The Devil of the Putumayo

Jordan Goodman

The story begins in the 1880s in the upper Amazon where an astonishing rubber boom has started. Centred on the Putumayo River a tributary of the Amazon Julio Arana is creating a vast empire working thousands of Indians literally to death. He carries everything before him and the City of London provides capital and shareholders for his Peruvian Amazon Company. But in 1909 a brave young American smuggles out evidence of murder and torture to London. The British Government sends Roger Casement fresh from triumphs in the Congo to investigate. Arana fights back but in 1912 Casement's report is published in London and Casement now knighted is a hero. A Select Committee in London grills Arana and others with the results published around the world. 30000 Indians have died and a British company is responsible. The company is liquidated its directors shamed and slave-owning is made an offence for any British subject anywhere.
But as Casement turns his energies to Irish Home Rule he is arrested and his Black Diaries' with their notes of homosexual encounters in Peru and Brazil ruin his reputation and seal his execution in 1916. Arana's glory days are over too as the forests go silent and Malayan rubber grown from seeds stolen from Brazil years before sweeps in the world market.