Augusto Jiménez Seminario was a Peruvian agent of the Peruvian Amazon Company, involved in the brutal exploitation of indigenous communities in the Putumayo River basin during the early 20th century. Jiménez was employed as an agent of Julio César Arana’s rubber firm J.C. Arana y Hermanos as early as 1904, this firm later became the Peruvian Amazon Company and they continued to employ Jiménez with management roles until 1911.
During his employment with Arana's rubber firms, Jiménez rose to a position of authority at the firm's agency of La Chorrera. He supervised forced labor, primarily among the Bora people located between the Igara Paraná tributary of the Putumayo River and the Cahuinari tributary of the Caqueta River. In 1904, he was appointed to manage the estate of Santa Julia, which had a port located on the lower Igara Paraná River. He was transferred to the estate of Abisinia in 1905 and subsequently served as the section's second in command, in subordination to Abelardo Agüero. Between 1906 and 1909, Jiménez managed Morelia, one of Abisinia's subsections, during this time period he became implicated with the deaths of many indigenous people, a large portion of which were held in captivity at Morelia or Abisinia. The Peruvian Amazon Company later appointed Jiménez as the estate manager of Ultimo Retiro, on the upper Igara Paraná River, Jiménez retained this position until 1911.
During his employment in La Chorrera's territory, Jiménez was implicated in a range of crime and violent practices. His role in the atrocities, which included killings, torture, and other abuses, was documented by multiple investigators, including journalist Benjamin Saldana Rocca, American engineer Walter Hardenburg, British diplomat Roger Casement, as well as the Peruvian judges Rómulo Paredes and Carlos Valcárcel. The Putumayo genocide, as this campaign of exploitation and violence came to be known, garnered international attention, sparking investigations and legal proceedings that named Jiménez and other company officials as responsible for severe human rights abuses.
In 1911, Jiménez was subject to an arrest warrant alongside other employees of the Peruvian Amazon Company. Jiménez was subsequently dismissed from the company and he fled the region with Abelardo Agüero as well as several other agents that were issued arrest warrants, they migrated towards Bolivia. These men trafficked a group of around seventy indigenous people, which the former intended to prevent from testifying to any judicial commissions and either sell the group of people or profit from their labour. The pair evaded incarceration until April 1914, at the time they were employed at a rubber producing estate which belonged to the Bolivian rubber baron Nicolás Suárez Callaú. Despite his arrest in Bolivia that year, Jiménez escaped detention and ultimately disappeared. His later life remains largely obscure, although reports suggest that he continued to operate near the Brazilian border, eluding justice until his death, which is not documented.
Career Augusto Jiménez Seminario was employed by a rubber exporting firm named J.C. Arana y Hermanos as early as 1904. This company was later implicated with perpetrating the Putumayo genocide, during which the Putumayo's indigenous people were exploited as a workforce to extract and transport rubber under the threat of death. Around 1904, Jiménez became the manager of the Santa Julia station, which was located on a tributary of the Igara-Paraná River and acted as the shipping port for rubber collected around the territory of Abisinia, an estate that belonged to J.C. Arana y Hermanos. Abisinia, Morelia, and two other stations sent their rubber towards Santa Julia, and from there the rubber was transported up the Igara-Paraná River towards La Chorrera. The indigenous people that lived between Santa Julia and Abisinia's territory were Boras, they were often targeted by slave raids organized by employees of J.C. Arana y Hermanos. Jimenez was transferred from Santa Julia to Abisinia in 1905, shortly after the first detachment of Barbadian men employed by J.C. Arana y Hermanos arrived at that estate.
The station of Abisinia was managed by Abelardo Agüero and during his employment at this estate Jiménez acted as Agüero's second in command. Jiménez later became the manager of Morelia, which was a substation that delivered rubber to Abisinia. In 1907, Julio Cesar Arana registered the Peruvian Amazon Company in London, and this new company acquired the assets of J.C. Arana y Hermanos. Jimenez was listed as the manager of the Cahuinari section on the prospectus of this new company which was drafted by Eugène Robuchon and Carlos Rey de Castro. The Cahuinari section refers to the Palmera and Morelia stations near the Cahuinari River, a tributary of the Caqueta River. Ovidio Lagos, who published a lengthy biography on Arana, noted that the report published by J.C. Arana y Hermano's auditor in preparation for the Peruvian Amazon Company's registration "affectionally addressed" Armando Normand and Augusto Jiménez, two murderers which Lagos believes should "join the list of the worst sadists" of the 20th century.
