The press of Benjamín Saldaña Rocca. An approach to the discourse of Manuel González Prada during the Peruvian rubber boom

Abstract

This essay discusses the denunciatory discourse of Benjamin Saldaña Rocca in his newspapers La Sanción and La Felpa, published in Iquitos in 1907 and 1908. Julio César Arana, a Peruvian rubber baron and general manager of the Peruvian Amazon Company, PAC, was the principal target of the complaints of Saldaña Rocca. Socialist apologist, this acerbic journalist blamed Arana and his foremen for the crimes commited against the Indians in the rubber plantations s under his control located in the region of the rivers Putumayo and Caquetá. To fullfil his objectives, Saldaña used a variety of genres such as delations, oral testimony, satirical letrillas, letters, transcriptions and caricatures, which later served to other individuals in their accusations. These, finally, would lead to the economical collapse of Arana. I will show that the press of Saldaña Rocca presents an approach with the ideological postulates of Manuel González Prada, leading exponent of the anarchist movement, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Because of his written legacy Saldaña Rocca could well be considered like one of the main and more daring defender of the human rights of the Amazonian indigenous peoples.