Putumayo

“ This system of long curves or windings extends along the whole course of the Putumayo, and it is to be observed in most of the large rivers of the Amazon basin. It is this that makes the Putumayo so wide and shallow and accounts for the numerous sand islands thrown up in midstream. In low water the channel cut out by these ever-changing currents must be strictly followed by all steamers and launches in order to prevent grounding.
At eleven o'clock we stopped and had lunch, which I had cooked previously while Perkins was performing the role of boga on a nice shady playa on the right bank. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some few of the employees in its service are, or were when I left the Amazon, still British subjects, and the commercial future of the Putumayo (if any commercial future be possible to a region so wasted and mishandled) must largely depend on the amount of foreign, chiefly British, support those exploiting the remnant of the Indians may be able to secure. ”

“ The tribes of the Putumayo in the hands of good men could be made into good men and women, useful and intelligent workers under an honest administration. Trained to be murderers, with the worst example men ever gave to men daily held up for imitation, with lust and greed and cruelty so often appealed to, I daily wondered that so much goodness still survived among the remnant we encountered. That that remnant itself would soon be gone I became convinced. A Peruvian who spoke good English, having spent some years in England, confessed as much to me two days before I left Chorrera. ”

“ The Putumayo is one of the most important affluents of the Amazon. Here in the sixteenth century missions were founded by the Spaniards, which were afterward destroyed by the Portuguese, and not a trace of them now remains.
Representatives of different tribes of Indians are found in the neighborhood, which are easily recognizable by the differences in their tattoo marks. ”

“ Putumayo, a Comisaría east and extending far to the southeast of Nariño, is on the northeast boundary of Ecuador, from which it is separated by the watershed between the river Napo and the Putumayo, which latter separates it from Caquetá, both rivers affluents of the Amazon. The northern part with an elevation of 3000 feet or more has a comfortable climate. ”

“ 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 Putu-mayo 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 Putumayo, here but a small, crystal mountain stream, flows through it, rising in one of the numerous peaks that surround the valley on every side. A part of the valley is low and swampy, but the rest is good, rich soil, quite suitable for agricultural purposes, and covered with a thick, short grass. Although all the encircling mountains are clad with forests, the valley is, at present, cleared and ready for cultivation.
In this beautiful Andean valley four distinct villages have sprung up—San Antonio, Santiago, Sibundoy, and San Francisco. ”

“ Nevertheless, there in Puerto Bermudez these Campas are in intimate contact with all who pass there, and furnish the traveller with everything in their power.
The appearance of the unfortunate Indians of the Putumayo is ghastly and horrible; thin, cadaverous, and attenuated, they look more like ghosts than human beings. And nevertheless, they go out to meet the employees when these latter pass through their villages, and give them what few fruits they have. These gifts have been rewarded by death, on more than one occasion. ”

“ The Putumayo Indians merely gash the tree with a knife or machete, and, catching the milk as it exudes in little baskets made of leaves, they wash it in their streams of running water and pound it with wooden pestles into long sausage-shaped rolls, termed in Peruvian rubber parlance chorizos, which ultimately are put upon the market just as the Indian carries them in to whoever may be locally exploiting him and his neighbourhood. ”

“ Casement quotes from the Annual Report of the Minister of Justice, presented to the Peruvian Congress in 1907:—
“Coming to more distant regions, where executive authority is necessarily weaker, the missionary brother informs the Minister of Justice of the state of things on the Putumayo itself:—
“‘River Putumayo. In this river it is not possible to establish any mission owing to the abuses of the caucheros against the Indians (los{297} infieles) , whom they maltreat and murder for no reason (por motivos frivolos) , seizing their women and children.’ (P. 782 of the Ministerial Report.) ”

“ Since the exposure of the horrors in the Putumayo region Governmental opinion in other Republics has been stimulated to take corrective action where conditions more or less comparable had arisen, and the action of Bolivia is indicative of a desire to protect the forest worker. In this connexion it should be observed that the Foreign Office has sent a Circular despatch [Cd. 7148] to its consular officers, calling attention to the Putumayo report and giving directions for more energetic action in cases of maltreatment of natives where British subjects and companies are responsible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the midst of the dense forest, surrounding these neglected relics of civilisation, live a tribe of Indians who call themselves Cionis and speak a language of the same name. They are quite distinct from the Incas, and occupy the whole region of the Upper Putumayo, living in small villages of from ten to fifty families along its banks. In all, they do not number over a thousand. ”

“ 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 remark- able 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 sho\vn in its intensity, and is augmented by a further Spanish quality. The Spaniard often regards the Indians as animals. ”

“ With regard to the pay they give the Indians for the rubber that these poor wretches extract, this is the most shameless system that can be imagined. In La Chorrera, which is the principal branch of this company in the Putumayo, I saw them give some Indians a few caps, matches, mirrors, and other trifles, the value of which did not amount to five soles, in return for a large quantity of rubber that they had delivered. ”

“ His business is merged, and he himself becomes an employee, and often finds it very hard to escape from the responsibilities he has thus contracted. At the date when the Barbados men were first brought to the Putumayo, the methods of exploiting the Indian population in the interests of the Colombian or Peruvian settlers were mainly confined to the river banks. ”

“ Sir Arthur feels it right to say something about British corruptions, and passes from the Congo to Putumayo, touching a little more lightly; for even the most honest Britons have an unconscious trick of touching more lightly on the case of British capitalists. He says that our capitalists were not guilty of direct cruelty, but of an attitude careless and even callous. ”

“ In the Amazon territories of Peru—the great region termed the Montaña—the entire population, it may be said, consists of native Indians, some brought into close touch, as at Iquitos and in the{335} settled mission centres of the Ucayali, with white civilisation, but a great proportion of them, like those on the Putumayo, still dwelling in the forest, a rude and extremely primitive existence. ”

“ 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.*
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 Hoggings at the rubber stations were committed by the Barbadian negroes at the order of the Peruvian chiefs of sections. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Accordingly, I sent word to Perkins by means of an Indian that Serrano loaned me for the purpose to descend with the canoe from Remolino to Josa, Serrano’s port on the Putumayo, and, arriving there, to leave the canoe and our personal effects—for we should pass Josa on our way to the varadero—and bring over to La Reserva everything we had for sale, for which purpose we would send some cargadores there to meet him. ”

“ 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 com- pany 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ However this be, it is certainly in the best interests of commercial civilisation itself, and of the vital needs of the trading communities upon the Amazon River, that the system of ruthless and destructive human exploitation which has been permitted to grow up on the Putumayo should be sternly repressed. ”

“ 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:—{24}
“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. ”