Produced by Chuck Greif, Broward County Library and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE PUTUMAYO
[Illustration: CHAINED INDIAN RUBBER GATHERERS IN THE STOCKS: ON THE
PUTUMAYO RIVER.
[Frontispiece]
THE PUTUMAYO
THE DEVIL'S PARADISE
TRAVELS IN THE PERUVIAN AMAZON
REGION AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE
ATROCITIES COMMITTED UPON THE
INDIANS THEREIN
BY
W. E. HARDENBURG
EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION
By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S.
_Author of "The Andes and the Amazon," &c._
TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF
SIR ROGER CASEMENT CONFIRMING THE OCCURRENCES
WITH 16 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP
T. FISHER UNWIN
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20
_First Published, December, 1912_
_Second Impression, January, 1913_
(_All rights reserved._)
PREFACE
The extracts from Sir Roger Casement's Report, which form part of this
work, are made by permission of H.M. Stationery Office. Acknowledgement
is also made for assistance rendered, both to the Rev. J. H. Harris,
Organising Secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection
Society, and to the Editor of _Truth_. Portions of Mr. Hardenburg's
accounts have been omitted, and some revisions necessarily made, but the
statements of adventures and the occurrences remain as in the original
and stand upon their own responsibility. The unpleasing task of editing
this book--which stands as perhaps the most terrible page in the whole
history of commercialism--has been undertaken in the hope that permanent
betterment in the condition of the unfortunate aborigines of South
America will be brought about.
THE EDITOR.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 11
II. HARDENBURG'S NARRATIVE: SOURCE OF THE PUTUMAYO 54
III. THE UPPER PUTUMAYO 87
IV. THE CENTRAL PUTUMAYO 111
V. THE HUITOTOS 141
VI. THE "DEVIL'S PARADISE" 164
VII. HARDENBURG'S INVESTIGATIONS: THE CRIMES OF THE
PUTUMAYO 215
VIII. CONSUL CASEMENT'S REPORT 264
CONCLUSION 339
INDEX 341
ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAINED INDIAN RUBBER GATHERERS IN THE STOCKS: ON
THE PUTUMAYO RIVER Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
MAP 11
THE PERUVIAN AMAZON: FREE INDIANS OF THE UCAYALI RIVER 24
AN AFFLUENT OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON 36
INDIAN WOMAN CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HUNGER: ON THE UPPER PUTUMAYO 53
VEGETATION ON THE PERUVIAN AMAZON 74
TROPICAL VEGETATION ON THE AFFLUENTS OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON 76
CANOE VOYAGING ON THE AMAZON: A NOONDAY REST 96
A TYPICAL RIVER BANK CLEARING 108
A HUITOTO INDIAN RUBBER GATHERER 152
GUAMARES INDIANS, OF THE HUITOTO TRIBE, IN DANCE COSTUME 162
RUBBER-COLLECTING RIVER LAUNCH 176
NATIVE WOMEN AND HUT AT IQUITOS 196
FREE INDIANS OF THE UCAYALI RIVER 208
A SIDE STREET AT IQUITOS 232
RIVER ITAYA, NEAR IQUITOS 250
HUITOTOS AT ENTRE RIOS AND BARBADOS NEGRO OVERSEER 286
[Illustration: Reproduced by kind permission of the proprietors of _The
Times_.]
THE PUTUMAYO
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
It is something of a terrible irony of fate that in a land whose people
for unknown centuries, and up to only four hundred years ago, lived
under social laws "so beneficent as had never been known under any
ancient kings of Asia, Africa, or Europe, or under any Christian
monarch"--laws recorded by a reliable historian and partly capable of
verification by the traveller and student to-day--should, in the
twentieth century, have been the scene of the ruination and wholesale
torture and murder of tribes of its defenceless and industrious
inhabitants. Under the Incas of Peru, as recorded by the Inca-Spanish
historian Garcilaso de la Vega[1] and other early writers, human blood
was never shed purposely; every inhabitant was provided for and had a
place in a well-ordered social economic plan; there was no such
condition as beggary or destitution; the people were instructed by
statute to help each other co-operatively; injustice and corruption were
unknown; and there was a belief in a Supreme Director of the Universe.
Under the Peruvian republic and the regimen of absentee capitalism
to-day, tribes of useful people of this same land have been defrauded,
driven into slavery, ravished, tortured, and destroyed. This has been
done, not in single instances at the command of some savage potentate,
but in tens of thousands under a republican Government, in a
Christianised country, at the behest of the agents of a great
joint-stock company with headquarters in London: the "crime" of these
unfortunates being that they did not always bring in rubber sufficiently
fast--work for which they practically received no payment--to satisfy
their taskmasters. In order to obtain rubber so that the luxurious-tyred
motor-cars of civilisation might multiply in the cities of Christendom,
the dismal forests of the Amazon have echoed with the cries of
despairing and tortured Indian aborigines. These are not things of the
imagination, but a bare statement of actual occurrence, as set forth by
the various witnesses in this volume.
The occurrences in the Amazon Valley which, under the name of the
Putumayo[2] Rubber Atrocities of Peru, have startled the public mind and
aroused widespread horror and indignation--atrocities worse than those
of the Congo--cannot be regarded merely as an isolated phenomenon. Such
incidents are the extreme manifestation of a condition which expresses
itself in different forms all over the world--the condition of acute
and selfish commercialism or industrialism whose exponents, in enriching
themselves, deny a just proportion of the fruits of the earth and of
their toil to the labourers who produce the wealth. The principle can be
seen at work in almost any country, in almost every industry; and
although its methods elsewhere are lacking in savage lust and barbarity,
they still work untold suffering upon mankind. It is easy to condemn
offhand the nation of Peru, under whose nominal control the foul spot of
the Putumayo exists, and to whose negligence and cupidity the blame for
the occurrences is largely to be laid, but the conscience of world-wide
commercialism ought also to be pricked.
Leaving, however, that broader aspect of the subject, it is necessary to
understand the local conditions which could have brought about such
occurrences. The region of the Amazon Valley--a region nearly as large
as the whole of Europe without Russia--was early divided between Spain
and Portugal. Brazil to-day occupies the eastern and most extensive
portion of the valley; and the various Andine republics, Peru, Colombia,
Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela, cover the upper and western portion.
The Amazon is the largest river in the world; the entire fluvial system,
with perhaps an aggregate of a hundred thousand miles of navigable
rivers and streams, gives access to an enormous territory of forests and
plains, which neither road nor railway has yet penetrated.
It is to be recollected that the interior of South America is the least
known of any of the continents at the present time. Large areas of
territory are practically unexplored. The backward state of the Amazon
Valley is largely due to the fact that during three hundred years of
Portuguese dominion it was closed commercially to the outside world.
Slave-raiding by the Portuguese and the Brazilians went on unchecked.
