W. E. Hardenburg

“ At 11.30 we stopped for almuerzo on an immense playa, upon which were two or three dilapidated-looking ranchos, probably erected by the exiles about a month before. Having partaken of a fair lunch of fried yuca, sausage, rice, and coffee, we were about to get into the canoes when Perkins’ eye fell upon a huge ostrich-like bird several hundred metres away. As he was such a fine specimen, Perkins endeavoured to get within range, but in vain; for the beauty, apparently as fond of his fine feathers as we were, soon disappeared into the forest and we saw him no more. ”

“ As we slowly made our way through the narrow brazo, the branches in some places joining over our heads, the calm beauty of the luxuriant vegetation and the intense silence of the forest, broken only by the occasional shrill call of some brilliant bird or the howl of a distant tribe of monkeys, combined to make us think we were in some fairy land. ”

“ Having shot nothing eatable, we reached a promising-looking playa at two o’clock and disembarked in search of some more turtle-eggs. We were busily engaged in excavating a nest, when Perkins saw a solitary canoe slowly making its way up-stream. Approaching the bank, we hailed the strangers, and they began to steer in our direction; as they came nearer we saw that they were all Indians, except one, who was a well-dressed, elderly white man. ”

“ It is a living hell. No wonder that the vegetation is so luxuriant here, for the soil has been deluged with the blood of so many innocent victims of the bestial greed and rapacity of these vile monsters that it should be the richest on earth!
Tribe after tribe of the peaceful and hospitable Indians of these forests has disappeared before the onslaughts of Peruvian “civilisation.” Colombian after Colombian has been foully murdered by these miserable criminals, until at last they were exterminated and their establishments, so long coveted by the syndicate of crime, passed into its unclean hands. ”

“ At six o’clock the next morning Orjuela, Sánchez, myself, a peon of Orjuela’s, and three of Serrano’s Indian boatmen set out on the trip to El Dorado. We made our way but slowly down the crooked, muddy course of the Caraparaná. This river is, I believe, one of the crookedest in the world, for it continually doubles on itself as it winds its way through the dense vegetation that rises up on either bank. ”

“ Thus, men and lads, rubber defaulters or fugitives from its collection, were suspended by a chain fastened round the neck to one of the beams of the house or store. Sometimes with the feet scarcely touching the ground and the chain hauled taut they were left in this half-strangled position until life was almost extinct. More than one eye-witness assured me that he had seen Indians actually suspended by the neck until when let down they fell a senseless mass upon the floor of the house with their tongues protruding. ”

“ The crimes alleged against Armando Normand, dating from the end of the year 1904 up to the month of October, 1910, when I found him in charge of this station of Matanzas or Andokes, seem wellnigh incredible. They included innumerable murders and tortures of defenceless Indians—pouring kerosene oil on men and women and then setting fire to them, burning men at the stake, dashing the brains out of children, and again and again cutting off the arms and legs of Indians and leaving them to speedy death in this agony. ”

“ To these remote people civilisation has come, not in the guise of settled occupation by men of European descent, accompanied by executive control to assert the supremacy of law, but by individuals in search of Indian labour—a thing to be mercilessly used, and driven to the most profitable of tasks, rubber-getting, by terror and oppression. ”

“ 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{36} summits of the Andes from the temperate lowlands where the Europeanised civilisation of the Pacific flourishes. ”

“ The Indians collect all this rubber gratis: the only compensation they receive is flagellation, torture, and death if they should lack half a kilo of the amount imposed upon them; a mirror, a handkerchief, an ounce of beads if they deliver the full amount. They are doomed and defenceless victims of an exploitation unparalleled in the history of the entire world.
Should the unfortunate Indian lack even half a kilo of rubber, he is mercilessly flogged, being given from five to two hundred lashes, according to the enormity of his crime. ”

“ All that is sensible of this among those interested in the rubber industry, whether of Europe, the United States, or Brazil, should heartily unite in assisting the best elements of Peruvian life to strengthen the arm of justice, and to establish upon the Putumayo and throughout the Montaña, wherever the rubber-seeker seeks his profits, a rule of right dealing and legality. It may be long before a demoralisation drawing its sanction from so many centuries of indifference and oppression can be uprooted, but Christianity owns schools and missions as well as Dreadnoughts and dividends. ”

“ Away from the restraining power of civilisation and public opinion, it is seen that men of certain character easily revert to primitive instincts of cruelty and oppression, and hold human life the cheapest thing on earth. The terrible indictment that has been made of Peruvian methods away from the influence of their cities shows how far from the principle of self-government the people of Latin America still are. ”

“ A clearing is made in the forest, and with the very straight trees that abound in the Amazon woods it is easy to obtain suitable timber for house-building. The uprights are as straight as the mast of a ship. The ridge-pole will often be from thirty to forty feet from the ground, and considerable skill is displayed in balancing the rough beams and adjusting the weight of the thatch. This thatch is composed of the dried and twisted fronds of a small swamp palm, which admirably excludes both rain and the rays of the sun. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The Indians of Mocoa are also Incas, the same as those of Santiago. They speak the same tongue, have the same customs, houses, arms, and utensils, differing only in the dress, which, on account of the heat, consists only of a long, black or white cotton shirt, almost concealing a pair of knee-pants of the same colour and material, and in their food, which is more diversified and comprises not only maize, &c., but also yuca, plantains, and many forest products. Like the Incas of Santiago, they also profess Christianity and have a limited knowledge of Spanish. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we were allowed to walk around the houses without being molested—although an eye was always kept on us by some one—we had the opportunity to witness the lamentable condition of the unfortunate Corregidor Gabriel Martínez and his men, who were confined, as though they were desperate criminals, in a small, dirty, eight-by-ten-foot room under the main house and guarded night and day by two soldiers. These poor wretches, in a starving condition, were insulted, taunted, and abused daily by word and deed in a most cowardly manner. ”

“ Years ago an estimate was made that every ton of rubber from the Amazon Valley{47} 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Neither age nor sex was spared; all had to work rubber, to perform impossible tasks, to abandon home and cultivation of their forest clearings, and to search week by week and month by month for the juice of rubber-yielding trees, until death came as sudden penalty for failing strength and non-compliance, or more gently overtook them by the way in the form of starvation or disease. ”

“ With all that it has given to the Amazon Valley of prosperity, of flourishing steamship communications, of port works, of growing towns and centres of civilisation, with electric light and tramways, of well-kept hospitals and drainage schemes, it may well be asked whether the rubber-tree has not, perhaps, taken more away. ”

“ 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. ”