W. E. Hardenburg

“ The economic principle of conserving the efficiency of human labour by its employer, remarkable as it may seem, has never been recognized 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 labor in Great Britain and the United States. The very abundance of labour has been its own undoing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would appear that the new Commissioner is resolved to put a stop to the barbarous custom of the correrrias f organised by the authorities themselves or by the rubber merchants, who carry on the repugnant business of selling the poor Chunchos. As labor 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 arc friendly or hostile, making them prisoners in the midst of extermination and blood. ”

“ 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 archaeology and origin of the South American people are far from being fully understood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 Biver, 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 Biver with the Madre de Dios, and farther upstream is the Inambari Biver. The whole of this region is rich in rubber forests, and several companies are engaged in rubber gathering, including British, American, Bolivian, and Peruvian. ”

“ 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 sugarcane rum, which is responsible for the ruination and decrease of the working population. ”

“ 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 [4] 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 "civilization" offered by the rubber merchants, others have been annihilated by them. ”

“ One school of thought denies any imported origin for early American culture, and considers the Aztec and Inca civilizations to have been autochthonous, a natural reaction of man to his environment.; whilst the other points to the great probability, as adduced in archaeological and other matters, of some prehistoric Asiatic influence. ”

“ 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. ”