The colonists even fought against and destroyed the Jesuit missions
which the devout and humane of their priests had established. The whole
valley has existed under a dark cloud ever since the time when, in 1540,
the first white man, Orellana, Pizarro's lieutenant, descended the Napo,
Marañon, and Amazon from Quito to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1638 Pedro de
Texiera performed his great feat of ascending the Amazon from the
Atlantic to Quito, and descending it again in 1639, one of the most
noteworthy explorations in history. Exaggerations of Indian savagery and
dangers of climate have deterred settlers in later times. As for the
Putumayo region, it was practically unknown until the last decade of the
nineteenth century. The name "Amazon" was probably a result of the
experiences of Orellana and his followers, who were attacked by a tribe
of Indians, the Nahumedes, on the river of the same name, whose long
hair and dress of chemises or shirts caused the explorers to think their
attackers were women-warriors, or "amazons." There is no proof of the
existence of any empire of women in South America, although there is a
legend bearing on the subject.
The Putumayo River rises near Pasto, in the Andes of Colombia, and
traverses a vast region which forms one of the least-known areas of the
earth's surface. This river is nearly a thousand miles long, flowing
through territory which is claimed both by Peru and Colombia, and enters
the main stream of the Amazon in Brazil. The river crosses the equator
in its upper portion. The notorious rubber-bearing region upon the
Putumayo and its affluents, the Igaraparaná and the Caraparaná, lies
within a square formed by the equator on the north, the 2nd parallel of
latitude on the south, and the 72nd and 74th degrees of longitude west
of Greenwich. Like most of the Amazon tributaries, the Putumayo and its
two affluents are navigable throughout the greater part of their
courses, giving access by water up to the base of the Andes; and the
rubber traffic is carried out by means of steam-launches and canoes.
The Caraparaná and Igaraparaná rivers, both flowing from the north-west,
run parallel for about four hundred miles through dense, continuous
forests, discharging into the Putumayo, the first some six hundred miles
and the second some four hundred miles above the confluence of that
river with the Amazon. The accompanying map renders clear these
conditions, and it will be seen that the region is a considerable
distance from Iquitos, nearly a thousand miles by water, the small,
intermittent river steamers of the rubber traders occupying two weeks in
the journey; and a part of the course lies through Brazilian waterway. A
much more direct route can be made by effecting a portage from the
Putumayo to the Napo River, which enters the Amazon about fifty miles
below Iquitos. The Putumayo region, therefore, must be regarded as an
extremely outlying part of Peru, with corresponding difficulties of
access and governance.
The native people inhabiting the region are mainly the Huitotos, with
other tribes of more or less similar character, but with different
names. These people, although known as _infieles_ and _salvages_--that
is, "un-faithed" and "savage"--cannot be described as savages in the
ordinary sense of the term. They have nothing in common with the bloody
savages of Africa and other parts of the world. Their weapons are not
adapted for taking life so much as for hunting, and although the tribes
of the Amazon Valley have always fought against each other and have
reduced their numbers by inter-tribal strife, they are not generally a
fortress-building people, and the noiseless blow-pipe takes the place of
the blood-shedding weapons of the indigenes of other lands. The Agarunas
of the Marañon, however, build war-towers for defence, as do some other
tribes.[3] The _tunday_ or manguare, the remarkable instrument for
signalling or communicating by sound through the forest, is used by
various tribes in the Amazon Valley. Most of the tribes live in great
community-houses. The Indians of the Amazon Valley in general are docile
and have good qualities; they are naturally free from immorality and
disease; they have a strong affection for their women and children and a
regard for the aged. They are well worthy of preservation, and might
have been a valuable asset to the region. The particular people of the
Putumayo region have decreased greatly since the advent of the rubber
"industry," as has been the case all over the Amazon Valley: on the
Putumayo they have been reduced, it is calculated, from forty or fifty
thousand to less than ten thousand, partly by abuse and massacre, partly
by having fled to more remote districts away from their persecutors.
The local conditions which rendered possible the Putumayo atrocities
are to be found, first, in the character of the Iberian and
Iberian-descended peoples of South America, and, second, in the
topographical formation of the country. To take the last-mentioned
first. The condition must be borne in mind that the region of the Amazon
forests is in every way separate from the region of the mountains and
that of the coast. The coast region of Peru, bordering upon the Pacific
Ocean, is a rainless, treeless zone, upon which vegetation is only
possible under irrigation, but upon which the modern Peruvian
civilisation flourishes; Lima, the capital of the country, being
situated only a dozen miles from the sea. To the east of this
Europeanised region arise the mountain ranges of the Andes, which cut
off the forest lowlands so completely from the coast that the two may be
regarded as separate countries. The mountain regions embody vast,
treeless tablelands, broken by more or less fertile valleys, and
overlooked by snow-clad peaks and ranges, and are subject in general to
a cold, inclement climate, with heavy rainfall. The uplands lie at an
elevation of 12,000 ft. and upwards above sea-level, and the dividing
ranges are crossed at 14,000 to 17,000 ft., with only one or two passes
between Western and Eastern Peru, at a lower elevation. The line of
tree-life begins at an elevation of about 10,000 to 11,000 ft., this
forest region being known as the _Montaña_ of Peru, merging by degrees
into the great _selvas_ or forests of Brazil. These topographical
details serve to show how greatly Western and Eastern Peru are cut off
from each other. The conditions similarly, affect Colombia and Ecuador,
and, to a certain extent, Bolivia, but the last-named country does not
extend to the Pacific coast. It is in the isolation of the cis-Andine
from the trans-Andine regions that Peru may claim some palliation for
the offences on the Putumayo. The river port of Iquitos is from thirty
to forty days' journey from Lima under existing means of travel. The
easiest method of reaching the one from the other is by way of
Southampton, or New York, and Panama. A system of wireless telegraphy is
now in operation across the six hundred miles of coast, mountain, and
forest territory separating the two cities.
The topographical conditions described had influenced the human
inhabitants of Peru before the time of the Spaniards. The aboriginal
race inhabiting the highlands and the coast lived then, as they do
to-day, in a manner distinct from each other. The highland and coast
people were those who formed the population under the Inca government,
and under whose control they had reached a high degree of aboriginal
civilisation; whilst the indigenes of the forests were more or less
roving bands of savages, dwelling on the river banks, without other
forms of government than that of the _curacas_, or petty chiefs of
families or tribe. The influence of the Incas did undoubtedly extend
into the forest regions in a degree, as evidenced by remaining customs
and nomenclature, but the Incas did not establish order and civilisation
in the forests as upon the highlands. The Incas and their predecessors
built a series of fortresses which commanded the heads of the
precipitous valleys leading to the forests, whose ruins remain to-day,
and are marvels of ingenuity in megalithic construction. After the
conquest the Inca population of the highlands and coast became
Christianised, and at the present time the whole of the vast territory
of the Pacific coast and Andine uplands, extending throughout Colombia,
Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia for two thousand miles, is under the regimen
of the Romish Church, and every village contains its _iglesia_ and
village priest. In very different condition are, on the other hand, the
aborigines of the forests, who live neither under civil nor religious
authority. But there was probably no fundamental or racial difference
between the upland and forestal Indians, and they resemble each other in
many respects, with differences due to climate and environment. Remains
of ancient civilisations, in the form of stone ruins and appliances, are
found east of the Andes, in the Amazon forest regions, and the Chaco
plains, arguing the existence of prehistoric conditions of a superior
character. Legends and customs among the forest tribes seem to refer in
a dim, vague way to ancient conditions and happenings of other
environments; and there can be little doubt that the archæology and
origin of the South American people are far from being fully understood.
