Armando Normand

Armando Normand (1880–disappeared May 1915) was a plantation manager of Peruvian and Bolivian descent who had a central role in the Peruvian Amazon Company's perpetration of the Putumayo genocide. For six years in the Putumayo, Normand committed uncounted abuses against the indigenous population.

Normand worked for the company, which extracted rubber with illegal slave labour, between 1904 and October 1910. During those years, he led a reign of terror against local indigenous populations. According to British consul-general Roger Casement, who investigated crime in the Putumayo River basin in 1910, Normand committed "innumerable murders and tortures" during this period. Several of the crimes that Normand was incriminated with include immolation, bashing out the brains of children, and dismemberment.

Reports and evidence of Normand's crimes were first documented by in 1907, Roger Casement in 1910, and Judge in 1915. A warrant for Normand's arrest was issued by Judge on 29 June 1911 along with 214 other men employed by the Peruvian Amazon Company's agency at La Chorrera. Normand was arrested in 1912, however he escaped from prison with Aurelio Rodriguez in 1915 prior to a verdict in their trial. It is believed he spent the first twenty years of his life in and around Cochabamba. Because there were no open positions at the firm, Larrañaga advised Normand to travel to Manaus, and Larrañaga also wrote letters of introduction for Normand to Julio César Arana, owner of J. C. Arana and Hermanos Company. This mission managed to contract around thirty five Barbadians (In 1913, Normand claimed that there were thirty six Barbadian men hired on this mission, In 1905, Normand was made co-manager of the Matanzas station after the dismissal of Sanchez for physically abusing the Barbadian men, and in 1906, Normand became the chief manager of Matanzas.) Saldaña used statements and first-hand accounts from former workers of the rubber stations, publishing them in La Felpa and La Sancion, two small newspapers from Iquitos. The indigenous people marched along with their loads of rubber to Matanzas from areas in the forest that were, in some cases, a ten-to-twelve hours distance by foot. The land route to deliver rubber from Matanzas to La Chorrera was estimated by Casement to be , and could take "four to five days of hard marching" to traverse by the Barbadian men, which escorted the indigenous workers.

Around 1907, a small steamship was launched on the Igaraparana River above the waterfall of La Chorrera, shortening the distance that indigenous people entrapped at Matanzas had to travel in order to deliver rubber to La Chorrera. From Matanzas, they were to travel to Entre Rios, a two-day walk, and then to a place named Puerto Peruano, which was around or more from Matanzas, with little to no food. At Puerto Peruano, the rubber carried by the indigenous people was then loaded onto a boat and shipped to La Chorrera. In 1910, Casement estimated that over the course of the whole march, natives would walk or more to deliver rubber to La Chorrera and he stated the path was "one of the worst imaginable". These marches from Matanzas to La Chorrera usually occurred twice in year, after a collection period referred to as a fabrico. A fabrico referred to the season that rubber was extracted, this time period could last between 75 and 100 days.

When Normand became the station manager in 1906, for every of rubber collected by enslaved indigenous people, he received three soles. At the time of Casement's visit in 1910, Normand was making around 20 soles for every of rubber, which was 20% of the station's generated profit. The manager of La Chorrera told Casement the company owed Normand 18,000 soles before a harvest of rubber in 1910—around £1,800—and Casement believed that Normand would get paid £300 for that collection period based on the output of Matanzas. According to Normand in 1910, 120 men, who could annually bring in around of rubber, were being forced to work at the Matanzas station. The number of people kept captive to work at Matanzas prior to Casement's visit is unknown, however the information given the American Consul in Iquitos, claimed that there were 5,000 indigenous people dedicated to extracting rubber for the Matanzas station in 1907. The manager at La Chorrera, Juan A. Tizón, also told Casement the company had been running the Matanza station at a loss for a few years.

After meeting Armando Normand in 1910, Roger Casement wrote:

Normand left the company a month or two after Casement's visit; he had requested to separate from the firm in a letter the previous year. According to Normand, at the time, he was "often ill and had symptoms of the dread beri-beri". When Victor Macedo, the general manager at La Chorrera, heard about Normand's request for resignation, he asked Normand to stay longer at the Matanzas station because they had no one to replace him.

Role in the Putumayo genocide

Armando Normand committed numerous crimes in the Putumayo River basin, which members of the Peruvian Amazon Company witnessed. Several witnesses who came forward include , , and Barbadians and . Some of these first-hand accounts were used as evidence in the La Sancion and La Felpa publications that exposed the company in Peru, Roger Casement's report and an extensive report released by the United States relating to slavery in Peru.

Judge Carlos A. Valcárcel initiated an investigative commission in 1911 to find new information; On occasion, Normand used starvation until death as a means of capital punishment. Ildefonso Fachin, a Peruvian Amazon Company employee and deponent to judge Paredes, claimed that Normand had cut down crop fields in order to starve the indigenous people that he could not capture.

