Adam Ashaninka
Words by Sandro Francisco Piedrahita
Art by Kaci Ellison
“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
John 1:5
Chayeki Quintimari, the leader of a jungle village located deep in the Ene River valley, learned many new words from the first white person he had ever met, an aging and bearded man dressed in shorts and a threadbare sweatshirt who Chayeki addressed simply as “Shirampari,” which means “the man” in the language of the Ashaninka. The man told him that beyond Chayeki’s secluded rainforest village there were different words for everything—for the sun, the moon, the animals, the spirits, the trees, the women—and Chayeki was amazed that all things in creation could have a different name. Chayeki had heard such rumors before, but had never heard any language other than variations of the Ashaninka tongue. He had also been told there were “unclean” white men in distant places who used words incomprehensible to the Ashaninka, but he had always suspected such reports were just legends repeated by old men.
The man also taught him words that had no exact translation in the Ashaninka language—the word “sin,” the word “baptism,” the word “Christ,” and even the word “terrorism.” Chayeki understood that “sin” was something akin to a crime, although he did not understand why the man thought it was a sin for women to walk about without covering their breasts or for a man to have more than one wife. The word “baptism” was more intelligible to Chayeki, since it was not altogether different from certain Ashaninka rituals. The word “Christ” was absolutely inscrutable, since it seemed to Chayeki that the man was describing a being that was God and man at once, and despite being a deity had been killed by mortal beings. As far as the word “terrorist,” Chayeki had a sense of what the white man meant, for he had heard of entire Ashaninka villages attacked and enslaved by men and women claiming to follow a shining path who perfectly fit the man’s definition of the word. Only with the passage of time would the young kuraka1 learn that the Shining Path guerrillas had a name in the Ashaninka language, the word “kitiokari2,” but that would happen only after Chayeki’s own encounter with Sendero3.
At some point, Chayeki deduced that the man intended to stay in Chayeki’s village indefinitely after having been ousted from another jungle village by the men Shirampari called the “terrorists.” Shirampari was fluent in the language of the Ashaninka and had lived in the Amazon rainforest for at least ten years. Apparently he had followed one particularly large tribe as they moved from place to place every couple of years seeking new lands to plant their crops. But Shirampari occasionally left the tribe with which he lived to seek out other communities in the jungle region and once left for nine months to establish a mission in a town next to the river. He did so because he wanted to minister to all the Ashaninka people and teach them a “new way,” a way to follow the man-god he called “the Christ.” He explained to Chayeki that Shirampari came from a distant land far to the North where still a different language was spoken, a language called English. He also told Chayeki about certain episodes in Ashaninka history about which the Amerindian leader knew next to nothing.
Chayeki’s community, numbering two hundred and fifty people, seemed to be more primitive and isolated than any other tribe with which Shirampari had ever dealt. It was as if the tiny enclave was beyond the grasp of time, unchanged for millennia, untouched by history. Shirampari had the uncanny sense that he was returning to the beginning of everything. The people still planted yucca and hunted wild boar and monkeys, as they had done at the time of the naming of things. They still waged a never-ending war against the animals, as they had since the days of the caveman. They had never heard of electricity, political parties or antibiotics, but they had also never suffered from the plagues brought to the continent by the white man. To arrive at the small settlement, it was necessary to traverse mountains covered by dense forest foliage which was exceedingly difficult and dangerous, at times requiring walks on very narrow tapir paths on the edge of enormous cliffs. And their cushmas4 were not made of cloth as in other Ashaninka villages, but of leaves from the kiriniraki tree, in the old-fashioned manner. Unlike the sonorous champollas5, charangos6, and quenas7 of the Quechua peasants in the Andean highlands, the only instruments in Chayeki’s village were a flute-like instrument made of clay which monotonously imitated the chirping of a bird and another made from the hollowed-out trunk of a small tree used to convey warnings from a distance. Nevertheless, Shirampari was astonished that Chayeki didn’t even know what the word Perú meant, nor that the Spaniards had conquered most of the country through the power of their muskets and cannons centuries earlier. When Shirampari explained that the Ashaninkas were the only ethnic group in all the land to have resisted the Spaniards by ousting them from jungle regions, Chayeki intimated that he had heard ancient legends about a war between the Ashaninka people and a foreign invader, but that was the extent of his knowledge.
