The incredible story of the governor forgotten by his government on an island

Ramón Arnaud had never imagined that before the age of 30, he would be a lieutenant in the Mexican army and governor of an island in the Pacific Ocean. To his misfortune, he also did not suspect that less than ten years after his appointment, the authorities would forget him at 1,200 kilometers from his country and he would die in the middle of a delusion, trying to join a lifeboat in a precarious boat.

Ramon Arnaud Vignon was born on August 31, 1879 in Orizaba, a city located in the center of the Mexican state of Veracruz, 277 kilometers from Ciudad de

Mexico

. He was the son of two Frenchmen who had sought more luck on Mexican lands: Ángel Miguel Arnaud and Carlota Vignon.

His family was well off because his father had ambaded a fortune by working hard but also thanks to a transportation subsidy that the government had granted him for the construction of the urban railway. For this reason, he had been able to buy a hacienda and a beautiful house in Real Street in Orizaba.

According to the account
Laura Restrepo, in her book
The island of pbadionWhile his father lived, Ramón and the whole family lived a life at the pinnacle of the Orizaba Provincial Pump. But when he died, his widow squandered the money. Ramón, the eldest child, was puzzled by the adversity and did not know what to do with his life.

"He had been educated to receive an inheritance, not to face a bankruptcy," says Restrepo in his book. For a while, he was apprenticed to an apothecary. He memorized the formulas and names of all the medicines and became interested in first-aid treatment until the owner of the pharmacy went to the capital with all his belongings. After a period of lack of control and vagrancy, Ramón chose to become a soldier.

"If I had had money, I would have paid the officer career in a military academy, like any blank wire, and I would have had money. obtained medals, honors and comforts, but as I did not have it, it would have turned into meat barracks ", it is said to La Isla de pbadion. They only recognized him thanks to his father's family name: they let him jump three or four degrees to become a sergeant.

Shortly after, he regretted his decision and defected. He wandered into Mexico City until they found him and locked him in Santiago Tlatelolco prison. A court martial had dictated his sentence: five months and fifteen days in prison for desertion from the army and degradation for private. Upon his release, he swore that he would fulfill his duty as a soldier and returned to the army as a soldier.

Indeed, on December 16, 1902, he returned to the army, in the 23rd Battalion in Veracruz. The conditions were more difficult than those that broke him when he first came in as a sergeant and yet, this second time he held firm. Gradually, he climbed until becoming a second lieutenant. He had a remarkable job to crush the Mayan rebellion in Yucatan and that is why they decorated him with the medal of merit and courage.

In 1907, Colonel Abelardo Avalos, his godfather and protector, told him something that would change his life: he would be sent to the island of Clipperton or to the Island of the Pbadion to defend him from French. Not only that: he was promoted lieutenant and the dictator Porfirio Díaz appointed him governor of the island and rewarded him for a previous trip in

Japan

.

The island of Clipperton, which Arnaud had almost never heard of, was a small atoll of corals measuring just 9 square kilometers in the Pacific Ocean, about 1,300 kilometers to the southwest of the island. Acapulco, on the Mexican coast. It was discovered in the early eighteenth century by John Clipperton, an English pirate and privateer who had devoted himself, among other things, to attack Spanish possessions and ships in the name of his British majesty.

A day after the announcement of his godfather, Arnaud was received by Porfirio Diaz and left Chapultepec Castle after the appointment. He was sure that he would finally be a happy man. At only 28 years old, he was already a lieutenant, governor of an island and trusted man of the master and lord of Mexico. In addition, they allowed him to take the woman with him to the island with which he would get married shortly. He was at his best. But … there is always a brush that ruins everything.

On November 20, 1910, four years after his arrival on the island, the
Mexican revolution. Unbeknownst to him, his luck is sealed: the authorities forget him and all the inhabitants of this lost land in the Pacific.

After six years of survival with the little that the island has procured for him and many companions, mainly sick of scurvy, Arnaud in his delirium thinks to see a boat, goes to meet him in a boat, but the boat sinks and he drowned or, in the worst case, eaten by sharks. This ended the story of the man who went from nothing to become governor.

Alicia Arnaud, her daughter, tells Restrepo how he experienced this fatal moment: "On the day of our father's death, we were all on the beach, boys and adults, watching him leave on a boat on the shore. the sea, when the manta ray appeared.We saw how the waves swallowed it, the shagreen also saw, a huge black animal, like a shadow coming out of the water, I do not know if we saw it or if we thought to see it blue stripes, other times it was money and sun rays "

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