Netherlands Antilles is no more

Goodbye, Netherlands Antilles. Hello, Curacao and St. Maarten.

Huh?

When did this happen?

What does this mean?

While many of us were caught up in the numerological symmetry of 10/10/2010, the breakup of the Netherlands Antilles was taking place amid fanfare, flag lowerings, flag raisings, fireworks and parades on Curacao and St. Maarten.

The 56-year-old Netherlands Antilles territory, colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century, originally consisted of six islands: Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao (known for years as the ABC islands), Saba, St. Eustatius (also known as Statia) and St. Maarten.

In the case of St. Maarten, it’s a bit more confusing. St. Maarten has shared a 33-square-mile island with French-ruled St. Martin for 350 years.

French St. Martin, the northern two-thirds of the island, is a department of France called an "overseas collectivity." There’s no formal border separating the two sides. The French side has cafes and a nude beach; the Dutch side has duty-free shopping and casinos.

The official capital of the Netherlands Antilles was in Willemstad, Curacao. Those offices have closed up shop, although Willemstad remains the capital city of Curacao.

Gone, too, is the blue and red Netherlands Antilles flag, which was lowered for the last time at the stroke of midnight on Oct. 10 in public squares filled with revelers in Curacao and St. Maarten.

Aruba broke away from the Netherlands Antilles in 1986 and became an autonomous country, although it does maintain some direct ties with Holland.

Now Curacao and St. Maarten have done the same. The process took 10 years, and included much heated rhetoric, discussions, disputes and debates.

Bonaire, Saba and Statia continue on as they have: special municipalities of the Netherlands.

Under the new arrangement, the Dutch government still will keep a watchful eye on the finances and foreign policies of Curacao and St. Maarten and provide for their defense, but some things will change.

Curacao (population 142,000) and St. Maarten (37,000) now have greater self-government and more independence in terms of lawmaking and use of their own tax revenue.

Citizens of Curacao and St. Maarten will retain Dutch passports, but their postage stamps will change, and their new currencies — still to be determined — will be pegged to the U.S. greenback.

Bonaire, Saba and Statia will switch to U.S. dollars to replace the Dutch guilder.

Confused? Join the crowd. Some St. Maarten residents who showed up for the public celebrations at the Court House in Philipsburg appeared to be clueless about what the change in political status meant for their lives.

"I don’t understand anything about 10/10/10," said a man interviewed on local TV.

"There’s been a blackout on information. Is this party free?" he asked the interviewer, surveying the dignitaries, the bands, the lights and cameras.

Perhaps he should check Wikipedia, which jumped on the changeover and updated its listing at about the same time that the Antillean flag was lowered and the flags of the two new countries were hoisted.

At a speech during the changeover ceremony, Sarah Wescot-Williams, St. Maarten’s first prime minister (elections leading up to Oct. 10 were held in September), said, "We will have to get ourselves accustomed to the new reality. Yes, we still are part of the Dutch kingdom and, yes, we are bound by rules and agreements with kingdom partners, but the success of our fledgling country starts with all of us."

For Caribbean visitors, there will be little in the way of outward changes, except that both new countries expect to use their tourism revenue to finance local projects such as hotels, ports and other improvements.

St. Maarten’s new status opens up opportunities to negotiate new air service, routes and markets, according to Regina LaBega, director of tourism.

"Open-sky agreements will be made in St. Maarten now," LaBega said. "In the past, these decisions rested with the Netherland Antilles government, which answered to the Netherlands."

Dealings with the French half of the island "also are easier now, given that St. Maarten is a country, and we can minimize destructive competition."

Revenue can be reinvested in tourism infrastructure, marketing and economic development.

Curacao, too, has its first prime minister, and at age 36, Gerrit Schotte is also its youngest-ever head of state.

As for what the new-country status means to Curacao, Hugo Clarinda, executive director of the Curacao Tourist Board, said, "This historic change brings huge potential for growth in tourism to meet the demands of the North American market."

Clarinda was alluding to an increase in hotel rooms, expanded airlift and new events.

A blogger in Curacao had the best explanation as to what all this means. "Here’s the easiest way to explain this to Americans: It’s as if all the islands of the state of Hawaii decided that they should each be their own state, like the state of Oahu, the state of Maui, etc.," he blogged.

What distressed him more than the change in country status was that no one had come up with a T-shirt to commemorate the occasion.

So, he took that task upon himself. It’s black, has the numbers 10/10/10 in red and yellow and sells for $14.40.

This report appeared in the Oct. 18 issue of Travel Weekly.