The tall, blonde commander’s firm handshake leaves no doubt that the European Union’s most unusual frontier, deep in the Brazilian rainforest, is in good hands.
The commander - who speaks French with a Russian accent but says he is now French - heads a contingent of 30 soldiers from the French Foreign Legion who are charged with keeping French Guiana secure.
The French overseas department, and therefore a border with the European Union, is divided from Brazil by the River Oiapoque.
The Oiapoque borders on Brazil’s Tumucumaque National Park, one of the world’s largest rainforest protection areas. The park is almost the size of the Netherlands and is home to a few hundred Wayapi indigenous people. Settlements are normally prohibited on the Brazilian side of the border area, with the only exception being Vila Brasil, which faces the French village of Camopi on the other side.
Most of the 90 houses of Vila Brasil were built before Tumucumaque was turned into a national park in 2002. It takes eight hours by boat to reach the settlement of 300 residents and its assortment of small shops, open-air hair salons, bars, brothels and loud music.
Shopkeepers in Vila Brasil accept payment in euros, and European mobile phones work without roaming costs.
The relative poverty and power cuts – with generators providing only a few hours of electricity daily – stand in contrast to the neat lawns and uninterrupted power supply on the border’s French side.
“I was born here and will die here,” Camopi Mayor Joseph Chanel says from his hammock, his reading glasses dangling above his bare chest.
Other than his red loincloth, the chief of Camopi’s “Euro-Indians” sports just a conspicuous gold watch.
His real name is Joseph Chandet, but the French started calling him Chanel - perhaps after the Parisian fashion house - and the name stuck.
About 800 of Camopi’s 1,800 residents are indigenous people, many of them Brazilian women who crossed over to give birth on French soil in order to get European child allowances.
“They receive between 400 and 1,200 euros (about 480 to 1,400 dollars), depending on their age and number of children,” Chanel says. The women may also qualify for other French social benefits.
The child allowances are often spent by the women, their relatives or others in the cheaper Vila Brasil on alcohol or fuel for illegal gold miners, many of whom operate in the area.
At dusk, Wayapis sit at tables filled with empty beer cans while children play on the ground.
The Wayapis are also said to have a high suicide rate. France has considered replacing the cash handouts with food or other benefits. “But so far, nothing has happened,” Chanel shrugs.
Taking a break from the interview, he gets up from his hammock and walks in his bathing sandals towards a house that has been built on poles to protect it from the high tide. His two grandchildren run towards him.
Will they stay here, like he has? Even if they don’t move away to a larger city, it is far from certain that they can prevent their cultural identity from being crushed by Western influences.
Marianne Mayet, a French woman teaching 270 children at a Camopi primary school, wonders even whether “school is good for them.”
The school system was, after all, set up by colonialists who wanted to force the nomadic Wayapi to settle down, says Mayet.
“They lose their culture, their language, forget how to make pottery, how to fish and hunt,” she fears. – DPA