Peruvian Amazon Company

Headquartered in Iquitos, it gained notoriety for its harsh treatment of Indigenous workers in the Amazon Basin, whom its field forces subjected to conditions akin to slavery.

[12] Arana adopted the common practices of the local Colombians in the region at the time, who made it their business to enslave and exploit the natives as a work force to extract rubber.

[13] Often, if a weight quota imposed by the caucheros was not met by the indigenous rubber collectors, the resulting punishment ranged from execution, dismemberment, starvation,[14] or potentially flagellation where the victim is left to die from their festering wounds.

[45][46] The American consul-general to Iquitos in 1907, Charles C. Eberhardt, was able to obtain a list that contains the documented numbers for the indigenous populations throughout La Chorrera's district prior to December 3 of 1907.

[74] Robuchon's notes and manuscript appeared in 1907 under the name En el Putumayo y sus afluentes, edited and published by Carlos Rey de Castro,[73] a friend of Julio C.

These were firsthand accounts coming from ex-employees of Arana's company, detailing the coercive and abusive system: describing the torture, maiming, and killing of the enslaved natives.

The very first issue of La Felpa contained four different pictures titled "The Crimes of the Putumayo: Flagellations, Mutilations, Tortures, and Target Practice," to describe how the natives were being treated.

On 22 September 1909, a small London-based watchdog magazine named Truth ran an article with the headline "The Devil's Paradise": A British-owned Congo," which detailed Hardenburg's experiences and the atrocities perpetrated in the Putumayo.

"[115] The British Foreign Office seized this opportunity to send their own representative on the commission, selecting Roger Casement, who served as Consul-General for Britain in Brazil.

Outlining the actions of the Peruvian Amazon Company in the Putumayo, he states:[125] I am in possession of definite documentary evidence which, I think, justifies me in making the following statements as to the results of this system:— 1.

Women, and even little children, were more than once found, their limbs scarred with weals left by the thong of the twist tapir-hide ... the chief implement used for coercing and terrorizing the native population.

An article appeared in The Times newspaper two days later with the headline "The Putumayo Atrocities: A South American Congo - Sir Roger Casement's Report published".

This article gave an introduction to Casement's work in the region, and pointed out that none of the claims were disputed by agents of the Peruvian Amazon Company, who were present at several of the interviews.

Rather than focusing on the atrocities and abuses in the region, The Times article highlighted the lack of reform to the system and warned Peru of substantial consequences if the country failed to act.

Parededs questioned members of the Huitoto, Ocaina, Andoque, Muinane, Nonuya, Recigaro, and Bora nations during his investigation and confirmed "the existence of many more crimes than those which had been denounced.

Matanzas, the station that most of the Peruvian Amazon Company's enslaved Andoke population was dedicated to, was referred to as "completely annihilated and almost extinguished" due to massacres as well as torturing under the management of Armando Normand.

[151] Paredes, along with Hardenburg and Roger Casement, emphasized that commission payment's issued to managers based on the amount of rubber collected at a specific station was one of the principal causes of crime in the region.

[158] Among the findings by the various investigatory parties were widespread debt bondage, slavery,[s] torture, mutilation, and many other crimes in the Amazonian rubber industry, with the Putumayo area being but one example.

The local government at the time attempted to implement measures to control the abuses, but it was difficult in the large, sparsely populated countryside, which had few road connections to major cities.

Despite examining the evidence, the committee concluded that Arana and his business partners in the rubber firm were aware of and accountable for the atrocities committed by their agents and employees in the Putumayo.

The committee's statement emphasised that neither the risk of frontier fighting, nor the alleged danger from the Indians, nor the occasional presence of the jaguar justified the large stock of rifles.

The head of this commission was Rómulo Paredes, who wrote an investigative report "embodying an enormous volume of testimony, of 3,000 pages involving wellnigh incredible charges of cruelty and massacre".

[186] Manager of El Encanto, the company's headquarters on the Caraparaná river, Miguel Loayza maintained a harem of around 13 indigenous girls, aged between 9 and 16, as noted by W.E Hardenburg.

[213][212] Daniel Collantes, a Hardenburg deponent, claimed that during his employment at Atenas and under the management of Martinengui, he witnessed the killing of around sixty natives, men, women and children, and their corpses were burned.

[223] This same firsthand account also describes an incident where Fonseca told his employees "Look, this is how we celebrate the sábado de gloria here", before shooting an indigenous man and a fifteen-year-old girl.

[224] Fonseca and Montt were employed by a Brazilian firm named Edwards & Serra, the pair depended on the labor of 10 Boras people that they trafficked from La Sabana.

[228] Witness Juan Rosas described how Rodríguez executed a group of 40 natives, delivered to the plantation from a slave raid, one by one for target practice after they contracted smallpox in stocks.

[229] The manager of La Chorrera in 1910, Juan A. Tizon, confessed to Casement that Rodríguez and his brother Aristides had killed hundreds of indigenous people in the Putumayo, earning a 50% commission from rubber collections.

[240][aa] After the Peruvian Amazon Company was liquidated, Arana and a number of his associates retained property in the Putumayo region, and effective control of the indigenous population.

[249] Several of those notable criminals included Abelardo Agüero, Augusto Jimenez Seminario, Alfredo Montt, Jose Inocente Fonseca and Armando Normand.