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.
The whole territory is divided up into sections, at the head of which are placed chiefs, each one with a gang of bandits, varying in number from five to eighty, to control the Indians and force them to work. The chief of the section keeps a list of the Indians and assigns to each one the number of kilos of rubber he must deliver every ten days. The prettiest of the women are taken away from the Indians and become concubines of the chief of section and his band, the chief generally having from three to twelve and the others in proportion.
La Chorrera, the chief of which is the celebrated Victor Macedo, is the centre to which the products of all the sections of the Igaraparaná and those distributed between that river and the Caquetá are sent periodically. Here all the books, &c., are kept and all payments to the employees are made. Macedo is the chief of all the employees in this territory, and has the power of employing or discharging men, the fixing of salaries, &c.; and it is with the knowledge, consent, and approval of this wretch that these incredible crimes are carried out. This torturer and assassin is the justice of the peace of the Putumayo.
El Encanto is the chief centre of the Caraparaná, exactly as La Chorrera is of the Igaraparaná, and its manager, Miguel S. Loayza, has similar powers to those of Macedo. This is the individual who superintended the murders of Serrano and Gonzalez and the other crimes committed upon these two unfortunates, upon Ordoñez, and upon their women and children, Indians and employees.
All the rubber produced in the whole region now being exploited by the “civilising company” is transported upon the backs of Indians, in canoes, or in small launches to these two centres, from whence it is shipped to Iquitos about every three months.
Macedo, Loayza, and the chiefs of sections are paid, not salaries but commissions upon the amount of rubber produced. Thus it is to their interest to extract the greatest amount of rubber in the least possible space of time, and to do this it is necessary to force the Indians to work night and day. The best method of obliging them to do this is to impose certain amounts which they should deliver in a fixed time. Once this rule is made it must be enforced, and if the Indian does not deliver as much as he has been ordered to he must be punished. The punishment must be severe enough to strike terror into the hearts of the other Indians, so that they will not follow the example of the culprit.
The Indians collect all this rubber gratis: the only compensation they receive is flagellation, torture, and death if they should lack half a kilo of the amount imposed upon them; a mirror, a handkerchief, an ounce of beads if they deliver the full amount. They are doomed and defenceless victims of an exploitation unparalleled in the history of the entire world.
Should the unfortunate Indian lack even half a kilo of rubber, he is mercilessly flogged, being given from five to two hundred lashes, according to the enormity of his crime. As the poor wretches receive absolutely no medical treatment, within a few days these wounds putrefy, maggots make their appearance, and the miserable victims of this form of Peruvian “civilisation” die a lingering and repulsive death. Their bodies are left to rot where they fall, or else the well-trained dogs of their “civilisers” drag them out into the forest. Indeed, in some sections such an odour of putrefying flesh arises from the numerous bodies of the victims that the place must be temporarily abandoned.
Often when some poor Indian, seeing that he could not deliver at the fixed time the amount of rubber imposed upon him, has fled, they take his tender children and torture them until they disclose the whereabouts of their unhappy father. Their favourite mode of torture is by suspending them from a tree and building a fire beneath them, by using the celebrated “water cure,” and by suspending them from four posts, piling logs of wood, &c., on their tensioned bodies until they are forced to speak. Besides the methods already mentioned they frequently employ others,[107] so revolting that it is impossible to describe them.
Another common form of punishment is that of mutilations, such as cutting off arms, legs, noses, ears, penises, hands, feet, and even heads. Castrations are also a popular punishment for such crimes as trying to escape, for being lazy, or for being stupid, while frequently they employ these forms of mutilation merely to relieve the monotony of continual floggings and murders and to provide a sort of recreation. The victims generally die within a few days, or if they do not die they are murdered, for it is said that in 1906 Macedo issued an order to his subordinates advising them to kill all mutilated Indians at once for the following reasons: first, because they consumed food although they could not work; and second, because it looked bad to have these mutilated wretches running about. This wise precaution of Macedo’s makes it difficult to find any mutilated Indians there, in spite of the number of mutilations; for, obeying this order, the executioners kill all the Indians they mutilate, after they have suffered what they consider a sufficient space of time.