Further exploration of this little-known region may produce much of
interest, and unravel mysteries which the dense forest at present
conceals.
One of the principal tributaries of the Amazon is the River Marañon,
which flows from the south for a thousand miles between two parallel
chains of the Andes, and breaking through a remarkable cañon, known as
the Pongo de Manseriche, turns suddenly to the east and forms the main
Amazon waterway. Above the Pongo, or rapids, the river is navigable only
for very small craft, but below it forms the head of steam navigation.
The upper Marañon flows down through a high, difficult territory, with
many fertile valleys, and upon its headlands and the adjacent slopes of
the mountains are freely scattered the ruins of the Inca and pre-Inca
peoples, who inhabited the region in pre-Hispanic times and even
contemporaneously with the Spaniards.[4] From this district, and from
the valleys to the west of Cuzco and Titicaca, it was that the Inca
influence mainly entered the forest regions of the Peruvian Montaña.
It is interesting to note that the "Mongolian" resemblance to the
Huitotos Indians of the Putumayo is again observed in Sir Roger
Casement's Report.[5] The resemblance between the aboriginals of the
Andine and Amazon regions of South America and Asiatic peoples is
striking, as indeed it is with the natives in some parts of Mexico. The
present writer has dealt fully with the matter, as bearing upon the
possible peopling of America by Tartars in remote times, in a book
recently published.[6] The subject is one of great interest. One school
of thought denies any imported origin for early American culture, and
considers the Aztec and Inca civilisations to have been autochthonous, a
natural reaction of man to his environment; whilst the other points to
the great probability, as adduced in archæological and other matters, of
some prehistoric Asiatic influence.
The abuses connected with rubber-gathering in the Amazon Valley are not
a new or sudden condition. The ill-treatment of the Indians in the
rubber-bearing regions of Peru were brought to public notice in England
and the United States in the book before mentioned, published in 1907,
showing that the aborigines were being destroyed, sold into slavery, and
murdered by the white rubber-gatherers or merchants several years before
the matter culminated in the publication of the Putumayo atrocities. The
present writer also wrote to various London periodicals in an endeavour
to arouse interest in the subject, but none of the journals specially
took the matter up.
The Peruvian Government and the Press of the Republic have long been
aware that the Indians of the forest regions were brutally exploited by
the rubber merchants and gatherers. Reports and articles have been made
and published both by officials and travellers. That Indians were sold
at Iquitos and elsewhere as slaves and that there was a constant traffic
in Indian women has been known to the authorities ever since
rubber-gathering began. In 1906, in Lima, the Director of Public Works,
one of the most important of the Government departments, handed the
present writer an official publication[7] dealing with Eastern Peru,
which contained among other matters an account by a Government official
of that region of the barbarities committed upon the Indians, a
translation of a portion of which is given here. The present writer had
undertaken to make a preliminary survey or reconnaisance on behalf of
the Government of a route for a railway from the Pacific coast to the
Marañon, which would give access to the interior and be of considerable
strategic importance.
The following translation of part of a Report in the official
publication, dated February, 1905, by a Peruvian engineer in the service
of the Government[8] shows that the abuse of the Indians was a matter of
current knowledge:--
"Marked changes have been produced among the savage tribes of the
Oriental regions of Peru by the industry of collecting the 'black gold,'
as the rubber is termed. Some of them have accepted the 'civilisation'
offered by the rubber-merchants, others have been annihilated by them.
On the other hand, alcohol, rifle bullets, and smallpox have worked
havoc among them in a few years. I take this opportunity of protesting
before the civilised world against the abuses and unnecessary
destruction of these primitive beings, whom the rapacity of so-called
civilised man has placed as mere mercantile products in the Amazon
markets; for it is a fact known to every one that the native slaves are
quoted there like any other merchandise. Throughout the forest region
under the control of the Governments of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and
Brazil the natives are exposed to attack without protection of the law
by the whites, who hunt and persecute them like animals of the jungle,
recognising as their only value the sum represented by their sale. If
protection is not afforded these unhappy beings, the just Judge of the
doings of all will condemn the generation which annihilates without
cause the indigenous races, the real owners of the soil."
The principal newspaper of Lima, _El Comercio_, a journal of high
standing, has repeatedly drawn attention to the ill-treatment and
exploitation of the Indians, not only in the regions of the Putumayo and
Iquitos but much farther to the south--as, for example, in the district
round Port Maldonado. This river port is nearly two thousand miles from
the Putumayo region, southward across Peru, reached by launch and canoe
upon a different river system, that of the Beni River. The upper courses
of this river are known as the Madre de Dios, upon which Port Maldonado
is situated, and whose lower course is the enormous Madera River, which
runs into the Amazon in Brazil in latitude 59°, more than one thousand
miles below Iquitos. At Port Maldonado is the confluence of the
Tambopata River with the Madre de Dios, and farther upstream is the
Inambari River. The whole of this region is rich in rubber forests, and
several companies are engaged in rubber-gathering, including British,
American, Bolivian, and Peruvian. The following translation from _El
Comercio_ of Lima in an edition of February, 1906, shows that more or
less similar methods were employed at points so far apart as Maldonado
and the Putumayo:--
"In the basin of the Madre de Dios and its affluents, where it is easy
to navigate with the help of the 'terrible' Chunchos,[9] who in reality
are good and hospitable, exist immense quantities of rubber, rich and
abundant rubber forests of easy exploitation. It would appear that the
new Commissioner is resolved to put a stop to the barbarous custom of
the _correrrias_[10] organised by the authorities themselves or by the
rubber-merchants, who carry on the repugnant business of selling the
poor Chunchos. As labour and women are both scarce, and as there is a
strong demand for the one and the other, bands of armed men are
constantly organised for sudden descents upon groups or communities of
the savages, no matter whether they are friendly or hostile, making them
prisoners in the midst of extermination and blood. Urged on by the
profit resulting from the sale of boys, robust youths, and young women
(_frescas mujeres_), they tear children from mothers and wives from
husbands without pity, and pass them from hand to hand as slaves. It
were well to take the savages from their forests to use their labour and
to cultivate their intelligence, but not for business purposes to make
them victims of the knife and the lash."
[Illustration: THE PERUVIAN AMAZON.
FREE INDIANS OF THE UCAYALI RIVER.
(Observe their robust appearance when not enslaved.)
To face p. 24.]
