Armando Normand

According to British consul-general Roger Casement, who investigated crime in the Putumayo River basin in 1910, Normand committed "innumerable murders and tortures" during this period.

[11][12][7] Reports and evidence of Normand's crimes were first documented by Benjamin Saldaña Rocca in 1907,[13] Roger Casement in 1910,[14] and Judge Carlos A. Valcarcel [es] in 1915.

[15] A warrant for Normand's arrest was issued by Judge Rómulo Paredes [es] on 29 June 1911 along with 214 other men employed by the Peruvian Amazon Company's agency at La Chorrera.

In 1903 I went to London and studied for a few months at the Pitman School in Russell Square in order to improve my knowledge of bookkeeping and modern business.

[19][20] While in London, Normand became friends with the Bolivian minister Avelino Aramayo [es] and through this connection he became acquainted with influential people from Peru and Bolivia.

[18] Normand left London in 1904 and travelled to Pará, Brazil, with a letter of introduction to Carlos Larrañaga,[18] the regional manager for Suárez Hermanos, a famous rubber firm in Bolivia.

[34][33] By 1907, Normand and his employer Arana were subjects of complaints made by Benjamin Saldaña Rocca, a journalist from Iquitos who was determined to hold them responsible for their crimes.

[39] According to Casement's report: It was alleged, and I am convinced with truth, that during the period of close on six years Normand had controlled the Andokes Indians he had directly killed 'many hundreds' of those Indians—men, women, and children.

The indirect deaths due to starvation, floggings, exposure, and hardship of various kinds in collecting rubber or transferring it from Andokes down to Chorrera must have accounted for a still larger number.

I witnessed one such march, on a small scale ... [40][e]Enslaved locals were expected to gather between 50 and 100 kg (110 and 220 lb) of rubber in a fabrico depending on their assigned quota.

[40] The land route to deliver rubber from Matanzas to La Chorrera was estimated by Casement to be 110 kilometres (70 miles), and could take "four to five days of hard marching" to traverse by the Barbadian men, which escorted the indigenous workers.

[40] In 1910, Casement estimated that over the course of the whole march, natives would walk 97 kilometres (60 miles) or more to deliver rubber to La Chorrera and he stated the path was "one of the worst imaginable".

[62] Armando Normand committed numerous crimes in the Putumayo River basin, which members of the Peruvian Amazon Company witnessed.

[73] Judge Carlos A. Valcárcel initiated an investigative commission in 1911 to find new information;[74][2] the first-hand accounts from ex-employees who worked under Normand make up the majority of the 'Andoques' chapter in his book El proceso del Putumayo y sus secretos inauditos.

[75] Judge Rómulo Paredes conducted the actual investigation around La Chorrera and Matanzas, he collected physical evidence and included numerous eyewitness accounts in his 3,000-page manuscript relating to the atrocities.

Morris stated that while he didn't witness this killing, he heard Normand give the order and he also saw the Muchachos de Confianza making preparations for the fire.

[90] [m] In January 1907, Normand led an attack against employees of Urbano Gutierrez, a Colombian rubber firm, which was attempting to establish an outpost near the Caqueta River.

Normand interrogated the prisoners and he ordered the chief of these Colombians, Felipe Cabrera, to send a message to his partner José de la Paz Gutiérrez to surrender all of the fire arms his group had.

[94] Eight of the Colombian prisoners were taken to La Chorrera and later they were abandoned on a canoe by employees of Arana's firm while in transit to Iquitos, near the Peruvian border with Brazil.

Felipe Cabrera, Jose de la Paz Gutiérrez and Aquiléo Torres were kept as prisoners and imprisoned by members of Arana's company with the intention of pressuring them into employment.

[108][109][p] Normand wrapped another woman in a kerosene-soaked Peruvian flag and set her on fire; she was then shot, Caporo stated she had previously suffered one hundred whip lashes.

[103][111][112] Near the end of Caporo's deposition, he declared "[t]o terminate with this repugnant criminal, whom I have seen commit crimes so horrible that perhaps they are unequalled in the history of the entire world, it is sufficient to say that I have seen him repeatedly snatch tender children from their mothers’ arms, and, grasping them by the feet, smash their heads to pieces against the trunks of trees.

[80] Paredes stated that at Matanzas, Normand imprisoned nearly 1,000 of the local indigenous people, they eventually died from excessive whipping, time in the stocks, and starvation.

[143] According to Casement: Dr Paredes declares that he himself certified to the murder of no less than 1,000 people in the actual station house of Andokes or Matanzas - Normand's headquarters.

[15] This in no wise represented all the massacres perpetrated by that monster or his section, but only the deaths that Dr. Paredes became convinced of as having taken place in close proximity to the house itself.

The bones he says he found in heaps - some in the bed of a stream - others in a deep pit that had been dug to receive them when it was known that I might visit Andokes - and others lined the paths through the forest in certain directions ...

[144]Armando Normand was officially dismissed from the Peruvian Amazon Company on 14 February 1911 along with ten other employees who were implicated in the perpetration of atrocities against the indigenous population.

[149][y] Normand later travelled to Buenos Aires then to Antofagasta, where he reportedly sold Panama hats for two years[2] At the end of 1912, he returned to his home town of Cochabamba, still using his birth name.

[154] In The Lords of the Devil's Paradise, Sidney Paternoster compares Normand to Simon Legree, a cruel and sadistic slaver in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Paternoster wrote: "Legree's acts pale in comparison to those of Armando Normand, and surely if any one in the Putumayo is to be punished this man deserves to be made an example of".