In March 1910, Jiménez became the manager of Ultimo Retiro after the previous manager, Alfredo Montt, was transferred to the Atenas station. Roger Casement estimated that the rubber delivered to Ultimo Retiro in 1910 may have yielded around 25 tons of rubber, about £5,000, and Jimenez would have received a portion of that through commission. A copy of La Chorrera's paylist dated to 1910 stated that Jiménez was paid 3 Peruvian soles per arroba of rubber, which equals 15 kilograms or 33 pounds. The list also documented ten other employees at Ultimo Retiro, including Aquileo Torres who was receiving 100 Peruvian sols per month. During its prime, Ultimo Retiro had two thousand workers on the company ledger and by the time of Casement's investigation in 1910 the population consisted of "260 workmen". In 1911, Casement stated that Jimenez was around the age of twenty six. The station apparently brought in 25 tons of rubber per annum supplied by the "260 workmen" who were enslaved to the company. Casement mentioned Jiménez drew a "fine percentage" of profit from the rubber brought to Ultimo Retiro.
According to Jiménez, the natives were paid with the advance system, and since they don't understand prices or quantity, he decided the quantity, prices and advances on the books. Casement stated "[i]t was clear there was no intention of paying these people, for there was nothing in the store to do it." While describing the method of rubber collection at Ultimo Retiro, Jimenez stated "the blancos did go out to the house of the capitanes and 'advise' them of when the rubber was due, and bring them in – this was twice in the fabrico". The term fabrico refers to a period of time, usually around seventy five days, during the year when there were ideal conditions to extract rubber.
Role in the Putumayo genocide Jiménez's role in the Putumayo genocide was first exposed by a criminal petition filed by Benjamin Saldaña Rocca against eighteen members of the J.C. Arana y Hermanos firm. When he received no response from the courts in Iquitos, Saldaña resorted to publicly attacking this firm through two different newspapers titled La Sancion and La Felpa. Saldaña published the contents of his original petition, as well as eyewitness reports to crimes occurring in the Putumayo, several of these witnesses implicated Jiménez with perpetrating crimes against the local natives. Jimenez's name was included in a list of men implicated with the Putumayo genocide, reported by Marcial Gorries to Benjamin Saldana Rocca. Regarding Jiménez's inclusion in this list, Gorries wrote: "[T]he least criminal like Jimenez [killed] ten in two months".
Saldaña's information was later given to an American named Walter Ernest Hardenburg, and he collected further depositions and evidence which further exposed the crimes perpetrated by J.C. Arana y Hermanos as well as Jiménez. One witness who made a report to Hardenburg was named Celestino Lopez and he referred to Jimenez as the "author of various violations, arsons, floggings, and homicides." Another witness named Daniel Collantes also included Jiménez among his list of the worst criminals in the Putumayo. Casement would later include Jiménez in a similar list in 1910 after carrying out his own investigation. During his investigation, Casement wrote that the "evidence against him is overwhelming", as well as "he has committed appalling crimes upon the Boras Indians in the section Abisinia." In reference to Jiménez, the editor of Truth in 1909, Sidney G. Paternoster, stated that "his record of cruelty is appalling".
In reference to Jimenez and another criminal implicated in the Putumayo genocide, Casement wrote "[t]hose men were murderers and torturers by profession – as their crimes swelled so should their fortunes. Whole tribes were handed over to them by a lawless syndicate which had no title-deed to one yard of land or one sapling rubber tree, and they were supplied with the armaments necessary to reduce these people to a terrified obedience and given a wholesale interest in the terror."
In 1911, there were two judges sent to the Putumayo to search for further evidence and eyewitness testimony in regards to the Putumayo genocide. Judge Rómulo Paredes and the depositions he collected implicated Jiménez with the decapitation of fifty-five natives, innumerable killings, the rape of children, and many other crimes. In his report, Paredes mentioned that Jiménez employed a method of torture to extract a confession where he cut the feet of natives and had them whipped after stabbing them. A Colombian named Simón Muñoz testified to Paredes that another torture method used by Jiménez, consisted of having the natives hanged by their limbs and then flogging them. Afterwards, these victims were interred in the stocks, where Muñoz stated he had seen ten natives die from their wounds. One muchachos de confianza believed that Jimenez's actions had caused an entire indigenous nation to disappear.
Abisinia Joao Baptista Braga was one of the first deponents to incriminate Jimenez and Agüero in the Putumayo genocide. Braga's information dates back to 1904 and he was originally hired by the J.C. Hermanos firm to direct a group of sixty-five Peruvian men. In order to demonstrate their treatment of the natives to Braga, Jimenez and Agüero had eight natives tied to a post then executed because they had tried to run away. Around three months later, Agüero ordered Braga to execute thirty-five imprisoned natives because they had also attempted to run away. When Braga refused to do so, Agüero got Jimenez to do this.
There were twenty-one Barbadian men sent to Abisinia in 1905 that were employed on slave raids under Agüero and later Jimenez's management. Some of these Barbadians, like James Mapp, would later report and testify the crimes of Jiménez as well as Agüero. Mapp reported one incident in 1906, which occurred after Agüero had returned from a trip to Iquitos. Agüero asked Jimenez where a certain group of native prisoners had come from, and Jimenez stated that they had recently been caught. Agüero ordered this group of eight natives to be sent towards the native crop fields and executed by the muchachos de confianza one by one. Mapp's testimony was later corroborated by another Barbadian named John Brown.