So that you don’t have to, I’ve conducted a reconnaissance of French Guiana where the French justice minister is to build a strict regime, maximum-security prison to warehouse France’s most dangerous criminals.
I’ve been there a couple of times as a guest of the French space agency, which occasionally conducts launches of the Ariane rocket from Kourou. You fly in from Paris over virgin rainforest and can see the enormous space base on the descent. It’s the hand of man on the face of God.
In the jungle, the butterflies are poisonous, the snakes venomous and the Caiman crocodiles hungry
French Guiana has a veneer of French civilisation. You can buy decent baguettes. There’s a Carrefour supermarket. But it’s essentially an anachronism of French colonialism.
Europeans run the spaceport and local government. There are industrious Indochinese, descendants of the families who were exiled there after the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, who run much else.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in