De praktijken van Julio Cesar Arana in de rubbergebieden in de Amazone begin 20e eeuw:
Asserting that the rubber trees are in rapid decline and will be exhausted in
four years' time because of the rapacity of the production system, the article
continues by declaring that the peaceful Indians work night and day collecting
rubber without the slightest remuneration. They are given nothing to eat or
wear.
Their crops, together with the women and children, are taken for the
pleasure of the whites. They are inhumanly flogged until their bones are
visible. Given no medical treatment, they are left to die after torture, eaten by
the company's dogs. They are castrated, and their ears, fingers, arms, and
legs are cut off. They are also tortured by means of fire, water, and crucifixion
tied head-down. The whites cut them to pieces with machetes and dash out
the brains of small children by hurling them against trees and walls. The
elderly are killed when they can no longer work. To amuse themselves,
company officials practice shooting, using Indians as targets, and on special
occasions such as Easter Saturday-Saturday of Glory-shoot them down in
groups or, in preference, douse them in kerosene and set them on fire to enjoy
their agony. l 9
In a letter written to Hardenburg by an employee of the company we read
how a "commission" was sent out by a rubber-station manager to exterminate
a group of Indians for not bringing in sufficient rubber. The commission
returned in four days with fingers, ears, and several heads of Indians to prove
the orders had been carried out. On another occasion, the manager called in
hundreds of Indians to assemble at the station:
He grasped his carbine and machete and began the slaughter of these defenseless
Indians, leaving the ground covered with over 150corpses, among them men, women,
and children. Bathed in blood and appealing for mercy, the survivors were heaped with
the dead and burned to death, while the manager shouted, "I want to exterminate all
the Indians who do not obey my orders about the rubber that I require them to bring
in."
"When they get drunk," adds the correspondent, "the upper-level employees
of the company toast with champagne the man who can boast of the
greatest number of murders. "
The drama perhaps most central to the Putumayo terror, quoted from an
Iquitos newspaper article in 1908, and affirmed as fact by both Casement and
Hardenburg, concerns the weighing-in of rubber brought by the Indians from
the forest:
The Indian is so humble that as soon as he sees that the needle of the scale does not
mark the ten kilos, he himself stretches out his hands and throws himself on the ground
to receive the punishment. Then the chief [of the rubber station] or a subordinate
advances, bends down, takes the Indian by the hair, strikes him, raises his head, drops
it face downwards on the ground, and after the face is beaten and kicked and covered
with blood, the Indian is scourged. This is when they are treated best, for often they
cut them to pieces with machetes.
In the rubber station of Matanzas, continues the writer, "I have seen
Indians tied to a tree, their feet about half a yard above the ground. Fuel is
then placed below, and they are burnt alive. This is done to pass the time."
Bron:
http://www.kevsam.com/mmw5paper/3/Culture_of-Terror.pdf (pagina 10-11)
Meer over Julio Cesar Arana:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_C%C3%A9sar_Arana(voor wie Spaans kan lezen, het Spaanse artikel is veel uitgebreider)
It really is just like a medieval doctor bleeding his patient, observing that the patient is getting sicker, not better, and deciding that this calls for even more bleeding.