French Guiana

Get out your map of the Caribbean to follow this account of French Guiana by Tim Brown. The Lesser Antilles, forming the eastern part of the chain, and divided into the Leeward and the Windward Islands, stretch north to south across the entrance to the Caribbean. The northernmost of the Leeward Islands is Martinique, a French overseas department. Hop south over Dominica and you come to Martinique, another French island and birthplace of Josephine, first wife of Napoleon. Curious that both should have been born in French island dependencies. Way off to the southeast is French Guiana, the easternmost of the three Guianas. From Martinique, Tim lorded it over an an empire worthy of Napoleon. He writes:

"As Consul General in Martinique for four years, French Guiana was in my district and I visited it often. Being tropical, Caribbean, and largely Creole, on the surface it has much in common with Belize, especially its fauna and flora. But beyond that, French Guiana is vastly different - a tropical province of France, a piece of the European Union n South America, the size of California but with a minuscule population, a space center guarded by the French Foreign Legion's 3ieme Regiment, meals of tepiscuintle washed down with fine French wines and complete with cheese platter, Hmong tribal villages that were transported lock, stock, and pa kau maas from Laos to the Americas, Paramaka and Saramaka Indians and Bosch and Boni black villagers in loin clothes voting for President of France. I've been in many an exotic place, Mindoro, the Pi Tong Luang highlands of Thailand, among the Druze in the Middle East, the Paraguayan Chaco. But in terms of exoticism few compare to French Guiana."

My comment: Tim does not mention Devil's Island, where many of the convicts were subject to a double sentence: the first in jail, then an equal number of years as inhabitants of Guiana, which they were supposed to open up. Most tries to escape. Those who stayed probably did not enjoy the local color as much as Tim.

Ronald Hilton - 2/28/01