Chapter VIII: Consul Casement's Report (3)

"Yes, sir, he leave her there in the same place. We left her there, going a little ways into the forest; it was about four hours' walk; after we left the old woman we met two women. They had no house--they had run away. One had a child. Jiménez axed the one that had the child: 'Where is these Indians that has run away?' she tell him that she don't know where they were. He tell her after she tell him that she don't know that she was a liar."

"Did he tell her this himself in her own language?"

"He tell his wife to tell her. His wife speaks Spanish, too. His wife is up there with him now at Ultimo Retiro. He tell his wife that she was a liar. He took the child from the woman and he gave it to an Indian, one of the Indians who had been collected to work rubber. 'Cut this child's head off!' he say, and he did so."

"How did the Indian cut the child's head off?"

"He held it by the hair and chop its head off with a _machete_. It was a little child walking behind its mother."

"Was it a boy or a girl?"

"It was a boy. He left the child and the head in the same place, everything there, on the path. He went on then; he take the two women with him, but the woman was crying for her child. Well, sir, we got a little ways more inside the wood; walking, we met an Indian man--a strong young fellow he was, too. That is, after we gets over to near the Caguetá. Jiménez say he wanted to go to the next side--the other side--of the Caquetá, but he do not know where he would get a boat, a canoe, to go over. So this time he tell his woman, his wife, to ax the Indian to tell where the boat is. Well, sir, the Indian say he do not know where it is. By that time Jiménez say the Indian lie--he was a liar, and he got a rope and he tie the Indian's hands like that behind his back. It was in the same way with the post across between two trees. He made the Indians tie a post across between two trees, and he haul the Indian, like that, up to the post. His feet could not touch the ground, and he call for some dry leaves, and tell the boys to bring some dry leaves, same as the old woman. He put the leaves under his feet, and he take a box of matches out of his pocket. The man was there shouting out, greeting. Jiménez draw a match and light the leaves, and this time, sir, the Indian start to burn, big bladders going out from his skin. The Indian was there burning, with his head hanging like that--moaning, he was. Jiménez say: 'Well, you will not tell me where the canoe, where the boat is,' he says, 'so you must bear with that.' Well, the Indian was not quite dead, but was there with his head hanging, and Jiménez he tell the _capitán_, by name José Maria, a Boras Indian [he is chief _capitán_ of the Abisinia _muchachos_]; he says, 'Give him a ball!' he says, and the Indian took his carbine and give him a ball here, shooting him in the chest. Well, sir, after I saw how the blood started, I ran. It was awful to see, and he left the Indian hanging up there with the rope and everything on him."

"Was the Indian dead?"

"Yes, sir, he was dead with the ball, and we left him there in the same place. That's all."

"Sealey states that he had reported these things to his fellow-countryman, John Brown, who when he had reached Chorrera had become the servant of a Captain Whiffen, an English officer who had arrived there. He hoped that Captain Whiffen, hearing of it, might be able to do something and so told John Brown.[127] Sealey states that Chase was with him on the expedition."

Another Barbados man's (Westerman Leavine's) examination includes the following:--

"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.'

"The entire absence of government, which has not kept pace with the extension of revenue-yielding communities, has left the weaker members of those communities exposed to the ruthless greed of the stronger. The crimes of the Putumayo, horrible as they are, have their counterpart, I am assured, in other remote regions of the same lawless forest--although possibly not to the same terrifying extent.

"In this instance the force of circumstance has brought to light what was being done under British auspices--that is to say, through an enterprise with headquarters in London, and employing both British capital and British labour--to ravage and depopulate the wilderness. The fact that this British company should possibly cease to direct the original families of Peruvian origin who first brought their forest wares (50,000 slaves) to the English market will not, I apprehend, materially affect the situation on the Putumayo. The Arana Syndicate still termed itself the Peruvian Amazon Company (Limited) up to the date of my leaving Iquitos on the 7th of December last. The whole of the rubber output of the region, it should be borne in mind, is placed upon the English market, and is conveyed from Iquitos in British bottoms. Some few of the employees in its service are, or were when I left the Amazon, still British subjects, and the commercial future of the Putumayo (if any commercial future be possible to a region so wasted and mishandled) must largely depend on the amount of foreign, chiefly British, support those exploiting the remnant of the Indians may be able to secure.

"A population officially put at 50,000 should in ten years have grown by natural increase to certainly 52,000 or 53,000 souls, seeing that every Indian marries--a bachelor or spinster Indian is unknown--and that respect for marriage is ingrained in uncivilised Indian nature and love of children, probably the strongest affection these people display. By computations made last year and the year before, by officials and by those interested in the prosperity of the Peruvian Amazon Company, the existing population of the entire region is now put at from 7,000 Indians, the lowest calculation, to 10,000, the highest. Around some of the sections or rubber centres whence this drain of rubber has been forced, the human sacrifices attained such proportions that human bones, the remains of lost tribes of Indians, are so scattered through the forests that, as one informant stated, these spots 'resemble battlefields.' A Peruvian officer, who had been through the Putumayo since the date of my visit in 1910, said that the neighbourhood of one particular section he had visited recalled to him the battlefield of Miraflores--the bloodiest battle of the Chilean War. Moreover, these unarmed and defenceless people, termed, indeed, in the language of prospectuses, the 'labourers' of this particular company, were killed for no crime or offence, and were murdered by the men who drew the highest profits from that company. They comprised women and children--very often babies in arms--as well as men and boys. Neither age nor sex was spared; all had to work rubber, to perform impossible tasks, to abandon home and cultivation of their forest clearings, and to search week by week and month by month for the juice of rubber-yielding trees, until death came as sudden penalty for failing strength and non-compliance, or more gently overtook them by the way in the form of starvation or disease. With all that it has given to the Amazon Valley of prosperity, of flourishing steamship communications, of port works, of growing towns and centres of civilisation, with electric light and tramways, of well-kept hospitals and drainage schemes, it may well be asked whether the rubber-tree has not, perhaps, taken more away.

"However this be, it is certainly in the best interests of commercial civilisation itself, and of the vital needs of the trading communities upon the Amazon River, that the system of ruthless and destructive human exploitation which has been permitted to grow up on the Putumayo should be sternly repressed. Peru herself can only greatly benefit from the establishment of a civilised and humane administration--a task of no great magnitude--in those regions hitherto abandoned to the _cauchero_ and the vegetable filibuster. The healthy development of the Amazon rubber industry, one of the foremost of Brazilian needs, calls for that humanity of intercourse civilisation seeks to spread by commerce, not for its degradation by the most cruel forms of slavery and greed.

"All that is sensible of this among those interested in the rubber industry, whether of Europe, the United States, or Brazil, should heartily unite in assisting the best elements of Peruvian life to strengthen the arm of justice, and to establish upon the Putumayo and throughout the Montaña, wherever the rubber-seeker seeks his profits, a rule of right dealing and legality. It may be long before a demoralisation drawing its sanction from so many centuries of indifference and oppression can be uprooted, but Christianity owns schools and missions as well as _Dreadnoughts_ and dividends. In bringing to that neglected region and to those terrorised people something of the suavity of life, the gentleness of mind, the equity of intercourse between man and man that Christianity seeks to extend, the former implements of her authority should be more potent than the latter.

"I have, &c., "ROGER CASEMENT."