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. A company of which he was the general manager, the Peruvian Amazon Company, was investigated by a commission in 1910 on which Roger Casement served. He was appointed its liquidator in September 1911. He later blamed the downfall of the company on the British directors for neglecting to manage the Peruvian staff, of whom he was chief. Arana was the main perpetrator of the Putumayo genocide: where his company exploited and exhausted Indigenous populations to death, in exchange for rubber. Arana's enterprise also had operations along the Caqueta, Marañon, and Upper Purus Rivers.

Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, caucho, or caoutchouc, as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Cambodia are four of the leading rubber producers.