Chayeki had never heard of Juan Santos Atahualpa, the warrior who had sought to reclaim the jungle region from the European usurper and had largely succeeded. After Juan Santos Atahualpa’s victory in the eighteenth century, the Spaniards had not ventured into Ashaninka territory for at least two hundred years. And now other men, the Shining Path guerrillas, sought to subjugate the proud Ashaninkas. When Shirampari tried to explain the intentions of the Shining Path to Chayeki, it simply went over the kuraka’s head. How to explain to the Amerindian chieftain long ensconced in the deepest jungle that certain people, the Shining Path guerrillas, wanted to impose on the Ashaninkas an ideology first taught by a dead man called Mao from a country which Chayeki didn’t even know existed? How to convey to the peaceful kuraka that they meant to take power through violence on a massive scale? How to make Chayeki understand that they expected the Ashaninkas to join them in battle or else be condemned to death as reactionary traitors?
In any case, Shirampari advised Chayeki that the people of his village should be protected. “Do you have any firearms?” the white man asked inanely. Of course they had never seen a firearm, let alone used one. Their only means of defense were bows and flame-tipped arrows. Shirampari thought such weapons would be useless in the quest to prevent occupation and enslavement by the senderista8 rebels. He had experienced Shining Path terror firsthand and knew their attacks would be sudden, merciless and brutal. He knew that thousands of Ashaninkas had been taken captive by the Shining Path and that dozens of Ashaninka communities had disappeared, its members either having been killed or enslaved by Sendero or having escaped deeper into the jungle. The only reason Chayeki’s remote village hadn’t been attacked yet was that the village was farther into the rainforest than the other Ashaninka villages and that it was surrounded by steep mountains with dense foliage. As far as Shirampari knew, there was no Amerindian settlement more inaccessible to outsiders than the tiny hamlet where Chayeki and his people lived. Nevertheless, he warned Chayeki that his men should not hunt or fish alone in the rainforest, as the terrorists had inundated the jungle region and might be anywhere.
News of Shirampari’s arrival had been greeted with trepidation by the villagers. They had heard about the existence of white men in the past and knew they were all warriors or shamans who wanted to control the Ashaninka people. Some of the white men wanted to tame the Ashaninka through force of arms while others wanted them to abandon all the spirits that had protected them for centuries. The white men lived far away, next to an immense lake, and they had weapons which spit fire. After Shirampari arrived, a group of town elders discussed his fate while the white man, now dressed in a black cassock which he had brought in a knapsack, sat in a wooden cage in the center of the village surrounded by green parrots and white guacamayas. The elders were all dressed the same, in gray-and-white cushmas, on their head horizontal square boards fixed upon a skull-cap, with two ochre feathers attached at the top. Some of them wanted to summarily execute the foreign man, believing if they spared him other white men would soon follow. But Chayeki, the kuraka of the village, wearing red paint from achiote seeds on his face as a symbol of authority, emphatically said that the white man should be allowed to live in peace with the natives in the camp.
Chayeki proclaimed that the white man had not come to hurt them, but to warn the villagers of impending danger. The man had lived for years among another Ashaninkan tribe, knew their customs and traditions well, and had only left them because a group of evil foreigners had decided to kill and enslave them as well as Shirampari.
“I believe,” said Chayeki emphatically, “that he is a good man sent to us by the gods so that we can be ready for the ‘terrorists’ when they come. He has discussed this with me in a long conversation. The word ‘terrorist’ used by the man you have in a cage comes from the white man’s word for extreme fear. He says the ‘terrorists’ bring fear and horror to the Ashaninka people. He also says they may soon visit our village and that they are not too far away, that they even have a large settlement by a nearby river. He says they mean to destroy our way of life and make us slaves or soldiers for their cause.”
“How can you believe him?” scoffed another village elder with taciturn eyes, a man who was father of twenty children with fifteen different women. “I’ve never heard of such men anywhere close to us. All the white man wants to do is convert us to his extreme views by putting fear in our hearts.”
“If we do not heed his warning,” Chayeki responded, “we won’t be able to later complain that we were not told what to expect. Surely you’ve heard stories about our kinsmen in other villages who have been forced into slave labor by those the white man in the cage calls the ‘terrorists.’”
“If those men come,” said another villager, wearing a collar of boar’s teeth about his neck, “we shall just escape deeper into the jungle. That is what our people have always done when foreigners appear.”
