SLAVERY IN PERU; JOINT INVESTIGATION BY THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN.

Resolved, That the Secretary of State be directed, if not incompatible with the public interest, to transmit to the House of Repre sentatives all information in the possession of his Department concerning the alleged existence of slavery in Peru, and especially all information tending to show the truth or falsity of the following statement made in an editorial in the London Times of July fifteenth, nineteen hundred and twelve: "The bluebook shows that in an immense territory which Peru professes to govern the worst evils of the plantation slavery which our forefathers labored to suppress are at this moment equaled or surpassed. They are so horrible that they might seem incredible were their existence supported by less trustworthy evidence."

Attest:

02d Congress; 3d Session.]

SOUTH TRIMBLE,

Clerk.

[House Document No. 1366.

Message from the President of the United States transmitting Report of the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, concerning the alleged existence of slavery in Peru.

Read February 7, 1913, referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and ordered to be printed.

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

To the House of Representatives:

I transmit a report of the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, in response to the resolution adopted by the House of Rep resentatives on August 1, 1912, calling upon the Secretary of State, "if not incompatible with the public interest," for "all information in the possession of his Department concerning the alleged existence of slavery in Peru, and especially all information tending to show the truth or falsity of the following statement made in an editorial in the London Times of July fifteenth, nineteen hundred and twelve: The bluebook shows that in an immense territory which Peru professes to govern the worst evils of the plantation slavery which our forefathers labored to suppress are at this moment equaled or surpassed. They are so horrible that they might seem incredible were their existence supported by less trustworthy evidence.""

THE WHITE HOUSE,

Washington, D. C., February 7, 1913.

WM. H. TAFT.

The undersigned, Secretary of State, to whom was addressed the following resolution of the House of Representatives:

[Text of the above-printed resolution.]

has the honor to submit correspondence on file in the Department of State containing information sought by the resolution, with a view to its communication to the House of Representatives if in the judgment of the President it be not deemed incompatible with the public interest so to do.

The circumstances under which the Governments of Great Britain and the United States, responding to the public sentiment which had been aroused in both countries by reports of the cruel treatment of the indigenes in the rubber-gathering districts of the tributaries of the upper Amazon, had taken concurrent steps to ascertain the actual conditions in that region are set forth in the initial paper of the subjoined correspondence, being an instruction given on the 6th of April, 1912, to Mr. Stuart J. Fuller, who had been a short time before assigned to the reopened consulate at Iquitos, in Peru, in order that an impartial agent of the United States might cooperate in obtaining first-hand information regarding the asserted brutal extermination of the native inhabitants of the important outlying district of the Putumayo, over which Peru claims jurisdiction and in which Peru exercises administrative control under a modus vivendi entered into with Colombia, whose claims to the sovereignty of a large extent of the territory conflict with those of Peru, and, in part, with rival claims advanced by Ecuador.

In taking this step the Government of the United States was mindful of the sensibilities of the Government of Peru, and, in the light of the measures then being considered by that Government to put an end to the barbarous practices reported to exist, it was believed that an impartial ascertainment of conditions in the Peruvian part of the Putumayo district could not fail to strengthen the hand of the Government of Peru in dealing with a problem of such magnitude and gravity. The entire friendliness of this Government and its sincere desire to aid Peru in acquiring knowledge of the facts and in applying the needful remedy for the existing evils have been consistently impressed upon and, it is believed, are well understood by that Gov

ernment.

In pursuance of that instruction Mr. Fuller visited the Putumayo region during August and September of the past summer, in company with Mr. George Babington Michell, the British Consul at Iquitos. Mr. Fuller's report, dated October 28, 1912, gives a full narrative of the extended journey as undertaken and sets forth his views of the labor conditions in the rubber-gathering region, with suggestions as to the treatment of the evils which have existed and to a great extent are believed still to exist therein. Mr. Fuller's report was received in December last.

The circumstances under which the journey was made, the inaccessibility of the native country, and the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy information at first hand from the Indians themselves handicapped Mr. Fuller and his British colleagues in their onerous task.

That the natives of the region have been inhumanly treated by the mercenaries of the rubber-gathering concerns and been reduced to a state of peonage indistinguishable from slavery is undenied and unquestionable: that the horrible conditions laid bare by the testimony of observers in the past still exist in all their enormity in the districts visited by the inquirers is not fully substantiated by the scanty evidence they were able to collect, but enough is known to show that whatever amelioration of labor conditions has been effected falls short of the demands of common humanity, and that the efforts of the Peruvian Government to work a remedial change and clear itself before the bar of the world's opinion have been for the most part painfully inadequate and unhappily misdirected to a degree making the results unresponsive to the unquestionable desire of the administration at Lima that its control of the vast and almost trackless regions of the Putumayo, embracing some 12.000 square miles of territory, shall be just and humane. The more energetic action of the present administration in Peru in sending a prefect of recognized ability and integrity to Iquitos and in pushing the prosecution of Messrs. Arana and Vega is considered significant as indicating the attitude that will be henceforth assumed by the Peruvian Gov

ernment.

Supplementing the report and cognate dispatches of Mr. Fuller, the undersigned submits other papers found in the Department of State bearing on the subject of the resolution, including the British Blue Book, entitled "Correspondence respecting the treatment of British colonial subjects and native Indians employed in the collection of rubber in the Putumayo district." which was laid before the Parliament in July last. A knowledge of the contents of this publication appears to be needful, inasmuch as the inquiry of the House of Representatives is based on a journalistic recital of its import.

