Julio César Arana del Águila (April 12, 1864 – September 7, 1952) was a Peruvian entrepreneur and politician.
A major figure in the rubber industry in the upper Amazon basin, he is infamously known in the English-speaking world through 's 1909 articles in the British magazine Truth, exposing his practices that amounted to a terroristic reign of slavery over the natives of the region. A company of which he was the general manager, the Peruvian Amazon Company, was investigated by a commission in 1910 on which Roger Casement served. He was appointed its liquidator in September 1911. He later blamed the downfall of the company on the British directors for neglecting to manage the Peruvian staff,"The Peruvian Amazon Company: No Return to Shareholders", The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931), Mar 20 1914. retr 2012 9 24 from https://trove.nla.gov.au of whom he was chief. Arana was the main perpetrator of the Putumayo genocide: where his company exploited and exhausted Indigenous populations to death, to extract rubber. Arana's enterprise also had operations along the Caqueta, Marañon, and Upper Purus Rivers.
Arana became a senator for the Department of Loreto from 1922 to 1926 and, as a result of the Salomon-Lozano Treaty, signed in Lima in 1927, Peru transferred his properties in the Putumayo to Colombia. He died at age 88, penniless, in a small house in Magdalena del Mar, near Lima.
Early life Julio César Arana was born to Martín Arana in Rioja, Peru, on April 12, 1864. The family was from Cajamarca, in the north of Peru and close to the Amazonian forests to the east. Martín Arana made a career out of making and selling straw hats in Rioja. Julio joined him at age nine and spent the next few years learning about the trade. At age 15, his father sent him to Cajamarca to learn bookkeeping and general business administration, rather than see his son go to war against Chile. After two years in Cajamarca, Julio ventured to the jungle, confident that he knew enough about business to take advantage of new opportunities. The rubber boom had just started to affect the Amazon, although it was years away from its peak.
Julio decided to move to the town of Yurimaguas, which was on the Huallaga River, a tributary of the Marañon River. From there, he was able to sell his father's hats in various towns of the Amazon basin. He believed he could make more money in the rubber trade, but he lacked the funds to invest in a business venture. In 1888, he married Eleanora Zumaeta; they had known each other as children in Rioja. He was able to secure some funding out of the convenient marriage and invited his new brother-in-law, Pablo Zumaeta, to join him in business. The two opened up a trading post in Tarapoto, which was a district rich in rubber and close to Yurimaguas. The very next year, they bought a portion of a rubber forest near Yurimaguas.
Arana and Zumaeta soon traveled to the Ceará region in Brazil, which had recently suffered a dust bowl and famine. They secured and hired twenty men, taking advantage of their destitute situation. These men would be the first debt peons of Arana, exploited for their labor. In 1889, Arana invited another brother-in-law, Abel Alarco, to join him at Iquitos, where they could set up business. Arana originally focused his business on peddling and transportation around Iquitos before becoming specifically interested in rubber forests in the Putumayo basin. Julio adopted the practices of the Colombians in the region, who enslaved indigenous people and exploited their labor to extract rubber.
Rubber baron
Julio Arana started multiple enterprises in collaboration with different business partners in the 1890s. Two of these notable partners include Juan B. Vega and Luis F. Morey, who established the Vega, Morey y Compania in 1890. Another company founded in the same year was Arana y Vega Ltda, a commercial firm that had an office on the Javary River. This relationship helped to facilitate transportation for Arana's expanding enterprise. In 1896, Arana moved his family to Iquitos. That same year, the Galvez steamship, owned by Arana and captained by his brother Lizardo, travelled down the Caraparaná River and purchased six tons of rubber from Colombians that were settled there.
Arana began trading with Benjamin Larrañaga and his son Rafael in 1896. The Larrañaga's owned La Chorrera, a settlement on the Igaraparaná where they enslaved the native population to extract rubber. Some of the enslaved native groups used for labor in the Putumayo include: Huitoto, Andoque, Bora, Ocaina, Muinane, Resígaros, Yabuyanos, Nonuyas and Yurias. Sometime in 1898, Arana established a commercial house in Iquitos for his enterprise. His largest competitor in the city, Carlos Fitzcarrald, drowned in an accident on the Urubamba River the previous year.
Arana soon began peddling firearms, liquor, and goods with other Colombians along the Putumayo, negotiating business with as many of them as possible. In 1901, Arana established the Larrañaga, Arana y compañia, with Benjamin Larrañaga as a business partner. There was an armed conflict between the Larrañaga's and several other Colombian patron's on the Putumayo, as the latter wanted to evict the Larrañga's from the region.
Information later provided by Rómulo Paredes, a judge in Iquitos, stated that Arana arrived on the Putumayo steamship at La Chorrera and intermediated a meeting between the two groups of Colombians. An agreement was made to pay Rafael Tobar and his companions 50,000 sols, and the Calderón hermano's were paid 14,000 for a settlement they built on the Igaraparana River. Paredes did not provide a date for this meeting, however Rafael Tobar, Cecilio Plata, Juan Cabrera, and Aquiléo Torres were arrested at La Chorrera in July 1901 then taken to Iquitos as prisoners. Those four Colombians were the original patrons of the rubber stations Entre Rios, Atenas, and La Sabana. Under Arana's enterprise, the indigenous peoples subjugated at these rubber stations delivered latex to La Chorrera, and this product would then be shipped to Iquitos.
