The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians ThereinHardenburg, W. E. (Walter Ernest)
History
The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein
Hardenburg, W. E. (Walter Ernest)
Peru -- Description and travel; Peruvian Amazon Company; Putumayo River; Rubber industry and trade -- Peru
On the 28th of July, the Peruvian Independence Day, I took advantage of
the orgy in which I found the chiefs of the section engaged, and
embarked in an Indian canoe that I found in the port, at 4 a.m.
My companions were Felipe Cabrera, a Colombian, who had been a prisoner
for eighteen months, and a Peruvian, Melchor Sajamín, who was in the
same condition as myself, having been flogged several times.
This is the truth of what passed and of what I have witnessed, and I
appeal to the authorities of my country, who will, I trust, demand an
explanation from the Government of Peru of the abuses and crimes
committed upon Brazilian citizens and those of other nations by the
employees of the J. C. Arana and Hermanos Company.
I present the person who signs this declaration with me as a witness of
my signature.
JOÃO BAPTISTA BRAGA.
CONSTANTINOPOLIS, _October 6, 1908_.
(_Signed in my presence_) JOSÉ R. BRAZIL.
_Letters to Hardenburg--Translation._
IQUITOS, _June 6,1908_.
SEÑOR W. E. HARDENBURG,--As you have written to me, I shall give you a
full account of all the deeds I have witnessed in the region of the
Putumayo in the year 1903.
On the 4th of August of that year I began work on _correría_ service in
the section Abisinia, where they sent us to guard the poor Indians and
see that they brought in the rubber that the chief demanded.
On the 20th of the same month Agüero committed a most savage murder,
cutting off an Indian's head. He is just the sort of man to commit all
kinds of atrocities, such as cutting Indian women's limbs off, burning
their houses, setting fire to their dead bodies, &c. On the 10th of the
same month he had some fifty Indians put in stocks, and as he gave them
neither water nor food, the poor Indians began to dry up like pieces of
wood, until they reached such an extreme as to be quite useless and
dying. Then he tied them up to a post and exterminated them by using
them as targets for his Mauser revolver.
On the 15th of this month this same man went out on a _correría_ with
eight men. At one of the houses where they stopped to rest they found
two Indian women who were ill of smallpox. The two poor sufferers begged
Agüero for some medicine to cure themselves. Agüero replied that he
would see that the fever continued no longer, and so saying, grasped a
_machete_ and cut off the heads of the two women.
On the 20th of September I began work at the section Morelia, where
Jiménez was the chief, and on the 30th a commission arrived, bringing
fifteen Indian prisoners, who were put in stocks. When on the point of
dying of hunger, one of the victims told the chief that it would be
better to kill them at once and not make them suffer such cruel agonies,
whereupon he took a _machete_, cut off the man's leg, and then ordered
him to be dragged away, killed, and burned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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