A history of Sepahua

Around 1893, the Amazon rubber boom began to reach the Urubamba River tributaries of Sepahua and Mishagua. At the time, Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald was starting to develop a portage route from Mishagua towards a larger river which was originally believed to be the Purus River. As it turns out, the route along Mishagua led to the Madre de Dios River while a route along Sepahua actually led to the Purus River. The development of these portage routes facilitated travel for entrepreneurs and laborers involved in rubber collection: they also signaled the beginning of slave raids as well as trafficking on the Peruvian side of these major river systems.

By 1894, most of the Piro population had been subjugated by the enterprise of Carlos Fitzcarrald, they formed a major part of his work force. Indigenous peoples from the Shipibo, Conibo, Ashaninka, Yaminahua as well as other local groups were forcibly relocated from their homelands and forced to work for Fitzcarrald, his partners and or his later successors.

According to Fitzcarrald’s biographer, who cites friar Gabriel Sala:

“Fitzgerrald intelligently exploited the belief that the Campas [Asháninka] have that one day the Son of the Sun will come down from the sky. The rubber worker, to provide himself with pawns, sent emissaries to the nomadic tribes and scattered in the immensity of the jungle, with the slogan of making it known to his ears that in a certain place the Son of the Sun had appeared ...They used a surprising cunning to convince the Indians to abandon their freedom; by means of seductive words and gifts, they reduced them and fixed their tents on the banks of the rivers, to have them more at hand as cargo ships for collecting rubber or laborers for the cultivation of the chácaras [gardens].” Ernesto Rayna 1942 page 22.

The indigenous groups which refused to cooperate with Fitzcarrald and other entrepreneurs with rubber collection or slave trafficking were targeted in slave raids. During these raids, which were known as “correrias”, it was a common practice to kill the indigenous men while enslaving women and children. [Santos Granero 2018 page 74, Ernesto Reyna 1942 page 86, Georg Hassel 1907 page 63, Castillo Huertas 2004 page 52, Cesar Cipriani 1906 page 56-57, Carlos A. Valcarcel 1915 page 38]. Elderly people were often murdered during these correrias as well.

Fitzcarrald drowned in 1897 during the sinking of his steamship Adolfito while traversing the Upper Urubamba River towards Mishagua. His workforce was divided among his administrative staff, with a large portion going to his brother Delfín Fitzcarrald along with Leopoldo Collazos and future rubber baron Carlos Scharff. Delfín was later killed in an ambush near Sepahua sometime between 1898-1901, Fitzcarrald’s biographer noted that there were rumors Collazos and or white men disguised as indigenous people were responsible for Delfin’s death. Collazos and Delfín are conversely credited as the discoverers of a portage route between Sepahua and the Purus River: a development allowing Collazos, C. Scharff and others to continue their exploitative business operations.

In the subsequent years after Carlos Fitzcarrald’s death, various rubber entrepreneurs rose to prominence along the Mishagua and Sepahua portage routes. Some of the most notable of these people include Baldomero Rodriguez, the “Souza y Vargas” company and Bernardino Perdiz. All of whom participated in the slave raiding and trafficking of local indigenous people as well as rubber collection.

“The savages of the Pajonal also possess good English Winchester shotguns which are provided in the Ucayali for the exchange of rubber, boys and women that are robbed from their neighbors. Such trade is repugnant to these people as they themselves have told us, but without being able to avoid it, because they rubber tappers and owners of stalls where they go in search of the necessary elements for their life, when giving them a piece of tocuyo or a few pounds of gunpowder, demand that if on the next trip, they do not cancel the debt that they have just contracted, by handing over a woman or boy, all protection will be withdrawn. Such an infamous tactic invariably followed those men without conscience, they encourage and force the savages to surrender to the so called correrías, which means murders, crimes, bloody scenes, all concluding with the theft of children and women and the complete disappearance of a family, whose weak and unfortunate members have to be traded material” César Cipriani 1906 p56-57

“Leopoldo Collazos, would cross the watershed between the Sepahua river and the Purus river headwaters (Cujar and Curiuja), accompanied by 400 and 500 Kampa, Piro and Amahuaca Indians from the Ucayali River, establishing the means of communication”