Today I will tell you the story of a peculiar character, enigmatic and with a surprising life, nothing more and nothing less than Henri Charrière better known as Papillon.
Born in France in 1906, in Saint-Étienne-de-Lugdarès, a small village that does not exceed 600 inhabitants. He was an orphan when he was just 11 years old and joined the French army at the age of 17, he only stayed 2 years in force because military discipline is not liked by men with the spirit of Papillon.
When leaving the army his luck was not the best, he remained in the underworld in the streets of Paris, there he met his first wife with whom he had a daughter; It was in those streets where he sealed his fate by killing a pimp.
The French justice quickly imprisoned him and condemned him to a life of forced labor in the Island of Salvation, a group of islands a few kilometers from the coasts of French Guiana, this is where the journey that made this man into a legend begins.
in 1933 he managed to escape from prison and along with two other inmates in a precarious raft, they skirted the coasts of Trinidad and Tobago in the direction of Colombia, after many mishaps on the route he manages to reach the Colombian Guajira, where he settles in a community Indigenous dedicated to the search for pearls, there she falls in love with 2 native sisters who become their wives and (citing her words) experiences.
The purest form of love and beauty.
In a trip to the west he is captured by the Colombian authorities and after a short detention in which he had numerous attempts to escape, he is extradited to Guyana again. Upon returning to the Island of Salvation (ironic name right?), He is placed in solitary confinement for 2 years and when he is released he is transferred to the island of Royale, where he also had numerous escape attempts, several of them failed thanks to some inmates who informed the guards.
He is put back into solitary confinement, this time for 8 years!, But thanks to the fact that except from the waters plagued by sharks, a small daughter of a guard called Lissette, his sentence was reduced to 19 months. Leaving the solitary feigned dementia as part of another escape plan, the asylum on the island was little guarded, also with the "crazy" were more lenient because they are not responsible for their actions.
After a failed flight in which Charrière and an accomplice almost drowned after crashing on the rocks with his raft, he decides to turn his freedom plans, "recover mental health" and asks to be transferred to the most feared of the islands, the Devil's Island request that the French authorities fulfilled with haste since they thought that they would finish their attempts of escape, since this island had the reputation of which never nobody had escaped of her due to its strong currents.
Upon arriving there he realized that his plans were always very elaborate, with this in mind he decided to go for something simple, a sack full of coconuts like float and jump into the sea. After spending time observing the sea and how the waves crashed against the rocks, he realized that they were coming in a series of 6 medium waves and then a seventh stronger, jumping into the sea with the company of another inmate who died just as they arrived to land, then I am trapped in quicksand.
He went by boat to Georgetown with the help of a Chinese named Cuic Cuic, and in English Guiana was safe, could be a free man again, but his desire for adventure led him to continue to Venezuela by land, when he was captured by the Venezuelan authorities and imprisoned in the sadly celebrated prison of El Dorado, there he was greatly surprised by the mistreatment that the prisoners received, which in his biography compared with the treatment that the slaves received in the ships of the XIX century.
He was released in 1945 and settled in the country, since Venezuela did not have extradition agreements with France, he married his fourth wife (Rita Alcover), in 1956 he received his Venezuelan citizenship and opened several stores in the city of Caracas, one of them still exists !, Le Grand Cafe or El Gran Cafe as it is known today, is a restaurant / cafe located on the Boulevard de Sabana Grande, this is decorated with portraits, memories and stories of Henri Charrière.
In 1967 due to the passage of time, his debts with the French justice prescribed, being able to return to his native land where relatives, journalists and the general public wanted to know the stories of this adventurer. He wrote 2 books with his memoirs, Papillon and Banco, which detail very much all his exploits and misadventures. I highly recommend his 2 books, including a movie with his story, starring Steve Mc Queen.
He was an orphan, a sailor, a criminal, a madman, an escapist, a pearl finder, an explorer, an adventurer, a barista, a scriptwriter and an actor.
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Se despide Francisco Queffelec.