CAMP DE LA TRANSPORTATION, French Guiana — At the end of a long courtyard, alongside where the guillotine stood, Cell 47 distinguishes itself from the rest of the adjoining block by the word "Papillon" scratched in its floor.
French for "butterfly," the scrawled word was the nickname of Henri Charriere, the subject of a 1973 film starring Steve McQueen and probably the best known of tens of thousands of men who passed through the infamous prison camp along the riverfront of St. Laurent du Maroni, French Guiana.
Left to rot amid encroaching vegetation since the last convoy of prisoners left in 1953, the brick cellblock that held "Papi" and others is under reconstruction as part of an overhaul of the Camp de la Transportation, which has been declared a national historic monument.
The renovation reflects an attitude swing by locals toward the dark past that permeates the French department and former penal colony parked in the northeast corner of South America.
"(Before) our conscience denied this history because of its butchery and sadism," said Brigitte Florez, a native Guianese and an expert on the prison colony. "It has been realized that it's a nefarious story that goes to our roots. Our goal is not to embellish it but to better understand it."
The renovation is expected to be finished in less than three years at a total cost of some $7.5 million, St. Laurent Tourism Director Yvan Marcou said.
"The municipality has decided it (the camp) is not our fault. It's history, like the Bastille," he said. "The Guianese now want it displayed, although not in a commercial way."
Through an arched gateway piercing a high outer wall, France's worst criminals were marched from the Maroni River dock into the camp's daunting confines and given a "welcoming" speech laced with warnings about attempted escape.
New arrivals were then shunted off to lockup to await possible transfer to interior jungle camps or the Ile Royale off the coast. Of the 70,000 men shipped to French Guiana to serve their time from 1852 on, only one in 10 survived, and a mere 2,000 made it back to the homeland.
Dressed in red-and-white striped uniforms and straw hats for the intense sun and humid climate, the damned lurked within the stone passageways and slanted roofs of the camp, which stands as a vivid example of French colonial architecture.
"The architects that came here during the prison's epoch were military civil architects but formed in the French school," Marcou said.
Measuring 235 yards by 120, the rectangular compound was divided into five walled-off sections, three of which held prisoners and two for administration and barracks.
To the southeast were 134 narrow cells with beds of wooden slats. Ninety-six of the hovels were in the disciplinary quarter, which also featured the blockhaus where those awaiting their Tribunal Maritime Special (T.M.S.) trial were chained.
On an execution day, the far end of the disciplinary quarter was crowned by the guillotine, France's centuries-old symbol of stark and sudden death.
Controversial 'tool'
Men sentenced to the guillotine were granted a last cigarette, some wine or rum and a confession with the pastor before lying down, head-first, on their stomachs beneath the shining diagonal blade.
Only 39 men were guillotined in Camp de la Transportation since an inmate had to go to extremes, such as killing another prisoner, to be given the chop, Marcou said. The Iles du Salut (Salvation Islands) may have posted a higher toll.
"It's possible there were many more in the islands who were fed to the sharks," Marcou said.
Currently the guillotine is packed away in storage as its future is deliberated. "There are two reasons," Marcou said.
"First, the true guillotine from the camp is not around. It disappeared after the camp closed. Second, it's difficult to expose a guillotine that served to castigate Guianese in a context where it may be badly interpreted."
As part of the remake of the camp, Marcou would like to put this "tool of colonial fabrication" in a display case where it could not be touched. The display would be indoors in order to water down the "spectacular" nature of the exhibit, he said.
Reflecting acceptance of its past identity and the interest shown by some 20,000 visitors a year who prowl around the camp, in the early 1990s St. Laurent erected a statue of a shackled prisoner along the riverside facing the tourist office.
The town, little more than five grimy streets of decaying 19th century wooden houses in the 1980s, has been partly revitalized and a handful of the old public buildings have been refurbished. Similar restoration has taken place on Ile Royale.
The hulking Camp de la Transportation, French Guiana's third most-popular tourist destination after the Kourou space port and the Iles du Salut, will never be brought back fully after years of deterioration in a corrosive tropical climate.
"Not all of it can be recovered, but rather a part of each element so people can see the (camp's) evolution," Florez said.
That includes the cell of Charriere, sentenced to life in prison in 1931 for killing a pimp in Paris. The veracity of his account of his attempts to escape — turned into the bestselling 1968 book "Papillon" as well as the movie by that name — is in doubt, as is his supposed signature in the cellblock floor.
"That's the legend, but it's almost certain it wasn't him who wrote it," Marcou said. "But he was shut up in there a good long time."