By 1902, Arana's enterprise accounted for 8 percent of Iquitos total rubber exports: and about 5 percent of its total imports. In this year, he became the mayor of Iquitos due to his success and reputation. By this time, most of the Colombian entrepreneurs in the region were on Arana's books. If the Colombians in the Putumayo wanted to sell their rubber, they would have to go to Iquitos. From Iquitos, they managed to secure the supplies they needed and negotiate credit. Arana facilitated everything for them.
In 1903, Arana established the J.C. Arana y Hermanos firm, which had its headquarters in Iquitos and an office in Manaus. Arana's brother Lizardo, along with his brother in laws Abel Alarco and Pablo Zumaeta had managing roles in this new company. The headquarters in Iquitos was managed by Pablo Zumaeta, and the office in Manaus was directed by Lizarado Arana. Zumaeta was general manager of the company, responsible for operations in the Putumayo: while Lizardo was responsible for commercial transactions in the commercial hub that was Manaus.
Arana met the French explorer Eugène Robuchon onboard Arana's steamship the Preciada, around July 1903. Robuchon was intrigued with the information Arana provided about his estates in the Putumayo region and Robuchon decided to deviate from his original exploration plans in order to explore the Huitoto territory. The Peruvian Prime Minister in 1903, José Pardo, sent a telegraph to Arana in November 1903 suggesting that Arana employ the French explorer Eugene Robuchon to explore the property of J.C. Arana y Hermanos. A contract between Arana and Robuchon was officially signed on August 30, 1904, whereupon Robuchon agreed to carry out geographic, ethnologic work among other similar studies, as well as take photographs in the region and to produce maps. Robuchon also agreed that he would make suggestions regarding reforms "to improve and extend the exploitation of the said region, principally with regard to obtaining rubber."
After the death of Benjamin Larrañaga in December 1903, Arana bought out the son, Rafael's share. From 1904 onwards, Arana and his company annexed Colombian rubber properties, "amounting to more than 40 settlements". Arana's enterprise carried this out through encouraging the Colombians to sell their estates, indebting the Colombians, or by forceful actions to acquire the Colombia estates. After securing La Chorrera from the Larrañaga's, he bought out Gregorio Calderón and the Calderón hermanos at El Encanto. The Calderón's had a reported workforce of 3,500 Huitoto natives that were dedicated to the extraction of rubber along the Caraparaná River, and this workforce was also acquired by Arana.
In February 1904, a steamship belonging to Arana's company, named the Acreana, was seized by Brazilian authorities on the Upper Purus River while en route to deliver supplies to rubber tappers on the Curanja tributary. Another steamship named Mercedes, which belonged to Carlos Scharff, was also captured by the same group of Brazilians. On March 30 of 1904, the Mercedes along with the Acreana were used to deliver a group of around 270 armed Brazilians to attack a group of Peruvians between the Chandless and Curanja Rivers. Arana's business representative aboard the Acreana decided to abandon this business venture since it would be dangerous to travel any further towards their original destination and a decision was made to leave the ship's cargo at the Acre River's mouth then travel back to Manaus, which they arrived at on May 17. Arana's company later filed a reimbursement claim to the Brazilian government for the losses the company incurred during this incident.
The Liberal steamship was commissioned by Arana's enterprise and completed in October 1904. Liberal first arrived in Iquitos in December 1904. It was estimated that this ship cost between £6,000-7,000 a year to operate.
In 1904, Arana sent his brother-in-law Abel Alarco to take advantage of the economic crisis occurring in Barbados. Barbados was a frequent stop along the Booth Steam Ship Co. route that took rubber to Liverpool. Over the course of 9 months somewhere around 200 men from the island became indentured to the company, initially for a period of 2 years. Some of these Barbadian men protested to the British vice-consul in Manaus when they found out what the nature of their work in Peru entailed, however they were told they must fulfill the contracts they signed with Arana's company. Some of the Barbadians refused to do so, and they were taken into custody by local police and escorted onto a boat that would take them to the Putumayo.
When the Barbadians arrived to the Putumayo region near the end of 1904, they were used as enforcers against the natives. These men were foreigners with no connection to the people or land in the Putumayo, and they stood out. It was virtually impossible for them to run away from the territory. At the end of 1904, an expedition of around thirty Barbadian men was sent out from La Chorrera to set up the plantation of Matanzas, near the Caqueta River. Armando Normand accompanied them, and would later become the manager of that station.
Matanzas was originally established as a joint venture between a Colombian named Ramon Sanchez and Arana. An investigation later carried out by Roger Casement determined that the Barbadians had committed horrible atrocities at the behest of their overseers. They were the perpetrators of many floggings and murders committed against the natives. The investigation determined, that when the Barbadians complained or were defiant, they "received ill-treatment and were subjected to torture, for which they do not appear to have received any compensation as British subjects."