Thus the Press of the country itself shows that these things are done,
not only with the connivance of the authorities but are "organised by
the authorities themselves." The expected improvements mentioned above
took place very slowly, and in some cases not at all. To replace one
Commissioner by another is insufficient. All are equally venal or
influenced, and King Log does but give place to King Stork. Barbarities
committed by the rubber-merchants upon the Indians of the Ucayali and
Marañon were brought to the knowledge of the Peruvian Government in 1903
and 1906 by Roman Catholic missionaries established there and published
by the Minister of Justice.[11]
After extensive journeys in the interior of Peru, upon returning to the
capital, the present writer wrote various articles, which were published
in the Press of Lima and Arequipa, drawing attention to the miserable
condition of life of the labouring Indian class. Among these evils is
abuse by petty authorities and estate-owners, who employ the Indians and
fail to pay them their agreed wages or pay them in goods of inadequately
low value; the extortions of the village priests under the cloak of
religious customs; and, most serious of all, the ravages resulting upon
the consumption of _aguardiente_, or fiery sugar-cane rum, which is
responsible for the ruination and decrease of the working population.
This cane spirit is manufactured largely by the sugar-estate owners, and
is often a more profitable product than the sugar, whose output is
sacrificed thereto; but as the large estate-owners are often influential
personages or politicians and members of the Legislature, the
prohibition of the profitable sale of alcohol among the Indians is not
likely to be brought about. The leading newspaper of Lima, _El
Comercio_, in a leading article, of which the following is a partial
translation, said:--
"It is not rare, unfortunately, in the Republic that the authorities of
all kinds raise up abuses as a supreme law against the villages of the
interior. For the Indians of the mountains and the uplands there often
exists neither the Constitution nor positive rights. It would be useless
to seek in the indigenous race beings really free and masters of their
acts and persons. It looks as though independence had only been saved
for the dwellers of the coast. From the moment that the traveller's gaze
ceases to observe the ocean and is directed over the interminable chain
of the Andes it ceases also to observe free men, the citizens of an
independent republic. To this condition, which is not abnormal because
it has always existed, the ignorance of the Indian contributes, but also
the abuses of the authorities, who, with rare exceptions, make of them
objects of odious spoliation. Such depredations are aggravated when its
victims are unfortunate and unhappy beings, towards whom there is every
obligation to protect, and not to exploit."
The most remarkable fact about the maltreatment of the South American
Indians is that--admitted and specially alluded to in the Peruvian
Press, as the foregoing extracts show--abuses are carried out often by
the petty authorities themselves. It is painful for a foreigner, one,
moreover, who has enjoyed hospitality both from the authorities and from
the village priests in the interior of Peru, to record these matters,
but it is manifestly a duty. Moreover, it is a service to the country
itself to draw attention to the evil. The extinction of the indigenous
labour of the Andine highlands and of the rubber forests will render
impossible for a long period the internal development of the country. No
foreign or imported race can perform the work of the Peruvian miner or
rubber-gatherer. Due to the peculiar conditions of climate--the great
altitude in the one case and the humidity in the other--no European or
Asiatic people could take the place of these people, whose work can only
be accomplished by those who have paid Nature the homage of being born
upon the soil and inured to its conditions throughout many
generations.[12] It might have been supposed that from economic reasons
alone the exploiters of native labour would have endeavoured to foster
and preserve it, even if it were simply on the principle of feeding and
stabling a horse in order to use its powers to the utmost. But this is
not the case. The economic principle of conserving the efficiency of
human labour by its employer, remarkable as it may seem, has never been
recognised even in the most enlightened communities, or only very
recently and in a very few instances. It is not necessary to go to the
tropics to seek instances; they are evident no farther afield than among
the ill-paid mining, dock, manufacturing, and other labour in Great
Britain and the United States. The very abundance of labour has been its
own undoing; the supply has seemed exhaustless and the tendency has
been to squander it. The question is one of degree rather than of
principle in any community or industry and at any time in history. But
in the persecuted districts of Latin America native labour is
practically being hounded off the face of the earth.
The Putumayo atrocities were first brought to public notice by an
American engineer and his companion, Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, and
the interesting narrative by the former of their travels upon the
Putumayo River forms a large part of the subject of this book. Mr.
Hardenburg and his companion suffered great hardships and imprisonment
at the hands of the Peruvian agents of the rubber company on the
Putumayo, and barely escaped with their lives. For these outrages some
time afterwards they were awarded the sum of £500 damages by the
Peruvian Government, due to the action of the United States. Mr.
Hardenburg came to London from Iquitos in financial straits, but only
with considerable difficulty was able to draw public attention to the
occurrences on the Putumayo. Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins's account
and indictment of the methods employed by the company's agents on the
Putumayo, under the name of "The Devil's Paradise," was a terrible one.
It was averred that the peaceful Indians were put to work at
rubber-gathering without payment, without food, in nakedness; that their
women were stolen, ravished, and murdered; that the Indians were flogged
until their bones were laid bare when they failed to bring in a
sufficient quota of rubber or attempted to escape, were left to die with
their wounds festering with maggots, and their bodies were used as food
for the agents' dogs; that flogging of men, women, and children was the
least of the tortures employed; that the Indians were mutilated in the
stocks, cut to pieces with machetes, crucified head downwards, their
limbs lopped off, target-shooting for diversion was practised upon them,
and that they were soused in petroleum and burned alive, both men and
women. The details of these matters were almost too repugnant for
production in print, and only their outline was published.
The first result of the publication of the Putumayo atrocities in the
London Press was denial. The Peruvian Amazon Company denied the truth of
the matter: the Peruvian Government denied the existence of such
conditions; whilst the Peruvian Consul-General and Chargé d'Affaires in
London denied them even more emphatically. In the minds of those
acquainted with Latin-American methods denials would not carry much
weight. To deny is the first resource of the Latin-American character
and policy. It is an "Oriental" trait they possess, the curious
obsession that efficient and sustained denial is the equal of truth, no
matter what the real conditions. The Peruvian Consul in London wrote
vehement letters of denial and re-denial to the London Press, among them
the following, published by _Truth_ in September, 1909:--
"This Legation categorically denies that the acts you describe, and
which are severely punished by our laws, could have taken place without
the knowledge of my Government on the Putumayo River, where Peru has
authorities appointed direct by the supreme Government, and where a
strong military garrison is likewise maintained."[13]
Unfortunately, the statements of the representatives of certain of the
South American republics in London cannot always be regarded as
disinterested. Their Governments in some cases pay them no salary, and
they are concerned in promoting and earning commissions from the
flotation of rubber and mining companies in the particular regions they
represent. Such a condition is often discreditable to the Latin-American
republics. Officials who are shareholders in and recipients of
commission from rubber company promoters with whom they are
hand-in-glove are not likely to take an impartial view of the
unfortunate native workers.
