“He confirms the statement made by Genaro Caporo, in the Truth charges read out to him, who had declared what he saw in the middle of 1907. The statement made by Caporo, that three old Indians and two young women, their daughters, were murdered by Normand in cold blood and their bodies eaten by the dogs, was corroborated by Leavine. He saw this take place, and saw the dogs eating them. As to the starving to death of Indians in the cepo, it was a common occurrence, and the dead and stinking bodies left there alongside still living prisoners he declares he more than once witnessed. The statement made by Caporo as to an Indian chief who was burnt alive in the presence of his wife and two children, and the wife then beheaded and the children dismembered, and all thrown on the fire, Leavine says he remembers, and was a witness to it. He also remembers the occurrence narrated by Caparo of an Indian woman who was cut to pieces by Normand himself, because she refused to live with one of his employees as he directed her to do. He was a witness to the woman being set fire to with the Peruvian flag soaked in kerosene wrapped round her, and of her then being shot. The statement made by Caporo as to the ground round Andokes being sown with skulls was then read out by the Consul-General to Leavine. He (Leavine) of himself stated that there were days in 1906 and 1907 ‘when you could not eat your food on account of the dead Indians lying around the house.’ He frequently saw the dogs eating them, and dragging the limbs about. The bodies and arms were thrown all round and were not buried.
“With regard to the statement of Roso España, read over to him from the Truth charges, he saw one child rammed head first down one of the holes being dug for the house timbers.
“The statement of Julio Muriedas, made in the same quarter, who stated that he had been at Matanzas, was then read over to Leavine. He remembers Muriedas. With regard to the statement that two hundred lashes were given to Indians, Leavine says this often took place, also the burning alive of children to make them reveal where their parents were hidden. This he declares he has seen Señor Normand do more than once. The eating of the limbs of the dead people by the house-dogs attested by Muriedas he again confirms, and says it was ‘a common occurrence.’ The statement of ‘M. G.,’ from the Truth accusations, was then read to Leavine. He recalls this man, named Marcial, being a short time at Matanzas when Señor Normand wished to make him a station cook, and this man had refused and they had quarrelled. This man’s statement that he had seen in one month and five days ‘ten Indians killed and burnt’ Leavine declares is in no wise remarkable. He has himself seen twenty Indians killed in five days in Matanzas. As to the ‘stinking’ of this section referred to by ‘M. G.’ he affirms that this was often the case to a revolting degree. He recalls ‘M. G.,’ or Marcial, shooting the little Indian boy by Señor Normand’s orders as he, ‘M. G.,’ accuses himself of doing.
“Leavine finally declares that Señor Normand killed many hundreds of Indians during his six years at Matanzas, during all which time he (Leavine) served under him, and by many kinds of torture, cutting off their heads and limbs and burning them alive. He more than once saw Normand have Indians’ hands and legs tied together, and the men or women thus bound thrown alive on a fire. The employees on the station would look on or assist at this. The station boys, or muchachos, would get the firewood ready, acting under Señor Normand’s orders. He saw Normand on one occasion take three native men and tie them together in a line, and then with his Mauser rifle shoot all of them with one bullet, the ball going right through. He would fire more than one shot into them like this.”
On arriving in London, in January, 1912, Consul Casement gave in a further Report to the Foreign Office, of which the following are extracts:—
“The managing director of the company at Iquitos, Señor Pablo Zumaeta, against whom had been issued a warrant of arrest, had, I found, not been arrested, but, with the connivance of the police, had merely remained in his private residence at Iquitos during the hearing of an appeal he was permitted to lodge. This appeal being considered by the Superior Court of Iquitos during my stay there, resulted in the court annulling the warrant issued by the Criminal Court below, and the return to public life of the accused man without trial or public investigation of the charges against him.”[128]
“Following my return to Iquitos in the 16th of October, an effort was apparently made to arrest some twenty of those still employed by the company on the Putumayo towards the very end of October and in the early days of November. Although the localities where all of them were at work were well known, the comisario or commissioner of the Putumayo, one Amadéo Burga, a paid employee of the company, and a brother-in-law of its managing director, in each case took action just too late, so that all those incriminated were either absent in the forest or said to have gone away only a few hours before the officer’s arrival. The vessel reporting this unsatisfactory ending to this, the latest attempt[129] to bring to justice the authors of so many crimes, returned to Iquitos on the 25th of November, bringing only one man in custody, a subordinate named Portocarrero, who was among those implicated. All the rest of the accused were stated to have ‘escaped,’ in some cases, it was reported, taking with them large numbers of captive Indians, either for sale or for continued forced labour in other regions of the rubber-bearing forests.
“Some of those wanted, however, I learned subsequently, had returned to their stations when the officer, who had failed to find them, had left the neighbourhood, and were at work again in the service of the company at the date of my departure from the Amazon. Others of the individuals charged by the judge, I found, were, or had been, actually in Iquitos at the time the police there held warrants for their arrest, and no attempt had been made to put these warrants into execution.
“The evidence that I obtained during my stay in Iquitos, coming as it did from many quarters and much of it from the Putumayo itself, induced in me the conviction that the punishment of the wrongdoers was a thing not to be expected, and, from a variety of causes I need not dwell upon here, possibly a matter beyond the ability of the local executive to ensure. Suffice it to say I saw no reason to modify the opinion expressed in my Report of the 17th of March last, that ‘custom sanctioned by long tradition, and an evil usage whose maxim is that “the Indian has no rights,” are far stronger than a distant law that rarely emerges into practice.’
“In the Amazon territories of Peru—the great region termed the Montaña—the entire population, it may be said, consists of native Indians, some brought into close touch, as at Iquitos and in the settled mission centres of the Ucayali, with white civilisation, but a great proportion of them, like those on the Putumayo, still dwelling in the forest, a rude and extremely primitive existence. To these remote people civilisation has come, not in the guise of settled occupation by men of European descent, accompanied by executive control to assert the supremacy of law, but by individuals in search of Indian labour—a thing to be mercilessly used, and driven to the most profitable of tasks, rubber-getting, by terror and oppression. That the Indian has disappeared and is disappearing rapidly under this process is nothing to these individuals. Enough Indians may remain to constitute, in the end, the nucleus of what is euphemistically termed ‘a civilised centre.’