The Story of Aloe

When visitors arrive at Queen Beatrix International Airport, few realize that they are entering a landscape shaped by Aruba's first export economy.

Before airplanes, terminals and runways, this area formed part of a government agricultural estate. Historical sources describe Baca Morto, the area where Dakota Airport would later be constructed, as a government aloe field. During the nineteenth century, the colonial administration experimented with different crops in an effort to create profitable exports and reduce the island's dependence on outside support.

Aloe became one of the few experiments that survived.

Under Governor Johannes van Raders, government cultivation fields were established across Aruba. While crops such as cotton, tobacco and cochineal struggled to succeed, aloe proved well suited to Aruba's dry climate. Government-owned enslaved people worked on these agricultural projects, helping to maintain the fields where new crops were tested.

Over time, the large government lands around what was then known as Baca Morto were divided into smaller concessions. Historical maps and land registers show names such as Idaho and Sabana Verde appearing in this landscape during the late nineteenth century. Although these names have largely disappeared from everyday use, they survive in historical records and reveal how the former government lands were gradually transformed into agricultural concessions.

The production of aloe was physically demanding work. Workers harvested the thick leaves by hand, cut them open and placed them on wooden boards so the bitter sap could slowly drain into collecting containers below. Once processed into resin, Aruba's aloe was shipped to Curaçao, where it entered international markets and was sold as Curaçao aloe. Although the plant was grown and processed on Aruba, the product became associated with Curaçao through the colonial trading system. The profits and recognition did not always remain on the island where the labor took place.

Despite this, aloe became one of the few agricultural experiments that endured. While crops such as cotton, tobacco and cochineal disappeared, aloe remained. More than a century later, the industry continues through Aruba Aloe, one of the oldest aloe companies in the world.

Today, the names Sabana Verde and Baca Morto have largely vanished from the landscape. Yet beneath the airport and surrounding neighborhoods lies the memory of a period when Aruba's future was imagined not through tourism, but through agriculture. The story of aloe is therefore not only the story of a plant, but of how land, labor and colonial ambition transformed the island and left traces that remain visible in the landscape today.