By Alex Rosaria
Moises Frumencio da Costa Gomez (Dòktor) is the father of our modern nation, not because he was an intellectual, the most popular politician ever, or even the architect of our autonomy. Dòktor made us proud to be who we were. He was able to inspire us to be as hopeful as ever before about what we were going to be or could be as individuals or collective. Dòktor both influenced and was influenced by great Caribbean emancipation leaders.
Unfortunately, he’s rarely mentioned in the emancipatory history of the Caribbean. This is because we don’t document and write enough in English and frankly because we barely pay attention to or make any effort to join the Caribbean. It seems we prefer to remain myopic and stare across the pond (The Hague). This must change. The ambition is to have our political emancipator among the other Caribbean founding fathers. I’ve already established with some regional scholars to have this realized. We shouldn’t keep our stories to ourselves.
~ Alex David Rosaria (53) is a freelance consultant active in Asia and the Pacific. He is a former Member of Parliament, Minister of Economic Affairs, State Secretary of Finance and UN Implementation Officer in Africa and Central America. He is from Curaçao and has an MBA from University of Iowa (USA). ~
