HISTORY
The islands off the Venezuelan coast
and their Caiquetio inhabitants (part of a larger group of Caribbean
people called Arawaks) were "discovered" by the Spanish
in 1499 but not developed. Although the Dutch claimed Aruba in
1636, no European settlers arrived until the 1750s. The discovery
of gold in 1824 brought some excitement and colonists to the island.
But the arrival of the oil industry in the 1920s after black gold
was found in nearby Venezuela actually had a bigger economic impact:
At its height in 1965, the refinery on Aruba produced 550,000
barrels of oil a day.
Aruba's first inhabitants were the Caquetios Indians from the Arawak tribe. Fragments of the earliest known Indian settlements date back to about 1000 A.D. Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda is regarded as the first European to arrive in about 1499. The Spanish garrison on Aruba dwindled following the Dutch capture of nearby Bonaire and Curacao in 1634. The Dutch occupied Aruba shortly thereafter, and retained control for nearly two centuries. In 1805, during the Napoleonic wars, the English briefly took control over the island, but it was returned to Dutch control in 1816. A 19th-century gold rush was followed by prosperity brought on by the opening in 1924 of an oil refinery. The last decades of the 20th century saw a boom in the tourism industry. In 1986 Aruba seceded from the Netherlands Antilles and became a separate, autonomous member of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Movement toward full independence was halted at Aruba's prerogative in 1990. Aruba has a mixture of people from South America and Europe, the Far East, and other islands of the Caribbean.
Tourists began arriving in the 1960s, but development of large
resort hotels with casinos really started in earnest in the 1980s,
when declining oil revenues led the government to seek new ways
to bolster the economy. Today, tourism is the leading industry
and more than half a million people visit Aruba each year, making
it one of the most popular destinations in the Caribbean. As a
result, the island is prosperous by Caribbean standards, and its
citizens enjoy good housing, education and health care.
Aruba
has been quasi-independent since 1986, when it became a "separate
entity within the Kingdom of the Netherlands." Actually,
the island has been influenced as much by Venezuela (only 15 mi/24
km away from Aruba) as by the Netherlands. Most Arubans speak
English, Spanish and Dutch, as well as Papiamento (a mixture of
African, Arawak, Dutch, English, Portuguese and Spanish idioms).
