Sir, – It is curious that you used Roger Casement's photo on your article ("Easter Rising international commemoration programme unveiled", June 29th) announcing the programme of 1916 commemorative events.
One place there will not be an event linked to him, is in Colombia, a country he is very much associated with due to his denunciations of the abuses of rubber plantation owners.
His Putumayo Journal is available in Spanish but very difficult to find in English.
Perhaps it is better this way. After all, in modern Colombia palm and rubber plantations are springing up all over the place and mining companies are forcing farmers and indigenous people off their lands.
Roger Casement would not lend himself to hors d’oeuvres and fine wine, any commemoration of him in Colombia would raise some very uncomfortable questions for officialdom.
Granted a big chunk of the part of Colombia he reported on now belongs to Peru, following the 1930 war, but the same uncomfortable questions would arise there also. – Yours, etc, GEARÓID Ó LOINGSIGH Bogota, Colombia