The Secretary of the Peruvian Amazon Company wrote in September, 1909,
to the Anti-Slavery Society and _Truth_ as follows:--
"The Directors have no reason to believe that the atrocities referred to
have, in fact, taken place, and indeed have grounds for considering that
they have been purposely mis-stated for indirect objects. Whatever the
facts, however, may be, the Board of the company are under no
responsibility for them, as they were not in office at the time of the
alleged occurrences. It was not until your article appeared that the
Board were aware of what is now suggested."
The publication of the Putumayo occurrences has revealed once more that
tinge of hypocrisy in the British character of which other nations have
accused us. Or, rather than hypocrisy, it should perhaps be termed an
intensive shopkeeping principle. Due to this spirit the exposure was
greatly delayed. No one would publish the Hardenburg account, because as
a book it might not have been a paying venture. Only when the way had
been prepared for a successful book, by the public scandal which
resulted after attention had been drawn to the matter, was it resolved
to publish it. The London Press at first was equally negligent or
timorous, with the exception of _Truth_. It showed little disposition to
take the matter up, until that paper, whose business it is to expose
scandals and abuses, exposed the horrors to public gaze. Then, when the
matter had reached the stage of useful "copy," it appeared in all the
papers--in some cases with startling headlines. The daily papers feared
that they would incur risk of libel proceedings in attacking what was
regarded as a powerful London Company, with a capital of a million
pounds and an influential Board of Directors, and at first hesitated to
take the matter up. Had it not been for the work of the philanthropic
society already mentioned, the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection
Society,[14] in London, and the courage of the Editor of _Truth_, to
both of whom Hardenburg went, followed by the prolonged publications in
_Truth_, the sinister occurrences of the Putumayo might have remained
unrevealed, and the unspeakable outrages on the Huitotos Indians have
gone on unhindered. The Anti-Slavery Society showed that "nothing
reported from the Congo has equalled in horror some of the acts alleged
against the rubber syndicate," and the reader of the present work will
not dispute the truth of the statement. The Society brought the matter
with such insistence before the Foreign Office that questions were asked
in the House of Commons and inquiries set on foot by Sir Edward Grey, to
whose everlasting credit it is that vigorous action was at length taken.
The Peruvian Amazon Company protested that the allegations were made by
blackmailers. This was denied by Hardenburg, and by _Truth_ on
Hardenburg's account. There were, however, accusations of blackmail
against others.[15]
The first reply to the letters of the Anti-Slavery Society, from the
Foreign Office, was in December, 1909, when it was stated that the
Foreign Office had the subject under consideration. In July, 1910, a
British Consul, Mr. Roger Casement, well known for his investigations
into the Congo atrocities, was instructed to proceed to the Putumayo,
his _locus standi_ being secured on the grounds that a number of British
subjects, coloured men of Barbadoes, had been employed by Arana and the
Peruvian agents of the company as slave-drivers. The securing of Mr.
Casement for the work was due to the endeavour of the Anti-Slavery
Society. The directors of the company, aroused at length by public
opinion, or the representations of the Foreign Office, sent out a
commission of inquiry at the same time.[16] Both the consul and the
company's Commission faithfully carried out their task, and Mr. Casement
handed in his report to Sir Edward Grey in January, 1911. The
conclusions reached were terrible and damning. The worst accounts were
confirmed in the words of Consul Casement: "The condition of things
fully warrants the worst charges brought against the agents of the
Peruvian Amazon Company and its methods on the Putumayo."[17]
The great delay in publishing this report, which was only laid before
Parliament in July, 1912, a year after being made, caused some protest
by the Press. The Foreign Office had withheld it out of a desire to
afford the Peruvian Government an opportunity of taking action to end
the abuses, but, as this was not done, the report was made public as a
means of arousing public opinion. The press of the whole civilised world
then took the matter up.
It may well be asked how it was possible that such occurrences could
take place in a country with a seat of government such as Lima, where
dwell a highly civilised and sensitive people, whose public
institutions, streets, shops, and churches are not inferior to those of
many European cities. The reply is, first, in the remoteness of the
region of the Putumayo, as explained, and secondly in political and
international matters. Peru is constantly torn by political strife at
home, and between the doings of rival factions, the outlying regions of
the country are overlooked. But Peru was largely influenced by its own
insecure possession of the Putumayo region; and it had greatly welcomed
the establishing of the Peruvian Amazon Company, a powerful
organisation, in the debatable territory. Under such circumstances few
questions were likely to be asked about such matters as treatment of the
natives. The existence of the company was a species of safeguard for
Peruvian possession of the region. Furthermore, a central Government
such as that at Lima might be well-intentioned, but if distances are
vast and without means of communication, and distant officials
hopelessly corrupt, the situation was extremely difficult for the
Government. Another circumstance affecting the action of the Peruvian
Government is that, in the republican form of government, the judicial
authorities are independent of the Executive. The educated people of the
Peruvian capital and coast region must, in general, be exonerated from
knowledge of the occurrences of the Putumayo.
The difficulties of Peru in the government and development of their
portion of the Amazon Valley, known as the Oriente, or Montaña, must not
be lightly passed over. The physical difficulties against what has been
termed the Conquest of the Montaña are such as it is impossible for the
European to picture. Nature resists at every step. Hunger, thirst,
fever, fatigue, and death await the explorer at times, in these
profound, unconquerable forests. Peru has sent forth many expeditions
thereto; brave Peruvians have given their lives in the conquest. The
authorities at different points have frequently organised bands of
explorers, and the Lima Geographical Society has done much valuable work
in sending out persons to explore and map these difficult regions. Yet
the possession of the Montaña is a heritage of incalculable value to
Peru. It is a region any nation might covet. The Peruvians are alive to
its value and possibilities, but they are poor. Days, weeks, months of
arduous travel on mule-back, on foot, cutting _trochas_, or paths,
through the impenetrable underbrush, by raft and by canoe, suffering all
the hardships of the tropics, of torrential rain, burning sun, scarcity
of food--all these are circumstances of venturing off the few trails
into the vast and almost untravelled trans-Andine regions of Peru,
divided by the lofty plateaux and snowy summits of the Andes from the
temperate lowlands where the Europeanised civilisation of the Pacific
flourishes.
It is not to be supposed that the Indians are all pacific or docile in
the Peruvian Montaña. Whole villages which were established in earlier
times by the Spaniards and afterwards enlarged by the Peruvians, with
buildings, plantations, and industries, have been wiped out by attacks
of the Indians, probably in reprisals. In some districts the danger from
savages prevents settlement, and the blow-pipe and the spear greet the
traveller who ventures there incautiously. Tales of savagery have been
told in which the white man has been the sufferer; and there has always
existed an animus against the Indian, although less acute than that
which the white settler in North America displayed against the "redskin"
in earlier times, and without the same cause.
[Illustration: AN AFFLUENT OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON.
To face p. 36.]
