Julio César Arana

Who was Julio César Arana?

Julio César Arana del Águila, was a Peruvian entrepreneur and politician. A major figure in the rubber industry in the upper Amazon basin, he is probably best known in the English-speaking world through Walt Hardenburg's 1909 articles in the British magazine Truth, accusing him of practices that amounted to a terroristic reign of slavery over the natives of the region. His company, the Peruvian Amazon Company was investigated by a commission in 1910 on which Roger Casement served.

Arana became a senator for the Department of Loreto from 1922–26 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.