In French Guyana in June 2019, François-Michel le Tourneau, geographer and senior research fellow at the CNRS, launched the Camopi-Regina expedition, composed of a botanist, an Amerindian guide and eight legionnaires from the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (REI) in Kourou.

The objective: to continue his research into populations living in the Amazon rainforest and investigate illegal gold mining activities, by collecting the testimonies of workers who had come from neighbouring Brazil, the Garimpeiros, to the heart of France's largest natural park.

Totally autonomous and paddling canoes, for a month the group immersed itself in one of the world’s most hostile environments: the Amazonian equatorial forest.