As we were allowed to walk around the houses without being molested—although an eye was always kept on us by some one—we had the opportunity to witness the lamentable condition of the unfortunate Corregidor Gabriel Martínez and his men, who were confined, as though they were desperate criminals, in a small, dirty, eight-by-ten-foot room under the main house and guarded night and day by two soldiers. These poor wretches, in a starving condition, were insulted, taunted, and abused daily by word and deed in a most cowardly manner. Orjuela, all this time, was kept in close confinement on the Liberal.
Another edifying spectacle that we witnessed was the condition of the poor Indians who loaded and unloaded the vessels that stopped at the port. There were from fifty to sixty of these unfortunates, so weak, debilitated, and scarred that many of them could hardly walk. It was a pitiful sight to see these poor Indians, practically naked, their bones almost protruding through their skins, and all branded with the infamous marca de Arana,[96] staggering up the steep hill, carrying upon their doubled backs enormous weights of merchandise for the consumption of their miserable oppressors. Occasionally one of these unfortunate victims of Peruvian “civilisation” would fall under his load, only to be kicked up on his feet and forced to continue his stern labours by the brutal “boss.”
I noticed the food they received, which was given to them once a day, at noon; it consisted of a handful of fariña and a tin of sardines—when there were any—for each group of four Indians, nothing more. And this was to sustain them for twenty-four hours, sixteen of which were spent at the hardest kind of labour!
But what was still more pitiful was to see the sick and dying lie about the house and out in the adjacent woods, unable to move and without any one to aid them in their agony. These poor wretches, without remedies, without food, were exposed to the burning rays of the vertical sun and the cold rains and heavy dews of early morning until death released them from their sufferings. Then their companions carried their cold corpses—many of them in an almost complete state of putrefaction—to the river, and the yellow, turbid waters of the Caraparaná closed silently over them.
Another sad sight was the large number of involuntary concubines who pined—in melancholy musings over their lost liberty and their present sufferings—in the interior of the house. This band of unfortunates was composed of some thirteen young girls, who varied in age from nine to sixteen years, and these poor innocents—too young to be called women—were the helpless victims of Loayza and the other chief officials of the Peruvian Amazon Company’s El Encanto branch, who violated these tender children without the slightest compunction, and when they tired of them either murdered them or flogged them and sent them back to their tribes.
Let us now take a glance at the system pursued by this “civilising company” in the exploitation of the products of this region—that is, the exploitation of the rubber and of the Indians. This system I afterwards ascertained to be as follows:—
The whole region under the control of this criminal syndicate is divided up into two departments, the chief centres of which are El Encanto and La Chorrera. El Encanto is the headquarters of all the sections of the Caraparaná and the right bank of the Putumayo, while La Chorrera is the capital of the sections of the Igaraparaná and those distributed between that river and the Caquetá. As already stated, the superintendent of El Encanto is Loayza, while that of La Chorrera is the celebrated Victor Macedo.
It is to these two centres that all the products are sent periodically on the backs of Indians, by canoe, or in small launches. Once here, it is shipped to Iquitos about every three months. At each of these centres all books are kept and all payments to the employees are made. The superintendents have the power of hiring and discharging all the men employed under them, and their slightest whim is law.
These two departments, as already hinted, are subdivided into sections, at the head of which are placed chiefs, under the instructions of the superintendents. Each chief has under his control a number of racionales, varying from five to eighty, whose business it is to direct the Indians and force them to work. The chief of the section keeps a list of all the Indians resident in his section, and assigns to each worker—in some sections this term includes women and children—the number of kilos of rubber that he must deliver every ten days.
Armed with machetes, the Indians penetrate the depths of the forest, gashing frightfully every rubber-tree they can find, frequently cutting them so much and so deep, in their frantic efforts to extract the last drop of milk, that vast numbers of the trees die annually. The milk runs down the trunk of the tree and dries there. A few days afterwards the Indians return, and, gathering up the strings of rubber, place them in baskets, which they carry to their huts on their backs.