“Why do you think so many of our kinsmen have been unable to escape?” asked Chayeki without lowering his voice. “The foreigners keep Ashaninka women hostage as well as their young children. They take the women as their own and send the young men to fight in distant wars. And the bearded man in the cage says the ‘terrorists’ kill any villager who opposes them or attempts to flee. They have strange and terrifying weapons which can kill dozens of people from a distance. Entire villages have disappeared. Sometimes they cut off men’s tongues before killing them. Sometimes they set them on fire.”
“Then how did the man in the cage manage to avoid their weapons if, as you say, they are so powerful?”
“He says he was protected by a man-God named Christ. He swears that if he puts water on our heads, the man-God will protect us too.”
“The only way I will accept the gods of someone who is not an Ashaninkan is if his people conquer us,” said the man who had fathered twenty children. “Otherwise, I shall continue to believe in Tasorensi, who looks down from above and has infinite power. The white man has not come with an army to make us venerate his god. If his god is so powerful, how is it that we’ve trapped the white man in a cage?”
“Shirampari says his God is not a warrior-god, that He cannot be imposed on people through the force of arms. He says that his God delights in love and love alone. If a man strikes you on one cheek, you should offer him the other.”
“I’m sure those you call the ‘terrorists’ pray to the same god. I’m sure they don’t pray to the gods of the Ashaninka people.”
“No,” responded Chayeki. “The white man in the cage says the ‘terrorists’ do not believe in any god. He told me they revere a dead man called Mao from a distant place called China. He says that they don’t allow those they capture to pay homage to any god, not even to the God-man, not even to Tasorensi. Shirampari says the God-man and Tasorensi are one and the same.”
“Then the terrorists must be evil spirits rather than men.”
“That would not be too far from the truth. The white man in the cage also told me that the men he calls ‘terrorists’ often kill a villager’s child in front of his parents as a form of punishment. Shirampari says that the parents are then forced to cheer the killers and drink masato9 in celebration. He told me that he has even heard that the ‘terrorists’ force some Ashaninka captives to eat their own.”
“In that case, let him put water on all our heads,” said Chayeski’s brother Shinanki. “If his God has saved him from such evildoers, perhaps we can be saved as well. I’ve heard rumors about the weapons the white men have and our arrows are no match for their fire-spitting blowguns. Without help from powerful spirits, we are doomed.”
Even the elder who had first objected to following the new man-God ultimately assented to the Baptism, although he made it clear to all that he would continue to venerate the Ashaninkas’ ancestral gods as well.
* * *
Shirampari, known as Father Steven Douglas among “civilized” people, had been proselytizing the Ashaninka for more than a decade and still felt deep misgivings about it. Sometimes he felt that perhaps he was an intruder, doing the work of the oppressor, stripping the Ashaninka of certain uncommon values about which the “civilized” white man knew nothing. They had ancient customs, beliefs and certainties at odds with much of what Shirampari tried to teach them but that did not make them sinners or inferior in any way. For one thing, the “uncivilized” natives showed a much greater respect for their environment than the white profiteers from Lima or the D.E.A. agents who sprayed herbicide to eradicate coca plantations in the rainforest. The Ashaninkans’ connection to the land was deeply spiritual. They used a slash-and-burn type of agriculture whereby they burnt down the jungle trees in order to plant their crops—manioc, cassava, potatoes and yucca—but they moved on after three years to allow the land to replenish itself. And even the women’s nakedness was more a sign of innocence than vice. Like the prelapsarian Eve, the women in the village simply felt no shame at uncovering their breasts. Shirampari thought of the earthenware Inca depictions of couples in the throes of sexual love, the men with enormous organs the size of their arms, works created before the Spaniards taught the Incas what it meant to sin. In a way, the Ashaninka peoples had been living in a tiny Eden, a world from the Book of Genesis, protected from all the traps and “advantages” of modern life. But that was before the appearance of the snake, thought Shirampari, that wily serpent called Sendero.
One bright Sunday morning, Shirampari baptized most of the villagers in Chayeki’s hamlet with a two-part name, one of Ashaninka extraction and the other the name of a Catholic saint. The women had cooked a special food for the festive day: fried green caterpillars and snails (which were Chayeki’s favorite) as well as several roast monkeys and pig-like peccaries. And Chayeki wore a colorful crown of parrot feathers and hedgehog quills in honor of the occasion.
When it was Chayeki’s turn, however, the kuraka told Shirampari that he did not want to be given a new name by the priest.
