Cola Debrot

Who was Cola Debrot?

Cola Debrot was a writer, lawyer, medical doctor and politician. He was the son of a plantation owner. In 1904 he moved from Bonaire to Curaçao, and then when he was 14 he moved to the Netherlands to gain an education. He went to secondary school and universities in the Netherlands, he studied law and then medicine, where he also started his literary career. His debut Mijn zuster de negerin is best known. In the late 1940s, he returned to the Antilles and lived on Curaçao, where he laid the foundations of Dutch-Antillian literature. Cola Debrot has also been active as a politician. From 1962 to 1970, he was the Governor of the Netherlands Antilles, the first to be born on one of the islands. In 1970 he moved back to Netherlands to dedicate his time to writing.