Putumayo genocide
The Putumayo genocide refers to the severe exploitation and subsequent ethnocide of the Indigenous population in the Putumayo region.
The booms of raw materials incentivized the exploration and occupation of uncolonised land in the Amazon by several South American countries, gradually leading to the subjugation of the local tribes in the pursuit of rubber extraction. The genocide was primarily perpetrated by the enterprise of Peruvian rubber baron Julio César Arana during the Amazon rubber boom from 1879 to 1911. Arana's company, along with Benjamín Larrañaga, enslaved the Indigenous population and subjected them to dreadful brutality. In 1907, Arana registered the Peruvian Amazon Company on the London Stock Exchange, this company assumed control over Arana's assets in the Putumayo River basin, notably along the Igara Paraná, Cara paraná and Cahuinari tributaries.
Arana's company made the local Indigenous population work under deteriorated conditions, which led to mass death as well as extreme punishment. Some of the Indigenous groups exploited by Peruvian and Colombian rubber firms were Huitoto, Bora, Andoque, Ocaina, Nonuya, Muinanes and Resígaros. The main figures of the Peruvian Amazon Company, including Armando Normand, Elías Martinengui, Andrés O'Donnell, and the Rodríguez brothers, committed mass starvation, torture, and killings. The company educated a group of native males—Muchachos de Confianza—in policing their fellow men and torturing them.
Nine in every ten targeted Amazonian populations were destroyed in the Putumayo genocide. The company continued its work even after 215 arrest warrants were issued against its workers in 1911. The dissolution of the company did not stop it from providing Arana and his partners with means to subjugate the native population of the Putumayo region. At least 6,719 Indigenous people were forced by administrators of Arana's enterprise to emigrate from their traditional territory in the Putumayo River basin between 1924 and 1930, half of this group perished from disease and other factors after the migrations. Although the genocide is of great historical significance, it remains relatively unknown. Eyewitness accounts collected by Benjamin Saldaña Rocca, Walter Ernest Hardenburg and Roger Casement brought the atrocities to global attention.
Background
The Cinchona boom and the beginning of the Amazon rubber boom in 1879 encouraged exploration and settlement of uncolonized land between Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. Rafael Reyes carried out one of the first main expeditions in the Putumayo River basin in 1874 in search of Cinchona pubescens, a plant that produces quinine.Reyes operated a firm in the Putumayo between 1874 and 1884 and stationed his headquarters at La Sofia, the furthest point of navigation for steamboats on the Upper Putumayo River. Members of this expedition later returned to the region they had previously noticed the abundance of rubber trees and Indigenous tribes to potentially use as a workforce. Between 1884 and 1895, a wave of new people sought to exploit these resources; these people included the Calderón Hermanos, Crisóstomo Hernández, and Benjamin Larrañaga, the latter two being Colombians and veterans of Reyes' first expedition to the region in 1874.
In his memoir, Reyes described the occurrence of human trafficking on the Putumayo River and he noted that this trafficking was active by the time of his first expedition to the region. According to Reyes, the traffickers encouraged strong Indigenous tribes to go to war against weaker neighboring tribes, the captives from these conflicts were traded for merchandize. The traffickers loaded their human cargo onto boats, where "many of these individuals died of hunger or mistreatment". The voyage between the Putumayo River and the final destination for the trafficked Indigenous people could take weeks, once at that final destination, which was typically in Brazil, these people were treated as slaves. Reyes compared this "barbaric" human trafficking to the African slave trade and he wrote that Indigenous tribes in the Putumayo "tend to disappear, wiped out by epidemics, abused and slaughtered by those who hunt and trade in men". Reyes claimed that his company managed to effectively end the trafficking on Indigenous people in Colombian territory during its operations however the company was unable to support itself and went into liquidation in 1884.
Benjamin Larrañaga and his company initially settled on the left bank of the Upper Igara Paraná River, at a point named Ultimo Retiro. This was the location of first contact between Larrañaga and the Putumayo's Indigenous people, Larrañaga and his companions traded with these Indigenous people and lodged within the houses of the latter group. The group of Colombians decided to travel further down river and a portion of Larrañaga's expedition stayed at Ultimo Retiro, this group continued along the river until they reached a waterfall which prevented any further navigation. The Colombians continued their journey on foot, moving around the waterfall and came into contact with members of Aimenes nation. Larrañaga was able to successfully trade with the Aimenes people, exchanging merchandize for lumps of rubber, which the Colombians taught the local Indigenous people how to produce. Some of the Colombians left behind at Ultimo Retiro were directed by Larrañaga to travel down river to the waterfall in order to help establish a settlement called Colonia Indiana, which later became known as La Chorrera. Overtime, Larrañaga was able to induce the Indigenous people around the stations of Ultimo Retiro, Occidente, Oriente, and Santa Julia into collecting rubber for him. " considerable quantity" of rubber was collected by Larrañaga's enterprise after several months and sent to Para, Brazil where the rubber was then sold. The profits were split between Benjamin Larrañaga and Gregorio Calderón however they "both wasted it entirely and fell into extreme poverty."