“If you name something, you own it. I don’t want to be owned by you. If the white terrorists ever come and take over this village, then they will give everything different names because they will own everything. If I ever undergo the calamity of being forced to live in the white man’s world, I suppose then I’ll accept a different name, but I see no reason to do so now.”
“You’ve given me a new name,” said Shirampari. “Do you believe that you own me as a result?”
“I snapped my fingers and you were spared. I can snap my fingers and have you executed. You tell me whether or not I own you.”
“Well, you’re right about one thing. If the terrorists take over your settlement, they will give everything different names. They will name every jungle village after Mao or their leader, Presidente Gonzalo.”
“You’re sure they’re going to come and enslave us, aren’t you?” asked Chayeki, as he drank from a cup of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drug taken during Ashaninka ceremonies which the chieftain felt was appropriate for the Baptismal ceremony.
“Sendero has been losing ground in the highlands of Perú for some time now,” said Shirampari, “and they want to make the entire jungle region what they call a zona roja10. They need Ashaninka men and boys to become soldiers for the Shining Path or to cultivate coca to be sold for a hefty sum of money.”
“What is money?” Chayeki asked. In the deep rainforest where he lived, there was no use for paper currency. Sometimes the villagers exchanged goods with neighboring tribes, but even that was rare as Chayeki’s village was so isolated, surrounded by mountains and impenetrable jungle.
“White men kill and die for money,” explained Shirampari. “How can I explain it to you? They are paper notes as valuable as gold.”
“And they make a great deal of money selling coca leaves? When they are no more valuable than potatoes?”
“They use the coca leaves to make something called powdered cocaine. It is a drug like ayahuasca, and many people from my country consume it.”
“In the North?” queried Chayeki.
“Yes, in a place called the United States. Cocaine can be sold for a lot of money because it is forbidden.”
“I don’t understand the world you come from,” said Chayeki. “Why would anyone forbid the use of coca leaves? Don’t tell me it is also a sin like when women go with their breasts uncovered.”
* * *
Chayeki told the village elders that Shirampari had instructed him to post sentries about a hundred meters from the Ashaninka village so they could promptly report any sightings of foreigners. The terrorists could be identified easily by their clothes. They did not dress in cushmas, the tunics worn by the Ashaninka, but with what Shirampari had described as pants and shirts. He had also warned Chayeki that their enemies would probably come armed with rifles. When villagers asked Chayeki what rifles were, he found it difficult to describe them. He referred to the action, the stock and the barrel of a gun with the same words Shirampari had used to explain them to him.
“They’re like blowguns,” Chayeki continued, “but they’re made of metal and discharge bullets instead of darts.”
Then the villagers asked Chayeki to explain what bullets were.
“They are like small metal pellets that travel at a high speed through the air and pierce the bodies of their intended victims. A bullet can pierce a man through the heart or through the head, immediately causing death. All of this has been explained to me by the white man.”
“And what are we supposed to do when we see them?” asked one of the older villagers, a man revered as the healer in the tribe.
“You must kill them,” Chayeki said without hesitation. “Pierce their bodies with your arrows. If necessary, crush their skulls. Stones and arrows are our only weapons. If they come close enough with their machine guns, none of us will be spared.”
“Is this what the white man told you?”
“Shirampari told me the man-God to whom he prays forbids killing, but not when it is necessary to save one’s own life or family. So he told me we should have our arrows ready in case the marauding enemy appears. You are all hunters and know how to kill your prey.”
For a while, everything was calm in Chayeki’s village. Shirampari was allowed to live in a large structure reserved for visitors in the center of the settlement. It was a dwelling just like the other huts, wooden beams without walls, palm branches used as a roof, but it was somewhat larger than the rest. Every day the Indian women prepared masato for him, a sign of great respect. Shirampari had spent years among the Ashaninka and knew it was a sacred drink, mostly used in social and ceremonial gatherings. He also knew how masato was prepared and was not repulsed as were most white tourists who visited Ashaninka villages closer to what the white man called “civilization.”
To make masato, a milky, lumpy drink, the Ashaninka women chewed boiled yucca and spit the mixture of yucca and spittle onto a container made from the dried fruit of a tree called totumo. Then they allowed the concoction to be fermented, and the result was a powerful alcoholic drink. Shirampari had heard some Ashaninkans in other tribes bitterly complain that visiting white men had refused to drink the masato, for such rejection was deemed to show great disrespect. Shirampari would never fall into such an error and profusely thanked the Ashaninka women who brought the masato to him daily.
