INFERNO IN A PARADISE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 85, 30 September 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

INFERNO IN A PARADISE

HORRORS OF SLAVERY IX PERU. It is already known that the rubber merchants of Peru have exploited .the Indians of the forests in the north-cast of the country, and are forcing them to work by diabolical cruelty. A representative of the London Daily News heard from the lips of two young Indians who have escaped from this "inferno in a paradise" a plain tale of the sufferings of their people, the Witota tribe. The elder, Omorina, is a young man of twenty, and he has come to England with a fellow-tribesman, Ricudo, a lad of twelve. I met them in the studio of an artist who is painting their portraits, and found them in native dress, a loin cloth of white bark. Their brown bodies are finely built, and their faces bright and intelligent. They may be savages; they are certainly gentlemen. Their homo is a forest on the banks of the Igara Parana, a tributary of the Putamayo, in that wild tract of country in the North-east of Peru. "They say," said Omorino, "that our country was very happy before the white man came for rubber. Now it is very unhappy." I asked the interpreter what the title by which Omiorino called me meant. "God," he said. "It is the word the Incas used for the Deity. The Indians are very simple, and they regard white men as supernatural being 3 to be obeyed implicitly." '"Now," continued Omorino, "we are slaves. We are sent far, far into the forest to get rubber, and if we do not get it, or if we do not get it quickly enough, we are shot. That is'how I lost my eldest brother. He was called Morujigi, and he was shot by a Viracocha called Montt. Our father was flogged to death by a Peruvian called Sarote."

Have you been flogged yourself? "Yes. They took me to help manage the other Indians. So I became a muehaoho (Spanish for a 'boy') and lived in a house with other young men who served the Viracocha. We had to beat the Indians who did not collect enough rubber. We had rifles. Some of us were sent into the forest with the Indians who were getting rubber, and we had to whip them to make them go quickly enough when they were bringing back the rubber. I was a bad muchacho, because I would not beat the Indians. They flogged me when I refuse to ill-" treat a kinsman."

Little Rieudo interrupted. "My mother," he said, "was beheaded by a muchacho. I saw it done. The Indian was ordered to cut off her head by a man called For.seca. She had not collected rubber. There were possibly a hundred people in my clan, and we all lived together in a great house. There arc now only five left. All the rest, have been killed. The thief of my clan, Gwamuy, was shot. Fonseca and the people he. employed kill all the people, because they did not bring enough rubber, or because they did not have it ready at the proper time. I had a friend, called Dora; he was shot only a little while ago. One old woman was very brave; she told us not to collect rubber for the Viracocha. Therefore they cut off her head. A few months ago thrc members if the clan were shot by order of a Peruvian named Miranda, because they had taken cassava roots from his farm."

"They were very hungry," exclaimed Omorino. "Before the Peruvians came we were never hungry, because we had time to grow food and to hunt. The men we work for promise to give us food, but often they do not. So some people have got very thing and they have fallen down under the weight of the rubber they had to carry through the forest, and have died."

"Did you go to collect rubber?" I asked Ricudo.

"Yes," lie answered, "I had to bring more than sixty pounds of rubber through the forest, fifty miles or more, on my back."

_ "Women have to work, too," said Omorino. ''Sometimes a woman carries a hundred pounds of rubber. They fall down many times if they are oid or ill."

"Each of the Indiana lias his wife, whoin he loves," he continued. "The Peruvians take our girls and make them live together in a house to be their wives. But when tliev go away they do not take them.

"My father never worked rubber," said Ricudo. "He died when I was very young, before the white men came into the forest. Ho was a great hunter. We blow a poisoned dart through a tube, You can kill a panther like that." And when we said good-bye, I asked a conventional question: "liow do you like London?"

"London is very wonderful," they said, "but the great river and the forest, where the birds fly, is more beautiful. One day we shall go back." There was no doubting the lad's sincerity. They told their hideous tale in a simple, straightforward way. They have escaped; others are being tortured and done to death. The rubber districts of Peru are far away from the civilised parts of the country. Iquitos, the headquarters of the rubber trade, is filled with adventurers lusting for rubber—godless men who hold nothing sacred. There is no church and no religious influence in the town.

Public opinion in Lima is only beginning to wake up to the existence of the devilish cruelty perpetrated by Peruvians. Peru is a Roman Cabhoiic country. Is not this a case when the voice of the- spiirtual head of the Peruvian Church might voice a universal protest against barbarities which the conquerors of the Incas hardly expected?