2023-05-03 05:31:01
Let’s discover a hell that has become paradise. 7000 km from here, in Guyana, are the Iles du Salut. In the past, they housed one of the worst prisons in France. Criminals or political detainees were sentenced to forced labor there. The place inspired the film “Papillon” with Steve McQueen. Today, these islands are home to lush vegetation and monkeys that delight tourists. Sébastien Rosenfeld and Samuel Lerate take us on an adventure.
The Iles du Salut are a wild environment yet steeped in history. Located 14 kilometers from the Guyanese coast, they lead the visitor into a green hell.
Suddenly, the vestiges of the old prisons appear: in these places will pass approximately 70,000 prisoners, including a certain Henri Charrière, nicknamed “Papillon” and embodied in the cinema by Steve McQueen.
A group of students on a trip to Guyana discover the old cells, overgrown with moss and vegetation. ” It’s quite destabilizing because at the same time, it’s a fairly heavenly place, but at the same time, the more time you spend there, the more you walk in the cells, the more you realize that it must have been a place pretty awful for inmates“, says a member of the group.
You have to find yourself in one of these cells of convicts, these strong heads that the French state had decided to break at all costs, to understand what they were going through. In these jails, 10 hours of forced labor and an absolute rule: the prohibition to speak, from which comes the sad nickname of Saint-Joseph Island: the island of silence.
A place steeped in history
From now on, it is no longer the guards, but the spiders that haunt the place. However, there is still a guardian: Joël is a legionnaire and his mission is to monitor and clean the island, including the cemetery. ” The convicts, when they made these places, they made it with their heart, their will. We try to maintain them to keep them clean.“, he explains.
Then, Joël will continue the guided tour of the island by revealing a secret place: rocks, which bear the inscriptions of the first inhabitants: the Amerindians. ” These little badges really mean something, they’re sacred pebbles“, explains Joel.
Distant from 300 meters, the royal island offers another landscape: more favorable to drop the anchor of the catamarans which transport the tourists. Here again, there are cells, but the inhabitants come for something else. ” It’s a bit of a vacation for the inhabitants of Cayenne, it’s to get out of everyday life“, explains a vacationer.
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