About six months after Shirampari’s arrival, what he feared the most happened. The Ashaninka lookout ran back to the village and announced that he had seen about a dozen men fitting Shirampari’s description of a “terrorist.” The Indian sentry reported that they were dressed like the men Shirampari had described, wearing pants and a shirt instead of a cushma, and that all of them were white men except for a man dressed as an Ashaninka, who was probably their guide. When Chayeki looked at Shirampari seeking guidance, the white man wasn’t sure what to say. It was almost certain that the men were Shining Path cadres, but no one could know for sure. When the sentry went on to tell him that some of the men were bearing rifles, Shirampari abandoned all hesitation and told Chayeki in an impassive voice, “It must be done.” The foreign men were certainly with Sendero. There simply wasn’t any other explanation for the presence of a dozen armed white men so deep into the rainforest.
Soon Chayeki told all of the men of the jungle camp to assemble at the northern periphery of their village, the direction from which the white men were coming, and to kill the foreign interlopers with their arrows as soon as they approached. More than fifty men heeded his orders and waited for the men they thought came with the intention of killing or enslaving them. The Ashaninkans hid noiselessly among the looming palm trees so the white men wouldn’t see them.
As the white men arrived, Chayeki whistled, thus giving his men the order to attack. Shirampari made a sign of the Cross, realizing that he was gambling with his soul. If the men were senderistas, their killing would be justified. But if they had come for another reason, it would be an act of cold-blooded murder. And yet he felt there was no other option. He had seen what the Shining Path did to the innocent settlers of other Ashaninka villages and could not contemplate the possibility of another massacre. Once the senderistas entered the village, their guns would quickly overcome any possibility of Ashaninka resistance. So the Indians took their arrows from their quivers and began to kill. To his consternation, Shirampari thought he perceived a primeval joy in their homicidal actions. Perhaps that was the moment when Adam ate the fruit, when Chayeki’s tribe killed for the first time.
With fifty men aiming their arrows at the “white” men, all but one of them were swiftly killed. Shirampari approached them in case anyone was still alive and needed to receive the sacrament of extreme unction. What he saw when he got close to the victims of the Ashaninka arrows shocked him to the core. All of them were wearing blue jackets with the word PRENSA on the back in bold white letters. They were members of the press! They were not senderistas! There was one man still alive, moaning with an arrow through his chest, and Shirampari in vain tried to staunch the bleeding with his scarf.
“Why did you attack us?” asked the man, still conscious, spitting blood in a tremulous voice. He was a mestizo, a man of mixed white and Amerindian descent, and there was a large wide-angle camera next to him on the ground.
Shirampari weakly responded, “Because we thought you were with the terrorists.”
“I’m dying,” said the photographer lying on the ground. “Please, please! Is there a doctor that can help me?”
“Not in this village,” lamented Shirampari. “I’ll see if one of the women in the village knows what to do.”
Shirampari immediately ordered one of the Indians next to him to call one of the healing women in the village, to see if she could do anything for the photographer.
“We’re with the fucking press,” exclaimed the photographer. “Why do you think I have this camera with me? And why is a white man like you living in the rainforest? You’re dressed like a frigging priest! How could you be involved in killing?”
“Why did you come?” asked Shirampari, without answering the photographer’s questions.
The photographer was having trouble breathing and continued to moan like an animal slashed with a machete, his groans echoing in the jungle night as if the mountain valley were a great cathedral.
“Because—” the man gurgled. “Because we’re working on a report about the Shining Path’s incursion into the jungle regions …”
The photographer had difficulty speaking but continued.
“We wanted to find the concentration camps where the Ashaninka people are reportedly enslaved. Obviously we were not looking for the gold of El Dorado. Please, please get me some help. Please don’t waste time.”
“I’m so sorry,” muttered Shirampari. “What were the natives to think? What was I to think? You came armed with rifles after all.”
“For protection from the terrucos11 … Obviously … from the terrucos. Not to be killed like wild hogs in the jungle by the Ashaninka.”
And then the man lying on the ground shut his eyes and breathed no more. The righteous pay for the faults of sinners, thought Shirampari as he cried violently, inconsolably, into the night. He was overwhelmed by guilt. A village where no one had ever killed a man had suddenly changed irreversibly. Black bats flew in circles overhead, like portents of evil, and the priest tried to return to his hut without stumbling in the darkness as a stray hound began to howl. Shirampari dragged his feet with sadness and remorse, as if suddenly his soul was too heavy for his bones to carry.
