Sir Roger Casement is one of the super-heroes of international human rights, and was so before such a phrase existed. As a British Consul he conducted months long investigations in both the Congo, 1903, and Peru’s Putumayo rubber districts in 1910, in unimaginable conditions, under the constant threat of death by those whose enterprises he was reporting on. He found the patterns of slavery, torture, starvation and sickness in both places so appalling that he wrote in his journals and in letters of, on some evenings, having to vomit up his sickness. He was one of the first to use the phrase “a crime against humanity.” He became a household name in much of England when his reports and public speeches, along with those of E.D. Morel and the Congo Reform Association created enough public and diplomatic pressure to put an end to the worst of the Congo atrocities and strip King Leopold of his private holdings in Africa. After the Peru report he was knighted by King George V in 1911 for his work.
He is also, in the eyes of many British and even some Irish, a traitor. In late October, 1914 he went to Berlin, as England, France and Germany were tightening their 4 year mutual death-grip across the fields of France. He tried to persuade Irish POWs to join him in forming the Irish Brigades which would fight alongside the Germans against the common foe — the British. Many of his strongest supporters, including his best friend Herbert Ward were outraged. In 1916 he was captured on the west coast of Ireland on Good Friday, two days before the bloody Easter Uprising in Dublin against the 800 year British occupation of Ireland.
He was hanged on August 3, 1916
He was hanged despite his Knighthood, his great fame and despite widely circulated petitions for clemency, in good part because beginning in July of that year scurrilous rumors began circulating about his homosexual obsessions; not simply that he was, but that he had pursued young boys wherever he went, that he had desperately offered himself “to be used by others.” At his trial, the finding of some diaries after a raid on his personal effects was mentioned. But then, as now, it wasn’t the facts that mattered, it was the rumor of something scurrilous and unproven that was used to destroy his character. Many who had once supported him refused to sign the clemency petitions. Joseph Conrad, who had personally credited Casement causing The Heart of Darkness to be written, refused. George Bernard Shaw signed and wrote widely encouraging others to sign. Arthur Conan Doyle signed, though on the grounds that the accusations proved him insane.
Despite his obscurity today, there are many books about Casement, several good biographies, histories and accounts of the Congo campaigns. One of the most famous novels in the western literary canon, Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, while it doesn’t mention Casement, owes its existence to him and his opening the eyes of the then British Merchant Marine Captain, Konrad Korzeniowski. Casement’s name appears periodically in Ireland and England as debate is raised again about the Black Diaries, as the material purportedly found in the raid became known.
Given the availability of competently done books about a now little known man it seems at first an odd leap that one of Latin America’s best known novelists would devote several years of research and writing to bring us an a sort of odd genre — a biography dressed as a novel, or a novel with the bones of a biography – El sueno del celta. [due to appear in an English translation in the spring of 2012.] (more…)
Contemplating the marriage of movies to the imagery of Gabriel Garcia Marquez occurs to every reader of any one of his books. Whether it’s crocodiles eating the last buttery manatee, a man with enormous wings, a woman farting so loud the dogs are startled, butterflies in the thousands, a single one landing on a bare breast, or coppery tresses on a 12 year old that reach the ground, the images float in the reader’s interior eye with the wish of seeing them on the big screen. Many films have come from this desire from Maria My Dearest in 1979 to Love in the Time of Cholera in 2007. Most are quite beguiling, worth spending an evening with. It may be the latest effort, however, that sets the standard for excellence of Garcia Marquez story and image brought to the screen
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Of Love and Other Demons, by Costa Rican director Hilda Hidalgo, has been making the film festival rounds for much of 2010. It was shown at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October where I was fortunate to see it. Though a theatrical release date has not been announced for the United States is is already listed as forthcoming on DVD at Netflix, and is Costa Rica’s nomination for Best Foreign Language film for the upcoming Oscars.
This is Hidalgo’s first full length film, and done with the benediction of Gabo himself who she met while taking a screen writing class. It bursts with color, character and place. It tells the story almost completely of the slender, 160 page novel, translated by Elizabeth Grossman in 2008. Sierva Maria is the only child of a deteriorating wealthy colonial family in 18th century Colombia. Forsaken by her superstitious and drug-addled mother she is brought up by the family slaves.
“Sierva Maria learned to dance before she could speak, learned three African languages at the same time, learned to drink rooster’s blood before breakfast and to glide past Christians unseen and unheard, like an incorporeal being.”
Unschooled and happy, at home with black slaves and unknown in the white community she concocts stories, tells lies, invents demons almost as a favor to the superstitious. All is well until bitten by a rabid dog sometime in her 12th year. She shows some signs of infection which is immediately interpreted as rabies, a terrifying sentence at the time.
