Talk:Putumayo genocide

Name change? - Putumayo rubber atrocities

Putumayo atrocities is the slightly more common name on google scholar, and atrocity is the term used for the similar event Atrocities in the Congo Free State which has controversy in being characterized as genocide.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=putumayo+genocide&btnG= - 1,420 putumayo genocide

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=putumayo+atrocities&oq=Putumayo+atr - 1,710 putumayo atrocities

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=putumayo+rubber&oq=putumayo+rubbe - 3,320 putumayo rubber

I suggest we need to add rubber to the name as Putumayo isn't a specifically held territory like the Congo Free State, so rubber is needed in the name for clarification. Unceremonious Individual (talk) 05:53, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn’t there be a wiki article encompassing rubber atrocities against natives in other parts of the Amazon?

As mentioned in the article, Carlos Fitzcarrald and Nícolas Suarez enslaved + exploited natives in the Peru / Bolivia area. Fitzcarrald's activities in Peru displaced multiple populations: many died from diseases due to their interactions. After Fitzcarrald's death in 1897 his enterprise fell apart and the natives rebelled against their captors. The Ucayali and Marañon still saw atrocities at least unstick 1906. This is mentioned by Roger Casement in his Putumayo report. Suarez retained many of Fitzcarrald's workers and most of his boats: which helped make him the biggest exporter of rubber in Bolivia. Arawoke (talk) 15:49, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

There were other places affected by debt-bondage system synonymous with slavery. If the atrocities in the Putumayo region amount to genocide: then the actions of rubber tappers in Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, and other parts of Peru, arguably amount to genocide. Arawoke (talk) 16:08, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Crimes against humanity category removal

Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

The Devil and Mr Casement, 2009, page 258-259

"Casement found it hard to capture the horror in words. He tried phrases such as 'a carrion - a pestilance,'... but he preferred a term that has now become all too familiar. It was, he wrote, "a crime against humanity" - Jordan Goodman

Casement, the consul-general sent to the Putumayo in 1910, uses the term twice in his 1910 journal, that is on pages 173, 178.

The epilogue of Goodman's 2009 book is titled "A crime against humanity" and the book is based entirely upon the subject of the Putumayo atrocities. The description of Goodman at the end of the book states "Goodman has been a professional historian for more than thirty years..."

Here is an excerpt from Mr Casement goes to Washington: The Politics of the Putumayo Photographs by Jordan Goodman, page 48

“This thing we find here,” Casement noted in his diary that day, “is a crime against humanity.” Now, that phrase, “crime against humanity” is so familiar today, so used (perhaps even over-used) in the media and in common parlance, that it comes as something of a surprise to learn that one hundred years ago when Casement used it, it had not yet appeared in print. That is one important point but the other is no less significant. For Casement used the phrase in precisely the way it was enshrined by the International Criminal Court of the United Nations after World War II and is used today: that is, the systematic practice of inhumane acts – murder, enslavement, extermination, torture, and so on – committed against any civilian population. I would argue that for Casement to have constructed the phrase 'a crime against humanity' he must have had a deep understanding and thought a lot of what he meant by humanity"

Introduction of "Sir Roger Casement's Heart of Darkness" page xxi states that the Parliamentary Select Committee Inquiry on the Putumayo, their brief "was to inquire into the level of responsibility of the British directors of the Peruvian Amazon Company and to ascertain how far they might be implicated in the crimes against humanity committed by Arana." That committee only had oversight for the British Directors and had no say regarding the 237 Peruvians that had arrest warrants against them.

Page 39 of El Proceso del Putumayo y sus secretos, written by Judge Carlos A. Valcarcel, has a line that states "to issue the most effective orders for the capture of those responsible for these attacks against humanity"

Please excuse me for this long quote, Page 235 of El Proceso, the judge wrote "It has been said that it is convenient for the inhabitants of Putumayo to make them work by force for the benefit of the civilized; but this is an argument that cannot be taken into consideration; since the laws of Peru do not establish, nor have they been able to establish, that such or such acts are crimes when they are perpetrated against such people and they are not when they are carried out against others. With such a criterion one could go very far and not even the Indians of the mountains and the coast of Peru would escape the distinction. Humanity has shed torrents of blood to abolish slavery... and for this reason, all these peoples consider criminals those who reduce their fellow men to slaves and in their laws they impose very severe penalties on those who commit this crime against humanity. What Julio C. Arana , Pablo Zumaeta; and other partners of the company "Arana, Vega" agreed in the aforementioned deed was the establishment of slavery..."

On page 92 of El Proceso he refers to the Peruvian Amazon Company employees as enemies of humanity.