* * *
On a rainy afternoon, three Ashaninkan women from another jungle village made their appearance in Chayeki’s camp, soaking wet and famished. They reported that their village had been taken over three weeks earlier by a group of men calling themselves the Shining Path. The men could not speak a word of the Amerindians’ language, but they had brought a teenage interpreter from another Ashaninka village with them. The teenage interpreter explained that the foreign men would give the Ashaninkan men two alternatives: either they joined the men in fighting what they called “a thousand-year war” to liberate the Ashaninka people from the white man, or they could become slaves of a man called Presidente Gonzalo, leader of the Shining Path.
Chayeki was confused by what the women said. For one thing, how could the marauders be saving the Ashaninkan people from the white man if they were white men themselves? At that point in time, Chayeki didn’t realize that many Ashaninkas had already been forced to join the Shining Path guerrillas in their attempted conquest of the jungle, nor that many Quechua peasants had been similarly conscripted. And who could understand the senderistas’ claim that the way to “liberate” the Ashaninkan people was by making them soldiers and slaves for the cause of a man named Presidente Gonzalo? The more he heard the statements made by the men of the so-called Shining Path, the more he thought their actions were demented, the more he thought the people who lived beyond the jungle were a little crazy.
But there was no doubt about one thing: the men of the Shining Path meant what they said. The three fleeing women reported that after the men entered the village with exploding objects they called “grenades”—a weapon Chayeki had never heard about—they proceeded to kill anyone who refused to agree with their proposal that they join the terrorists, including not only the village kumara and his family but also all the village elders.
Shirampari was sitting at his side, for Chayeki considered him a valuable advisor with respect to any issues related to the “terrorists.” At some point the American priest interposed a question.
“How far away is your village from where we are today?”
“It took us thirty days clawing through the jungle,” one of the women responded, “but I think that if we had been able to use the river, we could have arrived in half that time. We didn’t have a boat so we had to make the whole journey walking through the forest. And then of course we had to climb through the mountains, which was quite risky, but we wanted to get as far as possible from the white men and their Quechua allies.”
“That means that the Shining Path is less than two weeks away,” announced Shirampari. “And if they have grenades, they could kill a lot of us from a distance. We could all dig deeper in the interior, but there’s no guarantee we wouldn’t be followed even there. So there are two realistic options: either prepare for war or go back to the land the white man calls ‘civilization.’” As he spoke, Shirampari thought of all the horrors of “modernity” and realized the Ashaninkans were not facing an easy choice.
“I don’t want to leave the rainforest,” replied Chayeki. “Our people have lived here for thousands of years.”
“Then we must be armed—and soon!” exclaimed Shirampari. “I can go back to Lima and bring back weapons.”
“Lima?” echoed Chayeki.
“Yes, it’s the capital of the country. It’s where the white man lives. In the mountains you have the Quechua Indians and in the jungle the Ashaninka. The whites live next to the ocean.”
“Do it,” said Chayeki.
“Maybe I can alert the military and they can come to your rescue, as well as all the jungle region. But it is so vast that I don’t know if they can do it.”
“We shall wait for you,” said Chayeki.
“You should be aware that it may take some time for me to return. It’s not just the time going and coming back from Lima. I have to get the money for the rifles and the grenades and it might not be easy. I’ll also have to figure out how to bring back the weapons here. It’s going to require a helicopter. I obviously won’t be able to carry fifty shotguns and twenty grenades in a knapsack walking through the jungle.”
“May the God-man be with you,” said Chayeki.
“And also with you,” responded Shirampari.
* * *
Father Steven Douglas arrived in Lima on a Sunday night and by Monday morning he was already trying to drum up support for the protection of the little jungle hamlet threatened by the Shining Path. In truth, he preferred the vitality of life with the vulnerable Ashaninkans instead of life with the “civilized” limeños12, with their intolerable obsession with money, their imbecilic racial hierarchies, their grotesque pornography so different from the Indian depictions of a physical love untainted by sin or shame. He visited the Franciscans and the Jesuits first, along with certain groups of evangelical Christians. All of them told him they understood his cause, and wished to help, but weren’t sure if Christian groups should be contributing to the purchase of weapons of war.