Her mother the Marquesa [Margarita Rosa de Francisco] in the grips of emetic cures, paranoia and hatred of her husband pays little attention to the girl. Her father, the Marques del Castelduero [ Joaquin Clement], uncertain what to do, and long separated from the Church, takes her to a Jewish physician in town, secular and skeptical. Abrenuncio [Damián Alcázar] prescribes happiness:
“Play music for her, fill the house with flowers, have the birds sing, take her to the ocean to see the sunsets, give her everything that can make her happy. No medicine cures what happiness cannot.”
Of course the Bishop, hearing of the intervention of this godless man summons the Marques and declares his daughter in need of an exorcism to rid her of the rabies; rabies clearly being the work of the “enemy,”
“… one of the demon’s numerous deceptions is to take on the appearance of a foul disease in order to enter an innocent body… and once he is inside no human power is capable of making him leave.”
The father vacillates between the rational science of Abrenuncio and turning Serva Maria over to the convent, to be prepared for exorcism, as ordered by the Bishop. Suddenly he decides:
“The last memory he had of Sierva Maria was her crossing the gallery in the garden, dragging her painful foot, and disappearing into the pavilion of those interred for life.”
Eliza Triana, the actress Hidalgo found for Sierva Maria, after a long search, is close to perfect. As the book suggests, she has translucently white skin, with a length of hair so coppery bright she seems other worldly. She looks and plays the wild-child cast into prison by the fearful and punitive as wondrously as your imagination could make her. You will not soon forget her eyes staring though the bars. To her is sent Father Cayetano Delaura [Pablo Derqui], a young, somewhat modern priest — he reads Leibniz, and has since his youth longed to finish the church-condemned Romance, Amadis of Gaul [which had already driven Don Quixote crazy and given the name California to then north western Mexico.] He is charged by the Bishop, an old, wheezing with asthma relic of the dying Spanish Empire, with her exorcism.
Delaura, “aware of his own awkwardness with women” is smitten immediately.
“From the moment he first saw Sierva Maria, those calm waters of so many years became his inferno. He would not meet there again with his friends, the clergy and laymen who shared with him the delight of pure ideas and organized scholastic tourneys, literary gatherings , musical evenings,. His passion was reduced to understanding the wily deceptions of the demon.. the most terrible demon of all.”
When she tells him of a dream of herself overlooking a snowy field through a large window, he recognizes it as a pivotal scene of his own life; he is terrified, and lost. He comes to believe she is not infected. He tries to cure her instead of preparing her for exorcism. He cleans the wounds where she has been bound to the bed. He touches her.
Leave me alone, she said. Don’t touch me”
He ignored her and the girl loosed a sudden storm of spittle in his face. He persevered and offered the other cheek. Sierva Maria continued to spit at him. Again he turned his cheek, intoxicated by the gust of forbidden pleasure rising from his loins.”
Gradually she loses her feral wildness under his ministrations. Love –doubly erotic because of its determined chastity– begins. The scenes between the two are tender and erotic at the same time. We almost lose the discomfort of knowing this is a 36 year old man and a twelve year old child. Perhaps we are caught up in Hidalgo’s excellent translation of Gabo’s magical realism… it is love as if in a fairy tale and so we can understand it in a fairy tale way.
Hidalgo has added more texture and response from the girl than we find in the novel. Though we know she responds in equal measure to Delaura’s love in the book
“.. he kissed her on the mouth for the first time. Sierva Maria’s body shivered in lament, emitted a tenuous ocean breeze, and abandoned itself to its fate.”
the film gives us more of her, moving from the raging captive to a young girl discovering love, in its intimate caresses. More time is spent with her and less with the broader back story of her parents we find in the novel. This to the good.
Of course, Garcia Marquez is not just a simple, if fantastical, story teller. Always he brings us to the big things in life: love, death, solitude, rebellion. And so it is that the demon love that drives out other demons does not go where happy dreams go.
We see Delaura, unable to get to her cell any longer, his secret passageway blocked. Desperate and shamed he is sent to the leper colony, as a favor despite his having succumbed to the demon. Sierva Maria, golden hair shorn and burned, prepared once again for the brutality of exorcism is found having given up her soul to love, “her eyes radiant and her skin like that of a new born baby.”
A truly wonderful movie. Watch for it and go. Not a romantic movie in the Hollywood way but romantic in a serious, wonderful way. Viewers of many persuasions will be persuaded.
The book is pretty wonderful too. It’s not a major Garcia Marquez work but, being a book, has space for much more subtlety and character coloration than possible in a movie. There are asides and slantwise comments on the characters that make them fuller. The mother in particular, whose behavior was something of a mystery in the movie, is better known in the novel, if no better liked.