In the Peruvian Montaña, in its upper regions, Nature has been lavish of
her products and opportunities. The rancher who should take up his abode
there, with a small amount of capital, can rapidly acquire estates and
wealth. Abundant harvests of almost every known product can be raised in
a minimum of time. It is sufficient to cut down and burn the brush and
scratch the soil and sow with any seed, to recover returns of a hundred
for one. Sugar-cane, vines, maize, cocoa, coffee, and a host of products
can be raised. The sugar-cane, once planted, yields perpetually, some
existing plantations being more than a hundred years old. The cane
frequently measures thirty feet in height, and is cut seven to nine
months after sprouting. The whole Amazon Valley, when it shall have
been opened up, will prove to be one of the most valuable parts of the
earth's surface.
Apart from topographical considerations, the sinister occurrences on the
Putumayo are, to some extent, the result of a sinister human
element--the Spanish and Portuguese character. The remarkable trait of
callousness to human suffering which the Iberian people of Portugal and
Spain--themselves a mixture of Moor, Goth, Semite, Vandal, and other
peoples--introduced into the Latin American race is here shown in its
intensity, and is augmented by a further Spanish quality. The Spaniard
often regards the Indians as _animals_. Other European people may have
abused the Indians of America, but none have that peculiar Spanish
attitude towards them of frankly considering them as non-human. To-day
the Indians are commonly referred to among Spaniards and Mestizos as
_animales_. The present writer, in his travels in Peru and Mexico, has
constantly been met with the half-impatient exclamation, on having
protested against maltreatment of the Indian, of "_Son animales, Señor;
no son gentes._" ("They are animals, Señor; they are not folk"). The
torture or mutilation of the Indian is therefore regarded much as it
would be in the case of an ox or a horse. This attitude of mind was well
shown in the barbarous system of forced labour in the mines in the times
of the viceroys of Peru and Mexico, where the Indians were driven into
the mines by armed guards and branded on the face with hot irons. When
their overtaxed strength gave way under the heavy labour, which rapidly
occurred, their carcasses were pitched aside and they were replaced by
other slaves. These operations of the time of the Spaniards have their
counterpart in the Amazon Valley to-day. There is yet a further trait of
the Latin American which to the Anglo-Saxon mind is almost inexplicable.
This is the pleasure in the torture of the Indian as a _diversion_, not
merely as a vengeance or "punishment." As has been shown on the
Putumayo, and as happened on other occasions elsewhere, the Indians have
been abused, tortured, and killed _por motivos frivolos_--that is to
say, for merely frivolous reasons, or for diversion. Thus Indians are
shot at in sport to make them run or as exercise in _tiro al blanco_ or
target practice, and burnt by pouring petroleum over them and setting it
on fire in order to watch their agonies. This love of inflicting agony
for sport is a curious psychic attribute of the Spanish race. The
present writer, when in remote regions in Peru and Mexico, has had
occasion to intervene, sometimes at personal risk, in the ill-treatment
of Indians and _peones_, who were being tortured or punished to extort
confession for small misdemeanours, or even for purely frivolous
reasons. The Indians of Latin America are in reality grown-up children,
with the qualities of such, but the Spaniards and Portuguese have
recognised in these traits nothing more than what they term "animal"
qualities.
The indictment of Peruvian officials in the Hardenburg narrative is
extremely severe, and they are contrasted unfavourably with the
Colombians. In reality there is little to choose between the methods of
the representatives of any of the South American republics as regards
the administration of justice in remote regions. Power is always abused
in such places by the Latin American people, be they Peruvians,
Colombians, Bolivians, Brazilians, Argentinos, or others. Tyranny is but
a question of opportunity, in the present stage of their development.
Justice is bought and sold, as far as its secondary administrators are
concerned. The otherwise good qualities and fine latent force of the
Latin American character are overshadowed by its more primitive
instincts, which time and the growth of real democracy will
eliminate.[18]
Furthermore, there are other rubber-bearing regions in the Amazon Valley
where hidden abuses are committed, in the territory of other South
American republics; and Peru does not stand alone, and atrocities are
not confined to the Putumayo.
It was shown that many of the murders and floggings at the rubber
stations were committed by the Barbadian negroes at the order of the
Peruvian chiefs of sections. These negroes were forced at their own
peril to these acts. But probably the savage depth of the negro is
easily stirred, as all know who have had dealings therewith. There can
be little doubt that the Peruvian rubber-agents knew the negro character
and secured them for that reason. On the other hand, it is shown that
some of these Barbadian negroes rebelled against going to the
Putumayo--protested to the British Consul at Manaos, but were ordered on
board by that official under police supervision.[19] When they reached
the rubber stations on the remote Putumayo it was difficult to rebel
against the orders of the Peruvian agents or chiefs of sections. In some
cases, when they did so, they themselves received ill-treatment and were
subjected to torture, for which they do not appear to have received any
compensation as British subjects. The lack of advice and investigation
into the conditions of their contract and service which appears to have
befallen them at the hands of the British Consul at Manaos is a matter
for reflection. The investigation carried out by the Consular Commission
showed that some of these Barbadian negroes committed terrible crimes at
the instigation of their superiors. The first contingent of these men,
imported by Arana Brothers, reached the Putumayo at the end of 1904.
These Barbadoes men generally term themselves "Englishmen"[20] rather
than "British subjects." They are good workers generally, and to their
labour it is that the work of the Panama Canal owes its speedy
execution.
It is noteworthy that one of the worst criminal chiefs of sections was a
Peruvian or Bolivian who had been educated in England, frequently
referred to.
After the exposure of the scandals the Peruvian Government sent a
commission of its own to the Putumayo, which confirmed all that had been
published. The principal official of this commission was Judge Paredes,
the proprietor of _El Oriente_, an Iquitos newspaper; and he made a full
report "embodying an enormous volume of testimony, of 3,000 pages
involving wellnigh incredible charges of cruelty and massacre" and
"issued 237 warrants" against the criminals, as stated in Sir Roger
Casement's Report. But between issuing warrants and actually making
arrests and convictions, in South America, there is a wide gulf.
Furthermore, Judge Paredes endeavoured, in a recent statement, to
show[21] that the "English Rubber Company" was solely responsible for
the atrocities, and that the English Consul at Iquitos has been aiding
the guilty parties in keeping from the Peruvian Government an exact
knowledge of what was taking place, is the contention of Peru. Mr. David
Cazes, English Consul in Iquitos since 1903, would have been in a good
position to find out about the management of the rubber plantation. All
the rubber gathered in the Putumayo is shipped from Iquitos. And yet he
always swore that he knew nothing. No one can enter the territory of the
rubber company without the permission of the Company's representative
in Iquitos. The twenty-one constables whom the Peruvian Government kept
in the Putumayo in those days had all been bribed by the English traders
and shut their eyes to what was happening in the jungle.
In this way the Peruvian Commissioner seeks to excuse his country,
laying stress on the term "English company and traders," when he knows
that the only representatives of the English company were its Peruvian
directors and managers. The judge adds: "You must not imagine that the
Indians are any less protected than the white man in Peru. Barring, of
course, the times of the early Spanish conquerors, the native Indians
have been treated very humanely in Peru." This latter statement, read in
conjunction with the translations from official documents and _El
Comercio_ of Lima, previously given, about Peruvian treatment of the
Indians, will enable this statement of the judge to be judged in its
turn.