“Arms used in self-defense,” the priest said more than once, “are not doing the devil’s work. If we don’t arm the Ashaninka, the Shining Path is going to engage in genocide. It is no exaggeration to say they already are. Thousands of Ashaninkas have already been massacred.”
Undaunted, Shirampari next made an appointment with the Peruvian military. A lieutenant colonel advised him they wanted to help, but pointed out the army was already fighting the Shining Path in various villages in the jungle region. After the tenacious priest continued to beg for assistance, the lieutenant colonel begrudgingly agreed to provide him with thirty carbines and the use of a helicopter to transport the weapons. It was not much, but it was something, especially the offer to provide the helicopter. Now he only needed an additional fifteen thousand dollars for seventy more guns and perhaps another three thousand for grenades.
Two months passed and he was unable to procure the money. When he was about to return to the jungle village crushed by despair, a wealthy German benefactress suddenly appeared and provided the required funds. Later Shirampari would find out she was the widow of a Japanese-Peruvian journalist murdered by Sendero.
On the appointed day, at the town of Puerto Prado, Shirampari met with the soldiers who were to take him and the weapons to Chayeki’s village. They were four young men, led by a captain named Maldonado, a gruff man who chain-smoked Winston cigarettes and cursed relentlessly. Puerto Prado was the nearest “civilized” town to the Ene River rainforest. After boarding the helicopter, the five men flew for hours over the vast jungle canopy without much luck. Shirampari knew the area well after traveling through the region for a decade, so he was sure he’d find the village. He told the soldiers that the small Ashaninkan enclave was about two-hundred kilometers due north from the intersection of the Ene and Mantaro rivers and that it was situated next to a small lagoon in a jungle valley surrounded by mountains. Finally, when they were about to give up on the search they saw the tiny body of water.
“That’s the lagoon!” exclaimed Shirampari.
Captain Maldonado looked through his binoculars and said, “There isn’t any village there.”
“Sure, there has to be,” responded Shirampari. “Lend me your binoculars.”
Shirampari turned to the captain with a defeated face.
“That’s the place,” he said with stupefaction. “I’m sure of it, but you’re right. There is no longer a village there.”
“We can land if you want,” responded the captain. “I see a clearing there.”
“Yes, we must,” replied Shirampari.
When they landed, Shirampari was horrified by what he saw and smelled. All of the Ashaninka dwellings were burnt to the ground, a pile of blackened wood and dry matted straw. Worse than that, there were cadavers everywhere, probably more than thirty of them, some of them charred, all of them emitting a foul odor which made the priest suddenly retch. It was obvious they had recently been killed and the process of putrefaction had just begun. The greenish bodies were not fully decomposed and Shirampari could even recognize some of their faces among the slowly rotting carrion. Most of them had their skulls crushed and showed evidence of torture, their arms tied behind their backs and their genitals removed. There was also the body of a little girl, her face colored black, signifying death, which had probably been painted by her parents after she had expired. Many of the pestilential corpses had already been attacked by the army ants and carnivorous vultures which have lived in the jungle for millennia, as well as by a myriad laborious bugs which have no name in the Spanish or English language.
Shirampari walked through the ruins weeping, the loudness of his wails competing with the insistent buzz of enormous flies. He could see what remained of the large hut in the center of the now defunct village where he had stayed, sacrificed like everything else to the appetite of the elements. Apparently the Shining Path had used dynamite to destroy it, probably trying to kill the intrusive priest. And then he began to see body parts strewn everywhere, arms and legs and heads of men and women who had probably been killed by pineapple grenades. Shirampari searched in vain for Chayeki’s corpse. Since he was the village kumara, the senderistas had probably dynamited his corpse to make him an example to the rest of the villagers.
“They got here before us,” lamented Shirampari. “Those sons-of-bitches beat us to it!”
“We’ve seen this before,” said the captain. “The Shining Path is destroying multiple villages in the valley of the Apurimac, Ene, and Mantaro rivers. Those who aren’t killed are taken to concentration camps in the middle of the rainforest. The military is doing all it can to find the senderista bases, but the jungle is huge and the terrucos don’t stay in the same place for a long time.”
“You must do more!” said Shirampari. “You’re not doing enough. Nobody cares about the Ashaninkas.”
