• Tweeter

  • republish

The old "huts" of the camp in which the convicts were detained. Alberic de Gouville / RFI

In Saint-Laurent du Maroni, in French Guiana, the first International Festival of the Amazon-Caribbean Documentary Film (FIFAC) is held until the end of the week, which takes place in a former prison, the "transport camp". the mayor hopes to be listed as a Unesco world heritage site.

From our special envoy,

The transport camp is already classified as a historical monument but its eventual inscription as World Heritage of Humanity is part of a long process that concerns, more generally, the other former prisons of Guyana.

" The specificity of Saint-Laurent du Maroni is that it is a penitentiary city and is the only one in the world ," explains David Jurie, director of the Interpretation Center for Architecture and Heritage. The challenge of a World Heritage listing is international because there are also the prisons of New Caledonia and those of Australia .

Acquired in 1990 by the town hall of Saint-Laurent du Maroni after being abandoned and given to squatters since its closure in the early 1950s, the camp of transportation is now a place for cultural purposes. The old "huts" where the convicts were held are converted into libraries, theaters or training workshops.

"Traces of memory"

Today, 80% of buildings have been restored. It remains to rehabilitate the old disciplinary quarters and in particular the cell of one of the most famous convicts, "Papillon". This week again, a heritage architect came to oversee the completion of the old hall where meals were distributed to the detainees.

In parallel, the twelve boxes of the camp welcomed the festival-goers with projections in two of them, in particular for the jury of the FIFAC, of ​​which the Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau is the president. " Here we have a place that has been a prison with suffering, injustices that we usually had a tendency to repress ," he explains. Now, we are recovering these spaces, to make them not monuments in the Western way, but what we call traces of memory .

Today, the transport camp is a unique site, a place of memory open to tourists and schoolchildren who also hosts cultural events throughout the year. During the FIFAC, screenings, outdoors under the mango tree or in the huts, attracted more than 400 spectators per day.

► (Re) listen: The World March: Guyana: in the footsteps of the galleys

  • The transportation camp on the Maroni River
    Alberic de Gouville / RFI

  • Old "huts" of the camp in which the convicts were detained.
    Alberic de Gouville / RFI

  • The old disciplinary quarters have yet to be rehabilitated.
    Alberic de Gouville / RFI

  • The former prison welcomes today school visits.
    Alberic de Gouville / RFI

  • the old "boxes" of the camp are now libraries or cinemas for Fifac.
    Alberic de Gouville / RFI

  • Before the outdoor screenings ...
    Alberic de Gouville / RFI

  • During the FIFAC, the screenings reached more than 400 spectators per day.
    97XP