The “binnenwater” – Dutch for “inside-water” – is a very distinctive feature of Curaçao’s limestone coastline, fanning out like a lobed fig leaf with a very narrow stem connecting it to the sea. These lagoons, or inland seas, with their shallow waters, often bordered by mangroves, offer a welcome refuge to aquatic birds. (…)
Millennia ago, the valleys of the inner bays were formed by rainwater flowing down the surrounding hills, carving a channel to drain into the sea. The direction of the flow is now reversed, with the sea entering the narrow passage to the sunken land, pouring salt water into this empty space, this lacuna – from which the word lagoon derives.
(…) the inland sea is at the same time a sheltering bay to ships and birds, as it is a trapped body of water that can be manipulated, dammed, drained, and that conveniently lends itself to salt-winning, and sometimes to the dumping of waste – sewage, asphalt, and wrecked boats.
Photo by my grandfather, Benjamin Gomes Casseres
I walk out on the half-submerged walls [of the old saltpans] with water on both sides of me (…). I am eager to find myself surrounded by the inland sea, to follow the dams into the far reaches of the bay, as if walking on water.
I am captivated by the living organisms that gently sway their tentacles on the muddy bottom of the bay. I get closer to these enigmatic creatures with my lens, wondering what they are – plant or animal. Later I learn they are jellyfish that turn themselves upside down, so that the algae, with which they live in symbiosis, can get the sunlight they need for photosynthesis. Cassiopeia is their name, after the mythological figure punished for boasting to the gods of her beauty. This is a piece of knowledge I gained in retrospect that has greatly magnified my sense of wonder when looking at these creatures.
The inland sea, trapped in a system of dams, is no longer the same sea as the Caribbean beyond the bay, that in Papiamentu is referred to as “laman dj’afó”, the outside sea. Many organisms in this inland sea have developed adaptations to its high salinity and unique ecology, like flamingos, mangroves, and the upside-down-jellyfish. Though not actively manipulated today, the structures still hold shallow waters and salt is deposited every year as the waters evaporate.
But the salt I photographed on my previous walks around the saltpans of St. Marie, Cas Abou, and Jan Thiel, is no longer here – it has been dissolved by the heavy rains that flooded these low-lying plains in the last rainy season. I am disappointed, longing to get more shots of the intricate white forms, dripping like icing on a birthday cake and the whirls of sparkling crystals mixed with kernels of black sand and the minuscule crustaceans that color the flamingos pink.
Going through the slides taken by my mother, I am moved to discover the images with the abstract patterns of the salt, as if I am now echoing her pursuits, speaking the same language. Somehow the saltpans embody my photographic lineage more than any other subject matter – starting with my mother’s father, Benjamin Gomes Cassseres, who captured the saltpans in impressive black and white photographs before the age of built-in light meters and automatic cameras; to my mother, Tita Mendes Chumaceiro in her color slides; and my father, Frank Mendes Chumaceiro, who filmed laborers shoveling up the salt into wheelbarrows at Jan Thiel in the nineteen-fifties, when those saltpans were still being worked.
It is difficult to look at the saltpans without thinking of slavery. Even as the saltpans continued to be exploited after the emancipation, salt winning in the scorching heat of the sun surely depended on the hard labor of those who had limited choices of livelihood. With three plantation houses around the St. Marie binnenwater – Hermanus, Jan Kock and Rif, each with its own grid of saltpans, that shameful history weighs heavily in these regions.
[excerpt from my as yet unpublished essay "The Sea Inside - a walk around the inland sea of Rif St.Marie" ]
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