Our September Book: The Devil and Mr. Casement by Jordan Goodman

This month, we are reading The Devil and Mr. Casement: One Man's Battle for Human Rights in South America's Heart of Darkness by Jordan Goodman. Roger Casement is a fascinating historical figure who we have encountered before (in Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost and Peter Robb's A Death in Brazil) who is also the subject of Mario Vargas Llhosa's most recent novel, The Dream of the Celt. It's a wonder there hasn't been a biopic starring, say, Daniel Day-Lewis about him, though there is really too much drama for just one film, just as there is too much to cover in one book. Although this book concentrates on Casement's investigations of the exploitation of indigenous peoples by rubber barons in the Amazon, there are a couple of enjoyable ways to get a thumbnail summary of his entire life. One is to listen to the ballad below, but if you have a little more time you can listen to the radio drama The Dreaming of Roger Casement (download via iTunes) from RTE (Radio Ireland).



I wish I could provide a little more background on Jordan Goodman or an interview about his book but I have hit a dead end on that front. There are still a few resources on the internet to supplement our reading, however. You can actually page through Walter Hardenburg's 1913 report "The Putumayo, the devil's paradise; travels in the Peruvian Amazon region and an account of the atrocities committed upon the Indians therein."  Here's a very brief film clip of Casement and a newsreel about his state funeral in Ireland almost fifty years after his death.  RTE also has a program in which a panel speculates "What if Roger Casement had not kept a diary?" (download via iTunes). An Independent 2011 news story of interest, "The Mystery of the Missing Amazonian Rubber Slaves" traces the fates of Omarino and Ricudo, the two Indians Casement brought back to England,

"We are sent far, far into the forest to get rubber, and if we do not get it, or if we do not get it quickly enough, we are shot," Omarino told the Daily News, a popular national newspaper founded and edited by Charles Dickens. "London is very wonderful, but the great river and the forest, where the birds fly, is more beautiful. One day we shall go back."
The men did make it back to South America in the end, but the last known record of their whereabouts shows them separated from their homes by thousands of miles of thick rainforest.

I tend to think of the movement for corporate responsibility in human rights as a relatively new development so this book was very instructive in showing that human rights activists have been seeking justice, not just from governments, but from businesses for more than a hundred years. Unfortunately, the descendants of the Putamayo Indians are still facing environmental threats brought on by corporate exploitation of their resources. This Survival International article compares the Roger Casement story to the current illegal trade in mahogany, which we read about in Ted Conover's The Routes of Man. Jordan Goodman notes the exploitation of the Putumayo by the oil and gas industry.  You can learn more about the current struggle by watching the documentary, Crude  or check out Amnesty International's corporate accountability program, their specific work on Chevron in Ecuador, a success story for indigenous rights in Peru, and an action you can take here.

Our April Author: Santiago Roncagliolo

This month we are reading Santiago Roncagliolo's Red April.  The book was recently shortlisted (with Orhan Pamuk) for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the author is the youngest to have received the Spanish Alfaguara Prize.

I'm sure there are many interviews and other great resources available in Spanish, but here is what I could find in English.  This Boston Globe interview is a good place to start. We learn about the similarities between the author and the central character of the book,

Q. Chacaltana is a wonderfully odd character.

A. Well, he's more or less like me, really. I worked in human rights in Peru in the '90s. Like Chacaltana, I was this ridiculous little figure who saw himself as enforcing the law and upholding order. His process is the same process I lived, which was gradually realizing that the state and the terrorists could be really similar. I didn't have a serial killer to track, but I saw a lot of serial killing. I was probably not as ridiculous as he is, but for sure I was a bit ridiculous.

More insight from an interview from Latineos about how human rights influences the author's writing and how we might relate this Peruvian story to other contexts:

LP:  When I worked with PEN, I remember campaigning on behalf of Peruvian writers and journalists persecuted under Fujimori’s regime in the 1990s. You worked in human rights in Peru at a similar time, when it would have been particularly dangerous for you. Do you believe in “the power of the pen” and do you think writers and journalists have a moral duty to campaign against injustice?

SR: I would force no writer into political subjects. Power is always to be mistrusted, no matter where it comes from. The only way to control it is civil action. What would Norwegians write about? Red April is about violence and death. It is not just about Peru’s war, but also Baghdad’s or even World War II. I just picked the violence and death I knew well, which was Peruvian. But each reader recognises his own terrible past in it.  I think it is important that citizens take part in public life, not just writers, although writers or photographers can also show the injustices to other people. 

Three Percent, the website dedicated to literature in translation, offers a taste of what's in his yet untranslated work.

One of Roncagliolo's books, Pudor, has been made into a film.  I can't see that the film has had a North American release, but you can watch the trailer (in Spanish) here.

Roncagliolo was featured in Granta's recent "The Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists" issue. In a web feature related to the issue, the author talks about fellow Peruvian and 2010 Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llhosa and another recent Rights Readers author, Roberto Bolano,

And just what is a Latin American writer? I’ve no idea. Vargas Llosa’s next novel is the story of an Irishman. He also wrote the story of a French painter – Gauguin. And The Bad Girl takes place in Europe and Japan. Bolaño’s detectives travel through Africa and many of his characters live in Barcelona or Paris. In my opinion, what these two authors have in common is their boldness. Vargas Llosa has always taken risks, always tried out new ways of writing, without ever getting bogged down in his own creative past. And Bolaño was always implacably himself, and did things his own way.

The author reads from the Red April in Spanish:



Finally, please visit the Amnesty International site for more information about current human rights concerns in Peru.

For April: Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo

For April we have chosen Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo,

A chilling political thriller set at the end of Peru's grim war between Shining Path terrorists and a morally bankrupt government counterinsurgency.

Associate District Prosecutor Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a by-the-book prosecutor wading through life. Two of his greatest pleasures are writing mundane reports and speaking to his long-dead mother. Everything changes, however, when he is asked to investigate a bizarre and brutal murder: the body was found burnt beyond recognition and a cross branded into its forehead. Adhering to standard operating procedures, Chacaltana begins a meticulous investigation, but when everyone he speaks to meets with an unfortunate and untimely end, he realizes that his quarry may be much closer to home. With action rising in chorus to Peru’s Holy Week, Red April twists and turns racing toward a riveting conclusion.