Señor Paredes, when asked by his American interviewer "to what he
attributed the recent exposure of wrongs committed several years ago,"
replied, "It may be that certain Englishmen are a little jealous of the
cordial relations existing between Peru and the United States." There is
revealed here the somewhat singular situation of Peru's international
relations, with its atmosphere of jealousies. Peru strives to look
towards what it considers the dominant power in that hemisphere, and
years past has been engaged in what might be termed a one-sided
political flirtation with the United States. Peru has hoped to enlist
the sympathy of the great northern republic, which might strengthen her
hands against her old enemy Chile, between whom and the United States
there exists a veiled antagonism. The rankling question of Tacna and
Arica has been at the base of the Peruvian attitude. The friendship of
the United States would be more valuable, in Peruvian eyes, than that of
Great Britain. Furthermore, questions between Peru and the Peruvian
Corporation, the powerful company which controls all Peru's railways and
which, though international as regards its shareholders and its
capitalisation of £22,000,000 sterling, is operated and controlled from
London, have often been acute. Each claims that the other has failed to
fulfil its contracts, and whilst there have been faults on both sides,
the Peruvian Governments of past years were those who first created the
difficult situation. The Corporation has been accused of a sustained,
unfriendly attitude towards Peru and of an endeavour to block outside
foreign enterprise in the country. It is, however, in Paris that feeling
among financiers against Peru has been most acute, and Peru has been in
the past practically shut out from the French financial market owing to
the unsettled claims of French creditors. In general terms the United
States is considered to be the more desirable friend, not Europe, and
thus it is that North American friendship is cultivated. There is,
however, no unfriendliness between Peru and Great Britain, and the best
Peruvian statesmen have done their best to cultivate good relations.
But, like all American people, the Peruvians are sensitive, and they
deeply resent outside criticism.
The work of Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, to whom the exposure of the
Putumayo atrocities is primarily due, has scarcely received sufficient
acknowledgment. The risks they ran in obtaining evidence were
considerable, and such as can only be understood by a traveller
accustomed to Latin American ways. Human life is held cheap in such
communities. Murder and treachery to secure personal or political ends
are only repressed in the Latin American republics by the presence of
collective opinion. Where that is absent or perturbed there is no
restraining influence, such as the personal sense of fair play and
hatred of treachery which the British character affords. It is not only
a matter of education, but of soil, climate, race, and character. Those
who arouse the antagonism of any person in power, where the law is weak,
may expect anything, from charges of blackmail to the knife or bullet of
the assassin. The terrible political murders constantly taking place in
the Latin American republics indicate the ruthless spirit prevalent
among certain classes in those communities. The trouble taken by
Hardenburg to collect his evidence, and the repugnance displayed towards
the authors of the crime, and the appeal to English justice are worthy
of recognition.[22]
The British public might feel constrained to ask how it was possible
that the British Consul at Iquitos--whence all the rubber is
shipped--who has been stationed at that town since 1903, had never heard
of nor investigated the abuses committed against the Indians; that it
remained for a chance traveller to bring them to general notice.
Furthermore, the British Vice-Consul at Manaos appears to have had no
knowledge of the subject. When the Peruvian Amazon Company imported
foremen from Barbadoes--British subjects--and these men learned of the
terrible nature of the duties they were to perform, which was that of
slave-driving and flagellating the Indians, and complained to the
Consul, asking for an annulment of their contracts, they were unable to
obtain release by the official. The rubber from the Amazon Valley is all
exported in English vessels, moreover. Notwithstanding the extensive
British interests in Peru, no inkling of the treatment and fate of the
unfortunate Indians had reached the outside world before.
It is to be noted that the American Consul at Iquitos appears not to
have been able to afford any assistance to Mr. Hardenburg and his
companion, and that action was taken by the American Government
consequent upon the ill-treatment of its citizens, only after a
considerable lapse of time. The ill-treatment of the two travellers
afforded an opportunity for intervention by the United States
Government, even if it had not been aroused to action on grounds of
humanity alone. It was only in July, 1911, a year after Consul Casement
had been dispatched by the British Government to Peru, and after six
months of telegraphic dispatches between the British Foreign Office and
the British Minister in Lima--dispatches communicated to the Peruvian
Government--that the United States Government, having been urged thereto
by the British representative, consented to make "informal
representations" at Lima. Again urged by the British Government to
support their representations, as no progress was being made in bringing
the criminals to justice, the United States Minister, six months
afterwards, was instructed to support the British representative. Thus,
had action not been taken by Great Britain none would have been
forthcoming by the United States, a condition which, for a nation that
has assumed and been granted the position of policeman in South America,
must be regretted. The Monroe Doctrine carries with it a greater
responsibility than has been exercised so far by the United States in
Latin American affairs, and this is becoming plainer to the great body
of well-meaning American people. The United States at the present time
are actively engaged in increasing their commercial standing with their
southern neighbours, but it is the case that these doubt the moral
superiority of their neighbour, and naturally resent his right to
interfere in their political and international affairs.
Under the most favourable conditions the collection of rubber is an
arduous and generally unhealthy work. Years ago an estimate was made
that every ton of rubber from the Amazon Valley cost two human lives,
and although at that time the estimate seemed to be an exaggerated one,
the methods of the Putumayo must have quadrupled it. If the native
rubber-gatherer were treated as an ordinary labourer and paid a due
wage, it is safe to say that it would not pay to gather wild rubber at
all, or only by increasing its price in the world's market very
considerably. As a cheap commodity it represents a definite ratio of
human lives lost. In Sir Roger Casement's Report it is shown that for
the twelve years 1900 to 1911 the Putumayo output of 4,000 tons of
rubber cost 30,000 lives. Various rubber companies in Peru and Bolivia
have been obliged already to suspend operations due to scarcity of
labour. The remedy lies in planting, in conjunction with the wild rubber
forests. The amount of rubber collected by the slave labour in the
Putumayo district for the benefit of the company and its predecessors,
for six years ending in December, 1910, was 2,947,800 kilogrammes, of
the value on the London market of nearly £1,000,000. The output from
Iquitos, however, has not decreased, which has been taken as a proof
that native labour is still being hard-driven. The crop-year 1911-12
shows a considerable increase over that for 1910-11.[23]
Perhaps one of the most remarkable circumstances affecting the rubber
company is the ease with which it was possible to float, in London, a
property of which, to a large extent, possession was imaginary and
without proper title. It is but another instance of the astute methods
of company promoters and the gullibility of the British shareholder. It
will be recollected that in 1909 shares in rubber companies to the
amount of £150,000,000 sterling were taken up, a great part of which
have proved useless or fraudulent. Laws seem inadequate against the
combination of knave, fool, and victim which is so marked a feature of
modern company-promoting finance.