Among the interesting papers herewith subjoined are two reports made in November and December, 1907, by Charles C. Eberhardt. then the American Consul at Iquitos. The first of these, dated November 30, 1907, is a carefully prepared paper on the condition and characteristics of the native Indians of Peru. As an ethnological study its scientific value led to its publication by the Smithsonian Institution, in volume 52 of the Miscellaneous Collections. Incidental to that investigation, and in view of the assertions in American journals that American companies were exploiting the rubber production in the upper Putumayo district under concession from the Government of Colombia, Mr. Eberhardt submitted, under date of December 3, 1907, a report on the general conditions in the Futumayo River district of Pern. This report, while exhibiting the condition of virtual slavery to which the native tribes were subjected, showed that the cruelties so disclosed were not the work of American citizens, nor affected American interests, and, it would seem, did rot call for representations to any of the three Governments concerned in the disputed territory. Indeed, the prospect that the controversy as to the sovereignty in that quarter was about to enter on an acute stage might have made it a delicate matter for a neutral government to impute territorial responsibility to any one of them.

The undersigned has not deemed it advisable to expand this report, pendente lite, by including any correspondence in regard to the

conflicting territorial claims in the upper Putumayo district or to do more than make passing reference to this circumstance as bearing on the difficulty of practical and effective administration in that quarter.

Respectfully submitted.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, February 4, 1913.

P. C. KNOX.

PAPERS ACCOMPANYING THE FOREGOING LETTER OF SUBMITTAL.

File No. $23.5048/37a.

The Acting Secretary of State to the American Consul at Iquitos, Peru.

No. 1.]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, April 6, 1912. SIR: In arriving at the decision to reopen the American Consulate at Iquitos, Peru, the Department has had primarily in view the advisability of securing information as to the labor conditions along the affluents of the upper Amazon, and particularly the Putumayo River. Reports transmitted to the Department by Mr. Eberhardt, Formerly American Consul at Iquitos, during 1907 and 1908 indicated that those directing the gathering of rubber in the territory claimed by Peru to be within her jurisdiction were responsible for practices of exploitation of the native Indians which threatened the complete extinction of the primitive races. Subsequent to the receipt of the reports of Mr. Eberhardt by the Department the British Government, which was in possession of information concerning the horrible condition existing in the forests of the Putumayo within the concession of a British corporation, directed His Britannic Majesty's Consul General at Rio de Janeiro, Sir Roger Casement, to make personal examinations of the situation. Previous to this time this Government had been in consultation with the British Embassy at Washington, with a view to cooperation in representations to the Government of Peru in order that the Peruvian Government might undertake a thorough investigation of the subject and obtain sich first-hand information regarding the brutal extermination of the native inhabitants of one of the important outlying Provinces of Peru as would impel it to take the remedial measures that the circumstances appeared imperatively to demand. Owing to the imminence during the early months of 1910 of an outbreak of hostilities between Equador and Peru because of conflicting claims of these countries regarding the territory of which the Putumayo region was a part, the Government of the United States at that time deemed it wise to postpone communication with the Government of Peru en the matter until the outstanding dispute, which it was then hoped was approaching settlement, had been terminated. It was felt that, the international situation having become tranquilized and the ques

1 Inclosures 1 and 2.

tion regarding the title over the upper Amazon region decided, such representations as the Government of the United States might determine to make in the matter would more certainly produce the results which it was desired to bring about.

During the early part of 1911 the Department was informed. through the British Embassy at Washington, that as a result of the efforts of the British Minister at Lima, acting under instructions from his Government, the Peruvian Government had appointed a commission to proceed to the Putumayo region and report on conditions there found to exist. The Department, to which the cause of the defenseless natives of the Putumayo had so strongly appealed for humanitarian reasons, had received information from time to time of the views of the British Government in the matter and in regard to the steps which the British Minister at Lima had been instructed to take. During the months of April and May of the past year the British Ambassador at Washington transmitted, for the confidential information of the Department, copies of three reports of His Britannic Majesty's Consul General at Rio de Janeiro. which presented the horrible details collected by personal observation of the methods employed in the collection of rubber by the employees of the rubber company in the Putumayo district. These reports relate the appalling brutalities and atrocities from which the native rubber gatherers of the forest of the Putumayo were suffering. Copies of these pamphlets and other reports of more recent dates are attached for your information and for the files of the Consulate.1

On the 17th of July last the American Minister at Lima was instructed to express to the Peruvian Foreign Office, at a favorable opportunity, the pleasure that was felt by this Government upon learning of the steps initiated by Peru, inspired by the high ideals of serving humanity, to put an effective end to the excesses in the Peruvian rubber forests of the Amazon Valley by dispatching a judicial investigating commission to the Putumayo. The Minister was also directed to express the hope that adequate and vigorous measures would follow to put an end to the reported barbarous system in vogue, which threatened to accomplish the complete extinction of a defenseless people. It was at this time pointed out that Peru would undoubtedly understand the friendly spirit prompting a mention of this matter by the Government of the United States and would realize that there was no disposition or intention present to offend by referring to a matter concerning the internal affairs of Peru.

It has subsequently developed from information before the British Government, that the action taken by the Peruvian Government in organizing this commission has almost entirely failed of its object. The corrupt influence of those responsible for the conditions in the Putumayo has been seemingly so powerful as to defeat the laudable ends of the Central Government. As a result a few of the underlings have been arrested while no serious effort has been made to appre

1 These reports and related correspondence (not printed here) were gathered into a folio volume of 163 pages, which is referred to hereafter as the "British Bluebook"; it was presented to the two Houses of Parliament in July, 1912; the reports are signed by Sir Roger Casement, British Consul General at Rio de Janeiro. This Bluebook is re printed in Document 1366 (from which the most of the correspondence here given is extracted--see heading of first paper) at pp. 215-443.