Miguel S. Loayza

Miguel S. Loayza
Miguel S. Loayza, late 1912.
Personal details
Born	Miguel de los Santos Loayza Pérez

Miguel S. Loayza (c.1870-1960s) was a manager of the Peruvian Amazon Company at its El Encanto headquarters. Benjamin Saldaña Rocca included Loayza in his original criminal petition against eighteen members of the company for atrocious crimes. The criminal petition indicted Loayza and the others with fraud, robbery, rape and aggravated murder. Judge Carlos A. Válcarcel and Walter Ernest Hardenburg implicated Loayza with an incident in 1907 that result in the massacre of multiple Colombians. Ultimately, Miguel was never prosecuted for his role in the incident, or any involvement with the Putumayo genocide.

The Peruvian Amazon Company was liquidated in 1913, and in the process Loayza managed to retain some property. He also kept a portion of the company's workforce, which depended on natives trapped in debt peonage.^[1] In reality, the debt peonage relationship was equivalent to slavery.^[2] Before the transfer of the Putumayo from Peru to Colombia, Loayza and Julio César Arana organized a series of forced migrations deeper into Peru: with the intention of retaining their work force.^[3] The migration further hurt the indigenous of the Putumayo, with many dying from disease while the survivors continued to be exploited for Miguel's financial gain. It's believed that Loayza died during the 1960s, somewhere into his nineties near Iquitos.^[4]