It is just 288 square kilometers: small as seed awaiting birth, small as a drop announcing the drizzle, small as a pearl. That's Bonaire: the Pearl of the Caribbean.
 A special municipality of the Netherlands, geographically it is part of the so-called Leeward Islands (Lesser Antilles). It is a dichotomy that marks its cultural, economic and social physiognomy.
Bonaire is an overseas territory of the European Union, but each grain of sand announces the Caribbean: its intense light, their people, specially its mixture. This island was honored during the thirty-seventh edition of the Caribbean Festival in Santiago.
The Caribbean unites us. Researchers recall the arms of the people of Bonaire, the sweat and the tears on the Cuban cane fields that were exploited by foreign companies. They are the common roots: those of sacrifice, sun and hope.
Have you ever heard the sonorous papiamento? A Bonaire youth speaks to me in that language on the streets of Santiago de Cuba. It is a conversation on the move: curiosity pushes. I do not believe it when I get to understand several words.
Papiamento is a native language, emerged from repeated re-foundations: a symbiosis of Spanish and Portuguese words, contributions of the indigenous Arawaks and Africans. It is an official language along with Dutch. Tradition dictated it, family dialogue held it.
The galas and the giant passacaglia - the snake's parade - have the Bonairans alongside artists from about twenty nations. Yellow and green move frantically in bracelets, gowns, ribbons.
The rhythm, the longing, the strength, the allusion to nature do not seem strange. Everything seems so close...
Bonaire synthesizes the main legacy of the Caribbean as a land of coexistence of diversities, of active and permanent dialogue, of peace. The Caribbean Festival was a showcase for Bonaire. And it showed that there is no small place for memory and for joy.