The politics that are the sinews around the bones of Garcia Marquez’ stories might almost be better observed in the movie than in the book. The historical setting of colonial whites and impoverished blacks is immediate and unmistakable, as is the power and backwardness of the Church. The press of love against repression and domination is visceral and real. This is a complete movie you’ll return to. Hilda Hidalgo, and by the way, her completely female co-producers, have a very film on their hands, never mind that it’s their first.
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Curmudgeonly Note: It is amazing to me, with such an exotic, compelling story and marvelous film work that, at a Film Festival no less, viewers could not keep their hands out of their rustling popcorn or their teeth off the scrunching kernels during sweet and tender, taught and moving parts of the film. I for one would pay extra to have those damned tubs of popcorn and cellophane wrapped candies banned. Humph!
The Maid, a 2009 film from Chile, directed by Sebastian Silva, offers itself with a poster of a slightly maniacal woman, dressed in a white collared maid’s uniform, staring out at us. That fairly represents the film itself. Raquel barely cracks a smile for most of the movie. Her eyes are in constant, suspicious motion, her mouth signalling some inner running commentary with its constant tics. In her charge, in a well off Chilean household, are a teen age daughter, a 13 year old boy, part child, part sexual explorer, and two younger brothers — the boys always rowdy in totally brotherly ways. She does the cooking, the cleaning, the clothes washing. It’s a big load and it shows. Pilar, the working mother knows it and tries repeatedly to bring in someone to help her –which of course threatens Raquel’s security. The first two efforts end in failure as Raquel drives them off with a combination of brow-beating, strange behavior and actual lock-outs. Some fairly impressive scenes of black-humor, especially as the second maid, sent over by the Grandmother to get Raquel’s head set back on, scales walls to overcome the opposition.
This isn’t a movie of brutal exploitation of a poor maid. It looks like a pretty good, and good humored household. The kids, except for the oldest, the daughter, love her. She says several times that she loves them and they her. Yet she is morose and obviously at odds with the daughter. What is the problem — unless it is simply the society that creates the possibility and need for house servants. It doesn’t seem to be that kind of movie, though. Pilar refuses several times to fire Raquel, even as her own daughter and mother tell her Raquel is abusive to others and is losing it. We’re never sure what exactly ails Raquel. She pops pills regularly for severe headaches. She suffers serious fainting spells and is taken to the hospital with no control over her legs. Is this psychosomatic, or something organic? We are never told — a major flaw in the film — but are led to think it is the former.
It is the hospital trip that finally brings in maid number 3, Lucy, who breaks through Raquel’s reserves. We see her not only smiling, but genuinely cracking up, beginning when Raquel again tries to lock her supposed competitor out of the house. Whereas the first two responded with panic and anger, Lucy disrobes and sunbathes in the nude near the family pool, to Raquel’s disbelief and suppressed, admiring laughter. Through their growing friendship, a trip to Lucy’s family and (it seems) Raquel’s first sexual experience, we begin to see a different story — not of subjugation by others, but by self. Perhaps the condition of being a maid was chosen by a particular personality, and also reinforces it. Perhaps as the oldest child becomes a vivacious young woman realization sets in for Raquel, of what she believes she is not. Her friendship with Lucy seems to crack her shell, even as Lucy decides to leave the house to return to the family she misses. The last scenes have the perpetually dour Raquel dressed in form revealing running clothes, ear buds in her hears, picking up the jogging habit of the departed Lucy. She looks able now to run into a better future.
I can’t give The Maid a ‘Go See this Now!’ rating. It will be more interesting for Spanish speakers and learners, for South American fans. The Chilean dialect spoken is much “thicker,” more Argentine, than I had known it to be. It’s interesting to watch the family behavior amongst each other and with the maid. It is fascinating to watch Catalina Saavedra as Raquel show off her acting chops. You are convinced she is either totally depressed or suffering from some neurological condition. So, not a super rating from me but, I’d watch it again, just to pick up more of the nuances of a culture I don’t know very well and because the list of movies looking at real work in the real world by those at the lower end of the ladder are few and far between.
Working in a mine work may not be the most dangerous job in the world (believe it or not, ocean fisherman have the most dangerous jobs) but the idea of working deep under the earth, never seeing the sun, much less getting sealed up in a mine brings shudders of horror to most.
This year has brought a spate of mining tragedies to world attention in China, the United States, South Africa and Chile. The sealing up of 33 Chilean miners and their release after two months of desperate work gripped the world.
