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
(_Sworn before_) FEDERICO M. PIZARRO,
_Notary Public_.
IQUITOS, _May 17, 1909_.
SEÑOR W. E. HARDENBURG,--I have just received your letter of yesterday,
in which you ask me for information about my residence on the River
Putumayo, and especially concerning the things that I have witnessed. I
will inform you that during a stay of seven years up there I have
witnessed crimes, floggings, mutilations, and other outrages.
In 1902 I went to the Señores Arana of this city and asked them for work
in the rubber business which I was told they had in the Putumayo. My
application was at once accepted by Julio C. Arana, who promised me S.40
per month good food, medicines, and passage there and back. I will state
that these promises were not carried out, but were disregarded to such
an extreme that I became almost a slave of this company.
When I arrived at La Chorrera they gave me a position as fireman on the
launch _Mazán_, where I remained seven months. At the end of this time
Victor Macedo ordered me to leave my position on this launch, for he
wished me to start on a journey through the forest to enter the service
of Elías Martenegui; but as I was already aware of the crimes that they
carried out in the centre of the forest I refused.
This was sufficient for them to treat me brutally. For this reason I was
tied up with an enormous chain around my waist and put in solitary
confinement in one of the cells of La Chorrera. Here I remained ten
days, guarded by the sentries, who had orders to shoot me if I attempted
to protest against this imprisonment. Once I tried in my agony to speak
to this Victor Macedo, but upon hearing my complaints he ordered them to
give me a hundred lashes and to cover my mouth so that I could not cry
out.
Thanks to some of those who were aware of my innocence and who
protested, I was enabled to obtain my release at the end of ten days,
but with the condition that I should leave at once to enter the service
of the criminal chief of the section Atenas, Elías Martinengui.
The day after being released I set out for the section, accompanied by
the chief Martinengui and his colleague O'Donnell. After a journey of
two days we arrived at Atenas, and as Martinengui was aware that I would
not serve as an instrument for the commission of crimes he ordered me to
serve in the house. On the second day I became ill with rheumatism,
which was probably caused by the imprisonment I had suffered in a damp
and dirty cell of La Chorrera a few days before. This disease kept me
prostrate for seven months, and had it not been for two Colombian
employees who took pity on me and gave me something to eat whenever they
could, I should have died for lack of food.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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