Read the following answer the questions that follow:
Rubber extraction in the Putumayo: 'Everywhere in the world, conditions of work in plantations were horrific. The extraction of rubber in the Putumayo region of the Amazon, by the Peruvian Rubber Company (with British and Peruvian interests) was dependent on the forced labour of the local Indians, called Huitotos. From 1900-1912, the Putumayo output of 4,000 tons of rubber was associated with a decrease of some 30,000 among the Indian population due to torture, disease and flight. A letter by an employee of a rubber company describes how the rubber was collected. The manager summoned hundreds of Indians to the station:
He grasped his carbine and machete and began the slaughter of these defenceless Indians, leaving the ground covered with 150 corpses, among them, men, women and children. Bathed in blood and appealing for mercy, the survivors were heaped with the dead and burned to death, while the manager shouted, "I want to exterminate all the Indians who do not obey my orders about the rubber that I require them to bring in."
Michael Taussig, 'Culture of Terror-Space of Death', in Nicholas Dirks, ed., Colonialism and Culture, 1992.
- What was the condition of the plantation workers throughout the world?
- What was called Huitotos?
- What did the manager do with the Indian labourers?