Near the end of 1904 or the beginning of 1905, Augustus Walcott was physically abused by Normand and Ramon Sanchez. Normand had Walcott "hung up by his arms tied behind his back for a very long time, and beaten with swords or machetes." Clifford Quintin was also abused by Normand on two separate occasions. The scarring from Normand's flagellation of Walcott was shown to Roger Casement in 1910. Another Barbadian named Percy, or James Francis was also tied up and flogged by swords under Sanchez's orders, however there is very little information regarding that incident. Augustus Walcott provided a depositional statement to Roger Casement in 1910, in that statement Walcott claimed that Normand told the local indigenous people that the Barbadian men were cannibals and that they would eat the people who refused to collect rubber. Leavine also witnessed other crimes to which Caporo testified on. In one instance, a native chief was burnt alive in front of his wife and two children because he was not able to collect enough rubber to satisfy Normand. The wife was then beheaded, the children were killed, and their bodies were thrown into a fire. Leavine and Caporo also witnessed Normand murder a woman because she refused to be the concubine of an employee. Caporo stated that Normand cut the legs off of this woman and abandoned her for a day and a night in a field before returning to this scene and executing the woman with a Mauser revolver. Normand wrapped another woman in a kerosene-soaked Peruvian flag and set her on fire; she was then shot, Caporo stated she had previously suffered one hundred whip lashes.

Near the end of Caporo's deposition, he declared "o terminate with this repugnant criminal, whom I have seen commit crimes so horrible that perhaps they are unequalled in the history of the entire world, it is sufficient to say that I have seen him repeatedly snatch tender children from their mothers’ arms, and, grasping them by the feet, smash their heads to pieces against the trunks of trees." Normand was also implicated with "dashing out the brains of children" by Westerman Leavine and a Peruvian engineer employed with the Peruvian Amazon Company. According to Leavine, over the course of six years, he saw Normand kill "many hundreds" of indigenous people, including women and children. This did not include the many indirect killings that were caused by starvation, exposure, and the demanding job of collecting and delivering rubber.

The Barbadian Frederick Bishop told Casement that the elderly Andoque people, "all Normand could get hold of", had been killed long before 1910. Both Casement and judge Paredes elucidate the targeting of the elderly indigenous population. Casement believed this was largely due to the fact that the elderly population was capable of giving younger people "bad advice. Bad advice means not to work rubber. Thus the old folks are always first singled out." Paredes cited the attitude of local Peruvian Amazon Company agents towards the elderly, the former regarded the latter as people who could not produce rubber "ence, considering the elderly not only useless but dangerous, they were exterminated to the point of not leaving a single one in the vast and populous region of Putumayo." Fachin, One of Paredes's deponents, claimed that Westerman Leavine was the main executor of Normand's orders regarding the indigenous elderly people and that Leavine was responsible for beheading many of them.

Normand abducted an indigenous woman whom he named Teresa and during this abduction he murdered three other people, including Teresa's mother-in-law. Valcarcel's report mentions the immolation of a native named Jañaique.

Judge Carlos A. Valcarcel found evidence that Normand personally flogged, imprisoned, and starved to death at least four indigenous people. Valcarcel charged Normand with the destruction of the , , , , , , , and nations. Paredes stated that at Matanzas, Normand imprisoned nearly 1,000 of the local indigenous people, they eventually died from excessive whipping, time in the stocks, and starvation. According to Casement:

Arrest and disappearance Armando Normand was officially dismissed from the Peruvian Amazon Company on 14 February 1911 along with ten other employees who were implicated in the perpetration of atrocities against the indigenous population. The Prefect of Iquitos sent a telegraph to the Peruvian Minister of Foreign Affairs which stated this group of men had fled towards Brazil. On 29 June 1911, 215 arrest warrants were issued against employees of La Chorrera's agency, including Normand. There were three sets of arrest warrants issued against employees of the Peruvian Amazon Company. Normand was included with the second set, which was ordered by judge Romulo Paredes, and they were "charged with a multiplicity of murders and tortures all through that region".

In December 1911, a Barbadian reported to Casement he had seen Normand and Victor Macedo, together in Manaus, along with several other men who were implicated in crimes in the Putumayo region. The Barbadian informed Casement he thought this group was going towards the Acre territory in Brazil. Normand claimed that upon learning about Roger Casement's report and its contents, he wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice in Lima, "denying one and all of the charges".

In an interview conducted in 1913 by Peter Macqueen at Guadalupe Gaol, Normand detailed his life up to that point. He claimed that once he left the Putumayo River basin, he travelled to Manaus, then to Buenos Aires, Valparaíso and then Antofagasta, while there, he said that he sold Panama hats for two years For a time, he made a living by selling horses from Chile while he was in Cochabamba. Normand was transferred from prison at Lima to the prison of Iquitos, the British consul-general at Iquitos announced that Normand arrived at Iquitos in custody on October 3 of 1913. In an unpublished book titled El Putumayo y la Justicia, judge Paredes wrote:

During his incarceration, Normand sent at least two letters to The West Coast Leader paper, further refuting the crimes that Roger Casement had implicated him with. In 1915 it was reported Normand had escaped from prison and fled to Brazil with other henchmen of Arana. Historian John Hemming wrote that "ppeals and counter-appeals delayed proceedings until May of 1915, just before a verdict against them, Normand, Aurelio Rodriguez and another were allowed to escape from jail." There are no historical traces of Armando Normand after that.

Anthropologist Guillermo Páramo Bonilla constructed one of the first biographical attempts on the Peruvian Amazon Company criminals in his 2023 article "Un monstruo absoluto": Armando Normand y la sublimidad del mal". That title may translate into English as "An absolute monster: Armando Normand and the sublimity of evil."The first sentence of this article's abstract states: "mong all the characters accused of ghastly crimes in the Putumayo rubber plantations (ca. 1912), none has exceeded the horror and fascination inspired by Armando Normand."

Although Fred Mustard Stewart changes the name, nationality, and location of a character named Jorge Ruiz, who appears in Stewart's 1973 novel The Mannings, the character seems to be inspired by Armando Normand.