1. That their Pevas estate is practically exhausted.
2. That the Nanay estate, utterly neglected and abandoned, is now, and has been for nearly two years, in the possession of Muniz & Co.
3. That their “large staff” of European employees in the sanguinary Putumayo does not exceed eight or ten men at the most.
4. That the “extensive plains” are all covered with the thick, dense forest of the tropics, and that it is a tedious and expensive task to clear even a few acres of land there.
5. That in the short space of three or four years the Putumayo rubber will be completely exhausted.
6. And that “they force the Pacific Indians of the Putumayo to work day and night at the extraction of rubber, without the slightest remuneration; that they give them nothing to eat; that they keep them in the most complete nakedness; that they rob them of their crops, their women, and their children to satisfy the voracity, lasciviousness and avarice of themselves and their employees, for they live on the Indians’ food, keep harems and concubines, and sell these people at wholesale and retail in Iquitos; that they flog them inhumanly, until their bones are visible; that they give them no medical treatment, but let them die, eaten up by maggots, or to serve as food for the chiefs’ dogs; that they castrate them, cut off their ears, fingers, arms, legs; that they torture them by means of fire, of water, and by tying them up, crucified, head down; that they burn and destroy their houses and crops; that they cut them to pieces with machetes; that they grasp children by the feet and dash their heads against walls and trees, until their brains fly out; that they have the old folks killed when they can work no longer; and, finally, that to amuse themselves, to practise shooting, or to celebrate the sábado de gloria[109]—as Fonseca and Macedo have done—they discharge their weapons at men, women, and children, or, in preference to this, they souse them with kerosene and set fire to them to enjoy their desperate agony.”[110]
And all this, let us remember, is done by a gang of human beasts, who, consulting exclusively their own evil interests, have had the audacity to form themselves into an English company and put themselves and their gruesome “possessions” under the protection of the English flag, in order to carry out more conveniently their sanguinary labours in the Putumayo and to inspire confidence here.
People of England! Just and generous people, always the advanced sentinels of Christianity and civilisation! Consider these horrors! Put yourselves in the place of the victims, and free these few remaining Indians from their cruel bondage and punish the authors of the crimes!
CHAPTER VII
HARDENBURG’S INVESTIGATIONS
THE CRIMES OF THE PUTUMAYO
FOLLOWING are sworn statements of those who, as agents or sufferers, participated in the outrages on the Peruvian Amazon Company’s estates, together with translations from various Peruvian newspapers of Iquitos, and statements of Peruvians, who, to their credit, endeavoured to expose the conditions existing in the Putumayo region:—