As for the prosecution of crimes, and the case being tried as a crime against humanity, here is the issue. The judge who issued the warrants in June of 1911 and prosecuted the case was dismissed from office in October of 1911. The general manager of the company was arrested but released by a prefect of Lima, because the secretary of the Peruvian president protested his arrest warrant. Three Peruvian congressmen also protested his warrant. The managing director of the company, became mayor of Iquitos in 1912, where the case was being prosecuted. All of the station managers of the company fled, and were not arrested.(With the exception of Armando Normand, Abelardo Aguero, and Augusto Jimenez, they were arrested around 1913 and they all escaped.) I also can not find the trial proceedings online for any of the cases, however I do know there were a few hearings. The problem I am trying to emphasize on this end, is that there was a problem with corruption in this case, and the Peruvian courts did not settle the matter. Arawoke (talk) 17:47, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Lead section

Hi. I recently made a lead section for the article Putumayo Genocide. I would like to hear your comments. @Arawoke @Baffle gab1978 @WMrapids @Cdjp1. JLCop (talk) 20:25, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I am sorry for the late reply. Thank you very much for creating that lead section, I believe it is an appropriate summary. Arawoke (talk) 16:12, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

No problemo. 😀 JLCop (talk) 03:26, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Potential blockquote

"For indigenous people throughout the tropical world, white sails on the ocean's horizon have often presaged death. For the Indians in the Amazon's green 'ocean' in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, death was heralded by the arrival of steam launches or gunboats bearing armed men hungry for rubber. Technology had moved on from the time of the conquistadors, and killing and slave-driving had become more efficient. Reclusive tribesmen living today in remote corners of the Peruvian selvas inherited the memory of a catastrophe proportional to the genocides of the Final Solution and the Armenian massacres." - John A. Tully, The Devil's Milk: A Social History Of Rubber, 2011, page 85. Arawoke (talk) 16:15, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

“Causes of… development” for crime

For self reference during future work on this article.

Casement 2003 pages 699-705, précis of R. Paredes report, by ROger Casement. Information relates to Paredes conclusions regarding the reason for crime in the region and causes of its development.

Paredes gives info on the five principal massacres he singled out as deserving special attention: afterwards the judge attempted to trace the history and the cause of such crimes. The judge provided 4 separate causes which he extensively elaborates upon in the aforementioned page.

• 1: Payment by commission to the chiefs of staff

• 2:”[I]mpunity with which crime could be committed”

• 3:[T]o encourage this criminality, the very surroundings in which… crimes were committed”

• 4:”[W]orthless public authorities”, who protected no one, “also a cause of the spread of crime”
• 4A: P710 of Casement 2003 emphasizes that magistrates / the “juez de la Paz” was selected in the Putumayo from members of Arana’s staff while the governments appointment of commissarios was done in agreement with Arana co.

Arawoke (talk) 17:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

• Important note: The figures relating to the estimated number of people killed during this genocide specifically corresponds to the years of 1906-1911. These estimations are based on Carlos Rey de Castro's claim within "En el Putumayo y sus affluentes" [1907] that there was "no risk" in asserting the Putumayo's indigenous population was 50,000. [See Hardenburg 1912 pages 289-290, as well as En El Putumayo y sus affluentes page VII]

Here is an excerpt from the Peruvian Amazon Company's article: Judge "Paredes estimated that a population which was numbered at 50,000 in 1906 by Carlos Rey de Castro had dropped down to 8,000 by 1911" citing Valcarcel 2004 page 123.

Further topics to elaborate upon

• PAC liquidation
• Appearance of Victor Macedo, Augusto Jimenez Seminario, Abelardo Agüero and other PAC managers in Bolivia in 1914.
• Propaganda published by PAC
• ^Including the 1912 album produced by Silvino Santos, as well as “Rio Putumayo” (1914), “Índios Witoto do Rio Putumayo” (1916), and potentially his 1918 film (includes 5 minutes of film focused on Huitoto people).
• The rebellion of Atenas [1916 or 1917] / Rebellion of Yarocamena [may be the same event, unconfirmed]. A common issue that appears in the stories of rebellion relating to this time period is that abuse against indigenous people did not cease. The belief that abuse ended with the liquidation of the Peruvian Amazon company is a misinformed belief. Remigio Vega and Carlos Seminario singled out as abusive managers.
• ”El Oriente Peruano” (1921) published by Arana in order to attract investors to Iquitos, as well as improve the reputation of his name.
• Salomon-Lozano treaty and its impact on the Peruvian-Colombian border and the subsequent forced emigration of 6,719 indigenous people. [Organized by the Loayza brothers]

Arawoke (talk) 02:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)