The occurrences on the Putumayo accentuate a moral which is bound to be
presented to the conscience of the investing British public. In South
America, as in Latin America generally, and in many other parts of the
world where aboriginal labour is cheap, great sums of British capital
are invested, and a steady stream of gold turns its course therefrom
towards the British Isles. But these numerous and complacent
shareholders in their comfortable surroundings know nothing, and have
not made it their business to care anything, about the conditions of
life of the humble workers who produce the dividends. Do they know that
their gains are often secured by the labour of ill-paid, half-starved,
and often grossly abused brown and black folk? How long does the British
shareholder of foreign enterprises expect to live upon the toil of
distant "niggers," who themselves reap little or nothing from the soil
upon which they were born? There are approximately £600,000,000 sterling
of British money invested in bonds, stock, and shares in South American
enterprises, quoted on the London Stock Exchange, which return in the
aggregate a steady average dividend of nearly 5 per cent. per annum.
Some of these enterprises pay 12, 20, and 25 per cent. interest. Much of
this is the result of poor native labour. In various instances what
amounts to spoliation is practised upon the cheap labour by
British-owned companies. Similar conditions hold good with American
concerns--mining and rubber-gathering in Mexico and Central and South
America. The Americans are often extremely oppressive to the Indian
labourer. In the American-owned copper-mines of Peru serious outbreaks
due to this cause have occurred of recent years. The white American
foreman rapidly gets used to oppressing the Indian. The miserable
conditions of native labour in Latin America ought to be brought home to
the directors and shareholders of British and other foreign companies.
There are hundreds of rubber, mining, oil, plantation, railway, and
other companies with scores of noblemen--lords, dukes, baronets--as well
as doctors of science, bankers, and business-men, and even ministers of
religion, distributed among their boards of directors. What knowledge
have these gentlemen of the conditions of the poor native labourers
under their control? There is a grave responsibility, which has been
very easily carried, about this system of absentee capitalism.
British investment in and trade with the Latin American countries is an
important part of British commercial prosperity. But this trade is not
increasing in nearly the same ratio as that of other countries, notably
the United States and Germany. In some cases it is falling off. This is
due partly to a lack of organisation, and is constantly pointed out in
consular and trade reports.[24]
The occurrences on the Putumayo have at least tended to arouse the
religious element, if not the commercial conscience, of the British
people. A severe indictment of the directors of the Peruvian Amazon
Company was made from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, in August, 1912,
in a sermon by Canon Henson. The English directors were denounced by
name, and the demand made that they should be arrested and brought to
public trial, the preacher stating that he chose that famous pulpit for
delivering the indictment in order that the widest possible publicity
might be given to the subject. The directors, in the public Press, then
made through their solicitors an emphatic and indignant denial of their
responsibility, alleging that in the first place they were ignorant of
the occurrences, and that when these were shown to have some foundation
in fact they voluntarily dispatched a commission to inquire into the
matter.
Aroused by the revelations made, several religious missions started to
being in London, asking for support by public subscription to enable
missionary work to be carried out and stations established in the
Peruvian Amazon region. There is a strong religious moral to be drawn
from the occurrences. In all probability such a terrible situation
would never have grown to being if the fine work of the old Jesuit and
Franciscan friars in Brazil and Peru had been allowed to flourish. One
of the greatest names associated with the Amazon is that of the famous
Padre Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian by birth, who passed the larger part of
his life in the service of Spain in Peru as a Jesuit missionary, working
from 1686 to 1723, among the Indians of the Amazon forests. Living with
the native tribes of the Huallaga, the Napo--which parallels the
Putumayo--the Ucayali, and others of the great affluents of the Amazon,
this devoted priest carried on his Christianising work, winning the
natives to Christianity in a way so remarkable as has never been
equalled since. Venturing at length farther down the Amazon into
Portuguese territory, Fritz fell ill, and was detained for two years at
Para by the Portuguese, who were jealous and fearful of Spanish
domination in the Amazon Valley. The Portuguese built forts at the
confluence of the Rio Negro, where Manaos now stands, in order to assert
their sovereignty over that part of the river, and dispatched armed
bands upstream which destroyed the Christian missions and settlements
Fritz had founded. The atrocious cruelties practised in these
slave-raids, for such in effect they were, caused the tribes to flee to
remoter regions, and a great diminution of the population followed in
the first half of the eighteenth century. Thus the Portuguese
conquistadores accomplished for the Amazon what the Spaniards had
performed for the Andine highlands, and what the commercial conquest of
rubber-gathering, nominally conducted from London, has accomplished in
the twentieth century.
There can be no doubt of the value of religious missions in the Amazon
Valley. A mission which should establish itself in these regions ought
to be provided with well-appointed launches and motorboats, and to be
prepared to exercise a more or less "muscular" kind of Christianity.
Between the rival claims that have been advanced for Roman Catholic and
Protestant Missions it is difficult to judge. The existing Romish Church
in the Andean highlands is a valuable restraining force, but its methods
often partake of spoliation of the Indian under the cloak of religion,
and of what, as regards certain of its attributes, is practically petty
idolatry; whilst the moral character of the village priests leaves much
to be desired. There seems little reason why both sects should not
exercise their sway. Protestant public worship or proselytising is
against the Peruvian laws, but is tolerated. Nevertheless, bitter
hostility is shown to it in the upland regions, which are absolutely
under priestly control. In the Amazon lowlands and rivers this obstacle
would possibly be less formidable.
The occurrences of the Putumayo have aroused public feeling in Lima,
where a _pro-indigena_, or native protection society, has been
established, based upon a former, feebler association of similar
character; for there has always existed a party protesting against the
abuses practised upon the Indians. The change of Government in the
Republic has brought promises of betterment. Telegraphic communications
to the London Press have announced, on the one hand, that the
Peruvian Chambers of Congress have "moved a resolution protesting
against the attitude of Great Britain and the United States," and, on
the other, "that inhumanity in the Putumayo has been absolutely
abolished." Apart from electioneering devices, it cannot be doubted that
the Government has been aroused. But those acquainted with social
conditions in South America will greatly doubt if, apart from
mutilations and assassination, the social condition of the Indian will
yet be bettered or the ruinous system of peonage replaced by civilised
labour conditions. If peonage and forced labour still exist in the more
civilised upland regions, as they do, the conditions are not likely to
be banished in the Amazon forestal lowlands. The subject must not be
allowed to sink into oblivion, and the pressure of public opinion must
be sustained.
[Illustration: AN INCIDENT OF THE PUTUMAYO.
INDIAN WOMAN CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HUNGER: ON THE UPPER PUTUMAYO.
(The Peruvians state that this was the work of Colombian bandits.)
_Photo reproduced from "Variedades" of Lima, Peru._]
If the occurrences which have been exposed lead to an awakening of the
commercial conscience as regards investments in countries where poor
native labour is employed, and to the consequent betterment of the lot
of the humble worker in Latin America, the cruel sacrifice of the poor
Indians in the dismal forests of the Putumayo will not have been in
vain.
C. REGINALD ENOCK.