(Bonaire, 1 March 1937 – Curaçao, 19 December 2025)
Some people enter your life first as a voice—an idea, a calm tone, a thoughtful presence—long before you ever meet them in person.
That is how I came to know Angel R. Salsbach.
I first encountered him through television, radio, and VITO—as someone who spoke without noise, yet carried weight. Even then, it was clear that Angel did not think in slogans. He thought in layers: about society, culture, land, and the human responsibility that comes with shaping a country.
When I later met him in person, that impression only deepened. We met because we kept returning to the same question: how Curaçao could grow without losing itself. Our conversations—sometimes long, sometimes intense—were not “social visits,” but meetings of shared concern: to continue exploring ideas, to test thoughts, to imagine better futures, and to evaluate how our vision for tourism might still be fulfilled.
Angel believed firmly that tourism is not “sun, sand, sea, sightseeing, and escapism.” He saw something deeper. For him, people travel because they carry a human need: cultural exploration—the desire to encounter other societies, and to discover their history, music, artists, talents, stories, and living traditions. What many now label “cultural heritage” was, for Angel, not a trendy product. It was a living duty—something to protect, to understand, and to present with dignity.
He also believed tourism could create something rare in our times: friends around the world—connections between peoples, not just transactions between visitors and destinations.
There was a moment when he might have become Commissioner of Tourism, and in that context he asked me to assist. Events unfolded differently, because he was needed elsewhere. Yet that request revealed something important: his openness, and the trust he could extend to someone who kept a clear distance from political alignment. Angel always respected my position of neutrality—my decision not to mingle in party politics, while still caring deeply about Curaçao’s future.
Even after I moved to the Netherlands and lived there for 22 years, the thread did not break. We did not keep “regular contact” like close friends do—but each time life brought us into each other’s path again, whether planned or by coincidence, it felt like a living joy: a moment of mutual recognition, appreciation, and continuity. Time and distance never erased the respect.
Angel’s creativity was often ahead of its time—such as his concept of “Hanging Beaches” for Curaçao: not fantasy, but an invitation to think differently about space, sustainability, and island limits.
His legacy is also cultural and artistic. He was an engineer and public thinker, but also a musician—founder of the Salsbach Jazz Trio—and a writer and composer. He wrote works that carried Curaçao’s history into the performing arts, including musicals such as E lucha final and Di Corazante pa Kòrsou.
After the severe stroke in 2001 and the onset of aphasia, many abilities were shaken—reading, writing, fluent speech—but his dignity remained. Through his books—Writing Without Being Able to Read and Dreaming in the Forest—he left not only testimony of struggle, but lessons in perseverance and humanity.
In the end, what stays with me most is not only what he did, but what he stood for: direction and meaning. The belief that thought must serve people; that culture must remain alive; and that tourism must never lose its human soul—nor allow “yu di Kòrsou” to be pushed aside, nor allow our beaches and land to drift away into foreign hands without boundaries, laws, and protection.
Our shared vision for a more structured, human-centered tourism—guided by clear rules and responsibility—has not yet been fully achieved. But in his honor, I hold onto the hope that Curaçao will still choose that path.
To the Salsbach family, to colleagues, to friends near and far, and to all who respected him across Curaçao and beyond: my sincere condolences. May you find strength in what he planted—quietly, but deeply.
Rest gently, Angel.
Your life left behind not noise, but meaning.
And with faith in the promise of resurrection and eternal life, I look forward to meeting you again—when life is restored, and what is good is made complete.
Tico Vos