Arana, Julio César (1864–1952)

Julio César Arana (b. 1864; d. 1952), a Peruvian businessman who exploited rubber and other jungle products in the Putumayo River lowlands of northeastern Peru. By 1903, after some twenty years of work, he had set up the largest natural rubber-gathering business of the era. He controlled Amazon lands totaling 25 million acres, importing men from the British Caribbean colonies as overseers and workers and using members of local tribes as actual rubber gatherers. The company demanded that the workers meet daily quotas. Many were beaten, and some were murdered if they did not comply. News of enslavement and terror in the rubber camps eventually reached human rights groups. An international scandal developed after British diplomat Roger Casement witnessed the abuses in 1910 and reported that the native population had been reduced by four-fifths. Pressure from the United States and England in 1910 led the Peruvian government to force Arana to stop the worst abuses, and his power declined as the natural rubber boom ended.

See alsoRubber Industry .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fredrick B. Pike, The Modern History of Peru (1967), p. 194.

Thomas M. Davies, Jr., Indian Integration in Peru: A Half Century of Experience, 1900–1948 (1974).

Additional Bibliography

Aguirre, Carlos. The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

Klarén, Peter F. Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Mallon, Florencia E. Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

                                        Vincent Peloso