El Dorado is a small town in eastern
Venezuela
Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
. It is situated in
Bolívar State, on the
Cuyuni River. It is the second-largest town in
Sifontes Municipality; the capital of the municipality is
Tumeremo
Tumeremo is a town in the state of Bolívar in eastern Venezuela. It is the shire town of the Sifontes Municipality, and the administrative center of asserting Venezuela's claim over the disputed Guayana Essequiba region.
History
Its first ...
.
It is on the road to
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
. El Dorado has a small airport, .
History
El Dorado was founded in the 1890s. Gold mining was developing in the area, and there was a background of international tension caused by the
Essequibo border dispute between Venezuela and Britain.
Prison
The town has a prison, the ''Centro Penitenciario de Oriente El Dorado''.
The Venezuelan prison system is generally overcrowded,
and El Dorado prison has been described in the British press as "notorious".
In 2015 the Venezuelan press reported the completion of a stage in a project to expand the prison, providing new facilities for the rehabilitation of offenders.
Prisoners
*
Henri Charrière
Henri Charrière (; 16 November 1906 – 29 July 1973) was a French writer, convicted of murder in 1931 by the French courts and pardoned in 1970. He wrote the 1969 novel '' Papillon'', a memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a p ...
. The prison is mentioned in the book
''Papillon''.
While the accuracy of the book has been questioned, it is not disputed that its author, Henri Charrière, was imprisoned in Venezuela in the 1940s,
[ (subscription required)] an epoch when the prisoners were assigned to mobile detention camps.
See also
*
List of cities and towns in Venezuela
This is a list of cities, towns and communities in Venezuela. The state capitals are marked with a *.
List
See also
* List of cities in Venezuela by population, a list that only includes cities with no less than 100,000 residents in ...
References
External links
Sifontes Official Web Site
{{Venezuela-geo-stub
Populated places in Bolívar (state)
Prisons in Venezuela