Around this time, a group of Colombians led by Rafael Tobar, Aquiléo Torres, and Cecilio Plata initiated a campaign of conquest against natives in the areas that later became known as Entre Rios, Atenas, and La Sabana. After Tobar's campaign, Crisóstomo Hernández along with Gregorio Calderón and several other Colombians led an expedition towards the Cara Paraná River; they began another attempt to colonize the region and induce the local Indigenous people into delivering rubber for them at El Encanto, a settlement established by Calderón. Some of the Colombians that accompanied the aforementioned expedition were initially debt peons employed by Benjamin Larrañaga then recruited by Gregorio Calderón and or his two brothers. These Colombian patrons decided to exploit the Huitotos, the Andokes, and the Boras tribes into debt or enslavement with the goal of extracting rubber. According to Roger Casement in 1913:
Joaquin Rocha, a Colombian who travelled through the Putumayo region, said by 1897, Crisóstomo Hernández had subdued the entire Caraparaná region and a large portion of the Igaraparana River. Hernández waged war against the tribes that would not work or trade with him; during these conflicts, Hernandez acquired aid from tribes he had previously entrapped. In his 1905 book, Rocha provided an eyewitness account of a massacre that was relayed to him by an ex-employee of Hernandez. This source stated Hernandez ordered his employees to exterminate a tribe of Huitotos known as the Uruhuai, including the men, women and children, because they were rumoured to have practised cannibalism. Hernandez was later killed in an accident while one of his employees was handing him a loaded rifle. In his 1991 book, anthropologist Michael Taussig examined the history and conditions that led to the Putumayo genocide, and Peruvian anthropologist Alberto Chirif noted Taussig's examination of Crisostomo Hernandez "demonstrates that the massacres against the Indigenous people in the Putumayo were already taking place before Arana's arrival".
Arana's monopolization of the Putumayo
In 1896, Julio César Arana expanded his small peddling business in Iquitos and began to trade with Colombians in the region. At the time, it was easier for the Colombians to secure supplies from Iquitos rather than from Colombian territory. A year later, Arana's most-successful competitors in Peru Carlos Fitzcarrald and Antonio de Vaca Diez died in a boating accident in the Urubamba River. Along with the Putumayo, the basins of the Urubamba and the Madre de Dios were the biggest producers of rubber in Peru. After the collapse of the Fitzcarrald's and Vaca Diez' enterprises and their partnership with Nícolas Suarez, the Putumayo became the most-significant rubber-producing region of Peru.Arana entered a partnership with Benjamin Larrañaga, forming Larrañaga, Arana y compañia in 1902, the assets of this company later became a part of J.C. Arana y Hermanos, which was established near the end of 1903 to consolidate Arana's business interests. Prior to the first partnership, Arana had intervened in a conflict at La Chorrera with the Larrañagas against the Calderón brothers as well as Rafael Tobar, Aquiléo Torres, and Cecilio Plata. The latter group had organized an expedition consisting of around 40-50 armed men to attack La Chorrera, they wanted to evict the Larrañagas from the region and acquire their properties. Arana arrived at La Chorrera on the steamship Putumayo while both groups of Colombians were preparing for the conflict. At the time, both the Larrañaga and Calderón rubber firms were indebted to Arana.
Arana, acting as a representative for the Larrañagas, paid Tobar and his companions 50,000 Peruvian soles in exchange for the custody of "conquered tribes" while the Calderón's were paid 14,000 soles for a settlement built on the Lower Igaraparana River. While the source of this information, judge Romulo Paredes, did not provide a date for this intervention at La Chorrera, Rafael Tobar, Cecilio Plata and Aquileo Torres were imprisoned on steamship Putumayo in July 1901 prior to being sent to prison at Iquitos. Paredes emphasized that Tobar and his companions were obliged by Arana to definitively withdraw from the Putumayo and to forsake any right to establish future operations in the region. The settlements of Entre Rios, Atenas and La Sabana, which were founded by Tobar and his companions, became assets for Arana's enterprise. A chapter of Las crueldades en el Putumayo y en el Caquetá, written by Rafael Uribe Uribe, focuses on the arrest of Tobar and Plata, along with Arana's acquisition of several other Colombian estates. According to the chronology of Uribe's statement, the Colombian patrons were arrested on the steamship Putumayo then taken to prison at Iquitos. Tobar along with his partner Plata was informed that in order to secure their release from prison they would have to surrender their estates and "the numerous Indians he dominated", which had been induced to collect rubber. Uribe claimed that all of this was desired by Arana's enterprise for their own assets, as well as to bolster the amount of rubber shipped through the Iquitos customs house.