August 1, 1912. 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



517 



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HENRY C. PEARSON, Editor 



Vol. 46. 



AUGUST 1. 1912. 



No. 5 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS ON LAST PAGE OF READING. 



THE' PUTUMAYO HORRORS. 



FOR the last two weeks the press of London and of 

 New York has devoted a great deal of space to the 

 atrocities that have been committed on the rubber gath- 

 erers in the Putumayo district, and owing to the fact that 

 these cruelties have come to light while the memory 

 of the barbarities in the Congo region, under the late 

 Leopold's regime, are still fresh in the public mind, there 

 has been a tendency among some of the editorial com- 

 menters to impute to the rubber trade some special ma- 

 lign influence to which these atrocities may be attributed. 

 The only malign influence connected with the gathering 

 of crude rubber lies in the fact that it takes place in 

 remote and inaccessible localities where there is a total 

 absence of civil law, and where the only rule is that of 

 brute force, whose insigTiia of authority are the rifle and 

 the knife. Wherever these conditions obtain there is 

 liable to be a reign of unrelieved brutality. 



The Putumayo rubber district lies along the banks of 

 the Putumayo River, one of the tributaries of the Upper 



Amazon. This territory has been claimed by Brazil, 

 Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, but Brazil some time since 

 withdrew its claim,, and Peru has been most persistent 

 in demanding the recognition of its sovereignty over this 

 territory. Nearly twenty years ago some Latin Ameri- 

 cans under the firm name of Arana Brothers, secured an 

 exclusive concession from the Peruvian government to 

 gather the rubber in this district. The company sent its 

 agents, Latin Americans — not of the best type — to the 

 Putumayo jungle, and there with their assistants, half- 

 breeds and desperadoes generally, they started the gath- 

 ering of rubber. ' They found there a number of exceed- 

 ingly primitive Indian tribes, inoffensive, docile, singu- 

 larly free from the vicious traits that aborigines often 

 have, and untouched by the vices of a civilization that 

 had not yet reached them. The first thing the invaders 

 did was to despoil the natives of their weapons of de- 

 fence, consisting largely of the native blow-guns, to- 

 gether with a few antiquated muskets that had found 

 their way into that remote region ; and then having them 

 at their mercy the agents and their overseers plied them 

 with every imaginable sort of cruelty to compel them to 

 bring in the largest quantity of rubber. As the agents 

 were paid in proportion to the amount of rubber pro- 

 duced, it was natural for men of their type to use all 

 means — humane or inhumane — to make this amount as 

 large as possible. 



It is not necessary here to go into any detailed de- 

 scription of the horrors that were perpetrated. There is 

 conclusive and overwhelming evidence that men, women 

 and children were flogged, maimed, drowned, starved, 

 beheaded, burned alive and buried alive. 



In 1905, the firm of Arana Brothers, which had been 

 gathering rubber for nine years, sold its concession to the 

 Peruvian Amazon Company, a London corporation, hav- 

 ing three Englishmen and four South Americans on the 

 board of directors. The new company imported into the 

 Putumayo district a number of Barbadian negroes to 

 augment the band of overseers. These new recruits fell 

 immediately into the methods of the camp, and soon be- 

 came as barbarous as their predecessors, if not more so. 



The first inkling that the world at large had of the 

 appalling situation came from two young American en- 

 gineers, Hardenburg and Perkins by name, who, after 

 spending many months in the district, went to London in 

 1909 with the manuscript of a book entitled "The Devil's 

 Paradise," wherein they had recorded the atrocities that 

 they had witnessed. They found it impossible, however 

 — so shocking were the disclosures — to get a London 