Most of these mining stories involve men, which is hard enough to bear. When the story involves children, killed or simply hard at work, how much worse. A major portion of Freidrich Engles’ The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, was about child labor in the mines, recently[1842] prohibited in Great Britain until a child was over 10! The history of the American Labor movement and the United Mineworkers in particular has engraved in our minds photos of grimy young boys peering into the cameras, photos which gave intensity and immediacy to union organizing and national legislation. Most of us would imagine such exploitation is over. Far from it.
The Devil’s Miner is a documentary movie about the mines of the famous Cerro Rico (Rich Hill) in Bolivia, a hill so rich it became the location of the capitol, Potosi despite the extreme altitude — 14,300 ft–, and still produces minerals – mostly silver– long after the Spanish conquistadores turned them into engines for its empire. There isn’t one mine in the Cerro Rico, there are hundreds of them, many mined by rag-tag groups of miners with little capital, primitive equipment and few safety standards. Here a boy can become a miner at the age of 12, an experienced one at the age of 14.
Filmmakers Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani took their cameras deep into one of the mines with one small crew. The center of interest, and main voice of the film, is Basilio, now 14 but who started working in the mines at the age of 10 when his father died. The film is low key and unadorned with no fancy visuals or subplots. The cameras follow Basilio, his 12 year old brother and some of their adult co-workers deep into the mines. We see ore cars being hand pushed along their rails through treacherous mud, the kids having learned where there are niches to get out of the way. We see Basilio learning the rudiments of explosives, and working in the whirling dust of drilling, with breathing apparatus and covered with cloth head covers. He speaks knowledgeably about silicosis and the death it brings.
We see the two boys and all the men constantly stuffing small coca leaves into their mouths until one cheek, packed, looks like an enormous goiter. Far from the romance certain privileged citizens have of coca – after all ‘It’s natural’ — it looks like a least good choice: chew this or be taken out in a box. To misquote Dylan, ”Do not praise what you don’t understand.”
We also see Basilio outside the mines and on the surface, living in a single room stone hut with his mother and three siblings. We can only imagine the cold at such an altitude, the difficulty in getting and preparing food. He is the father figure to the others. He knows it and his mother knows it. He plays soccer with his brother, cuddles his younger sister. He is a happy, well-spoken kid; someone we would all be proud to have as a child. And he dreams of school, learning and the world beyond his tiny village.
In fact he is shown at school, anxious to learn but knowing, short of a miracle, the family needs him at work, sometimes at 24 hour shifts in the mine, sometimes in heat reaching 100 degrees.
Though not as slick as many current documentaries, Devil’s Miner is a very very good film — a great one for US youngsters to see as they begin to look at, and travel around the world. A great one for anyone going to Bolivia, Chile, Peru or any country with great, hand worked mines. A great one to remember when we think it would be cool to have some Potosi silver, a trinket to flash and think no more about. After watching this film, any such silver you wear will have the signification of our Aids or Cancer ribbons — worn in memory and support, not simply for adornment.
Mario Vargas Llosa was not in the final list compiled by would-be Nobel Prize seers. A British betting firm had Cormac McCarthy (US) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o as the favorites. The Swedish selection committee, playing their cards close to the vest as usual, surprised many by choosing Vargas Llosa this year, though he has been on the short list previously. His choice returns the prize to a Latin American writer for the first time since Octavio Paz in 1990.
Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, and the entire eastern region of the state are suffering the worst drought in more than a century. A government scientist who calls it an “atypical” drought says it is chiefly caused by warmer ocean temperatures.
Scientist Carlos Nobre, of the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), said, “When it comes to the Rio Negro, in Manaus, this drought has no parallel in the last 103 years. That is, since 1902, when the level of the Rio Negro began to be measured,” he said.
In the eastern part of the region, this is the worst drought in the last 50 or 60 years, he estimates. The governor of Amazonas state has declared a crisis due to the drought. Environmental News Service
Tropical Storm Matthew continues to dump heavy rains over Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, and neighboring regions of Mexico today. Puerto Barrios, in northern Guatemala, has received 4.57″ of rain in the past 24 hours. With Matthew expected to slow down and dissipate by Sunday, the storm’s heavy rains of 6 – 15 inches can be expected to cause severe flooding and dangerous mudslides. The rains are of particular concern for Guatemala, which suffered its rainiest August in its history…
Despite his obscurity today, there are many books about Casement, several good biographies, histories and accounts of the Congo campaigns. One of the most famous novels in the western literary canon, Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, while it doesn’t mention Casement, owes its existence to him and his opening the eyes of the then British Merchant Marine Captain, Konrad Korzeniowski. Casement’s name appears periodically in Ireland and England as debate is raised again about the Black Diaries, as the material purportedly found in the raid became known.
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