There is a system of oppression and poverty

There is a system of oppression and poverty

16 May 2026

It is becoming increasingly clear that while the economy is growing, poverty is growing right alongside it. The events of the past few days are revealing once again the elements of a system that not only produces poverty but also actively maintains it.

We are seeing the protests unfold before our eyes. Large groups of citizens are expressing their frustration because they have waited for years, sometimes twenty, thirty, forty, or even sixty years, without receiving an answer to their request for a parcel of land under leasehold in order to build a home. Sixty years waiting for a response. That is no longer an incident. That is a pattern.

At the same time, we see how foreign investors are able to secure land, permits, and all necessary approvals in a remarkably short time. Suddenly, everything can move quickly. People are now openly saying, even on camera, that this must be corruption. I understand that sentiment. When rules appear rigid and immovable for one group, but effortlessly bend for another, it naturally raises the question of whom this system actually serves.

Add to that the fact that only after public protest did twelve families receive an apartment from Fundashon Kas Popular (FPF). These apartments had reportedly been standing empty for some time, and there are said to be more still vacant. That says a great deal. It suggests that helping the lowest-income class obtain housing is not a priority, even when the resources are already there.

Meanwhile, the housing market has become completely overheated. For many local families, buying a home has become practically impossible. Prices now start at around half a million guilders. For a large part of the population, this is no longer a market; it is a closed door.

On top of that, the AOV pension is not structurally indexed or raised, while attempts to increase the minimum wage repeatedly meet resistance. When you place all these developments side by side, an uncomfortable but clear picture emerges: there is a system that drives people into poverty, and a system that keeps people there.

This is no longer vague or abstract. It is visible. It is known.

And measures such as subsidies for the food bank or temporary programs in which people earning less than 30,000 guilders a year receive 100 guilders a month for six months do nothing to alter that structure. These are bandages on a wound that is deliberately left open. Window dressing. They soften the visible pain just enough to avoid confronting the underlying mechanisms.

Perhaps that is the most confronting part: not that poverty exists, but that the structures that create it have been known for so long, and still remain largely untouched.

P.S.

And the system does not operate only through major policy decisions, but also through the small humiliations of daily life. Poor people often do not have a bank account. There is no proper public transportation. Their beach is taken away. If they cannot pay their bills, their water and electricity are cut off. These may seem like separate facts, but together they create a reality in which poverty is not only a lack of money, but also a lack of access, space, and peace of mind.

And when the Ombudsman Curaçao asks questions? The response is often simply silence. That too is part of the same system: not only exclusion, but also the avoidance of accountability.

Miguel Goede