutions gradually changed, but patterns of behavior often remained. The Shon disappeared as a person, but survived as a mentality.
Perhaps that also explains why the unity we are currently experiencing around Curaçao's participation in the FIFA World Cup feels so fragile.
During moments like these we come together. We are proud. We celebrate as one people.
But once the euphoria fades, the old habits often return: distrust, feelings of superiority, patronage, and the constant desire to be important.
Perhaps that is our greatest challenge.
Not poverty.
Not crime.
Not political division.
But making the transition from seeking power to embracing service.
Because as long as we continue to admire status, privilege, and the idea that some people stand above others, the Shon will continue to be reborn, time and again.
We abolished the Shon, but inherited the Shon mentality.
The real question is no longer whether the Shon still exists.
The question is: how much of the Shon still lives within us?
The day we learn that authority is not a means of elevating ourselves above others, but a responsibility to help others move forward, a different legacy can begin.
A Curaçao where people no longer treat one another as master and subordinate, but simply as one human being to another.
Orlando Meulens
Columnist