French Guiana releases land crossing between France and Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The French Guiana authorities released a decree on Saturday (18) releasing the circulation of people on the Binational Bridge, the only land connection between the French overseas territory and Brazil. The bridge had been closed since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The measure was expected and had been rumored for days. In the streets of Saint-Georges de l’Oyapoque, the subject was in every conversation on the French side of the border. Everyone had a hunch about whether or not the Binational Bridge would be opened.

Even so, many people were surprised when François Ringuet, the mayor of French Guiana (a post equivalent to that of a governor in Brazil), published the decree in the middle of the weekend.

According to the text, the crossing is again possible by land over the Binational Bridge. However, travelers over the age of 12 will have to prove that they have been vaccinated against Covid-19 or present a Covid-19 test with a negative result performed within the last 48 hours.

The decree further explains that if the traveler does not meet these criteria but presents an “imperative” reason, the crossing is also possible if the person agrees to be tested upon arrival at their destination and serves a seven-day isolation period, followed by a retest.

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The measures announced in the decree should make life easier for those living in French Guiana who used to make the crossing by car, both to shop and to travel to other regions of Brazil. But it also represents a new lease of life for the residents of Oiapoque, on the Brazilian side, where commerce lived mainly from the euros spent by travelers coming from across the border.

“The economy of the state of Amapá will take a huge leap forward. Everybody wins with the opening,” summarizes association representative José Gomes, who works on both sides of the Oiapoque river in social actions with vulnerable families.

“Tonight, everyone is celebrating. You can be sure that starting Monday (20th), there will be a huge line of cars to cross the bridge,” he predicts.

THE BINATIONAL BRIDGE SOAP OPERA

The reopening is just another episode in the Binational Bridge soap opera. This project took 20 years to get off the paper before being inaugurated in 2017, aiming to take the north of Brazil out of isolation by land.

But for the cross-border residents, the decree does not represent a radical change since the crossing between French Guyana and Brazil has always been possible informally using canoes, the so-called catraias, which cross the Oiapoque River for a handful of reals long before the bridge was built.

And, as a result, open a direct door to the European Union since French Guiana is an overseas territory of France.

Not even the health context has changed this situation. If the police tried to limit boat activity to contain the spread of the virus at the beginning of the pandemic, soon the circulation returned to an almost normal rhythm.

“For me, the pandemic didn’t affect anything. I kept working. Sometimes we make about ten crossings a day,” says Osvanil, one of the more than 200 catraieros, most of them Brazilians, who work on this stretch of the Oiapoque River.

“There are people who live there but work here. Some students live on the other side and study here. So they come in the morning and come back in the afternoon. And we spend the day transporting these people,” he told RFI’s report on the French side of the river.

The crossing between Saint-Georges and the town of Oiapoque takes about 10 minutes in motorized boats. As for Vila Vitória, a small neighborhood on the Brazilian side, 4 minutes is enough to change the country.

During the pandemic, the trip that cost R$ 5 went up and can reach R$ 20, depending on the customer’s face. According to Osvanil, inflation is due much more to the increase in gasoline prices (on the Brazilian side) than to the pandemic.

But the price doesn’t seem to be a problem, since crossing the river is part of the local population’s life. It is enough to stay a few minutes on the Oiapoque shore, on the French side, to see an endless parade of canoes carrying adults and children, many people with bags and even suitcases, in an illegal coming and going, since the border was officially closed, but tolerated.

I LIVE ON BOTH SIDES

“I cross every day for work,” says Deise, who sells acai at the Saint-Georges market. “My children study here too. I live on both sides,” jokes the Brazilian, who in the past also piloted boats.

She was one of the only women catraieiras in Oiapoque but decided to change her activity at the moment the authorities started to control the movement of the canoes, at the beginning of the pandemic.

She feared the reopening of the Binational Bridge, as did Osvanil, who was already calculating the impact on the canoeing activity. “If the bridge reopens, it will affect our lives because we depend on it here,” says the catraieiro. “There are more than 200 of us, and each one of the catraieiros represents a family.

But the associative representative José Gomes is less pessimistic. “With the opening, everybody wins. There will always be people who won’t be able to cross the bridge,” he says, alluding to the fact that the verification of documents is rigorous during the land trip, while on the boats, the controls are much rarer.

Thus, with or without the pandemic, for many people who are in an unfair situation, including a good part of the prospectors who work in the nearly 400 clandestine camps in the forests of French Guyana, the only way to cross the Amazon border between Brazil and France is still the river crossing through Oiapoque.