Tula

Tula Rigaud, the principal commander of the Curaçaoan Slave Revolt of 1795, was born about 1750 at the principal Knip plantation of the western Curaçao district of the principal Dutch West India Company colony, of an Afro-Curaçaoan family of the principal Kongo-Yoruba-Ewe synthesis of the Curaçaoan enslaved community.

He was raised across the principal middle decades of the eighteenth century in the principal Knip estate of the Knip family — a relatively small Curaçaoan sugar-and-saltpond estate of the principal Dutch colonial regime — and was instructed in the principal Papiamento Kreyòl of the Curaçaoan enslaved community, the principal Roman Catholicism of the principal Dutch West India Company toleration of the Spanish-language Catholic mission, and the principal Kongo and Ewe ritual canon of the principal Curaçaoan religious synthesis.

He received in the principal year 1795 the principal news of the principal Batavian Republic that had replaced the principal Dutch Stadtholderate in January of that year, the principal French Republican abolition of slavery of the principal Convention decree of the sixteenth Pluviôse Year II (the fourth of February 1794), and the principal Haitian Revolution then in its principal fifth year. He concluded — by the principal Batavian-Republican legal doctrine of liberté and the principal solidarity-with-Haiti of the Curaçaoan enslaved community — that the principal status of the principal Curaçaoan enslaved was no longer juridically defensible.

He led the principal Knip plantation slaves on the principal seventeenth of August 1795 in an unarmed delegation to the principal Knip master to declare the principal end of the principal labour obligation. He was rebuffed, and the principal delegation transformed within hours into a continental revolt — gathering across the principal western Curaçaoan districts to about a thousand insurgents by the principal twentieth of August, joined by the principal sub-commanders Bastian Karpata, Pedro Wakao and Louis Mercier.

He fought the principal Tula Revolt across the principal seventeenth of August to the twentieth of October 1795 against the principal Dutch colonial militia and the Spanish reinforcements summoned from Coro on the Venezuelan littoral. He was betrayed by a free-Black informer on the principal eighteenth of September at the principal Porto Marie cave hideout, captured at Porto Marie on the nineteenth of September, and tortured by the principal Curaçaoan colonial court at Riffort. He was broken on the wheel, his face burned, and decapitated at the principal Rif fortress of Willemstad on the third of October 1795. He was rehabilitated as the principal Curaçaoan national hero by the principal Curaçaoan island government in 2010. He is honored here as the principal commander of the Tula Slave Revolt of the Dutch colony of Curaçao.