“We’re doing what we can. The Ashaninka people are the most populous of the indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon and they occupy a territory of forty-thousand square miles. Under the circumstances, it is very difficult to protect them. Many times we’ve arrived at camps merely hours after the departure of the guerrillas. Since they have Ashaninka hostages with them, they can make their way about the jungle with ease.”
“Is there nothing you can do? Can’t you find what remains of this village? It was Eden once and now look at what they’ve left of it.”
“I can assure you of nothing, but be comforted in the knowledge that the Peruvian military is doing all it can to find the concentration camps where the Ashaninka are imprisoned. Just last week we rescued seventy-one people in an occupied Ashaninka village called Samaniato—nineteen men, twenty-three women, twenty-nine children and seven babies, all found in a state of malnutrition like in those old photographs of Nazi concentration camps. We’re also trying to find the senderista plantations of coca leaves. Part of the reason the Shining Path is here is their alliance with the cocaleros13.”
Shirampari felt a sense of despair, a deep-seated anxiety. Cain had killed Abel and this jungle land was no longer Paradise. It was a place of suffering and chaos for thousands of innocents. How could the Lord be allowing this? For the first time in his life, Shirampari’s faith was shaken. He decided to go back to the mission he had established at Cutivieri years earlier and at least help some of the natives. The mission was at the very edge of the rainforest, close to so-called “civilization,” and Shirampari thought it would be a safe place to stay and perhaps house about two-hundred jungle Ashaninkans fleeing the wrath of the Shining Path. And despite his doubts, Shirampari prayed without cease. Lord, how he prayed!
* * *
Two years later, the mission Shirampari had established on the perimeter of the jungle was attacked by members of the Shining Path. Approximately sixty men and women dynamited the seventeen buildings which made up the mission compound: a church, a rectory, a convent, twelve classrooms and two large halls where Ashaninka refugees were huddled together waiting to be transported by planes to other regions of Perú. Most of the terrorists were either mestizo men from the coast or Quechua peasants from the highlands, but there were also some Ashaninka men among them, forced to fight for Sendero in order to protect their families. When Shirampari heard the explosions, his first instinct was to go to the two halls where his beloved Ashaninkan refugees were housed. He rushed out of his room and found that the Shining Path guerrillas bearing mausers had already occupied the rectory and held two priests captive. Soon a contingent of rebels brought a group of six nuns from the convent with their hands tied behind their back, all of them in black habits with white cornettes above their head, like a cluster of confused pigeons who had no idea what to do. Shirampari knew what awaited the priests and nuns. The priests would be tortured to death in a gory fashion and the nuns would suffer the same fate, but only after being raped repeatedly.
To Shirampari’s great surprise, one of the senderista rebels, apparently the leader of the group, addressed him directly, as if he knew him, crying out against the American priest with an implacable fury.
“You’re the one we have come to bring to justice, Father Gringo, revisionist priest. You weren’t content with moving thousands of Ashaninkans to other lands, far from our grasp. You got involved in helping the military find us in our jungle settlements. News of your activities has been published in Lima magazines and even the Archbishop of Lima has publicly blessed your traitorous acts. No, Father Gringo, your betrayal of the people shall not be forgotten.”
“Do with me what you will,” responded Shirampari, “but leave the Ashaninkans alone. Just let them be. All they want to do is work and raise their families in peace.”
“Every Ashaninkan who has not joined our cause is an enemy of Perú. We are trying to liberate them from their oppressors and their response is to side with those who do the oppressing. They are willing slaves of the military which arms the ronderos14 and the Church which blesses them. Everywhere little rondas15 have sprung up, armed Ashaninkas in defiance of Sendero. We must bring them to justice to teach the others a lesson.”
“And what would that lesson be?” asked Shirampari sardonically. By now, his fate was sealed and he had no reason to cower. “That they must engage in crimes or their own lives will be imperiled? Is that what you want them to learn?”
“You’ll soon see what the followers of Mao do to the ravening dog. Don’t pretend you don’t know about the Ashaninkan Army. They number more than a thousand. They have attacked our settlements in every corner of the Peruvian jungle, armed by the military and inspired by you.”
“I’ve heard about the Ashaninkan Army, desperate natives uniting to protect themselves from you and the cocaleros. But I have no idea why you believe I have inspired them.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know who their leader is. Don’t lie and say you don’t know the leader of the Ashaninka Army is your boy.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We should have killed him then and there, when he was our captive. But we thought after a few months of instruction, he would make an excellent guerrilla, strong and young. Even though he was proud and headstrong, still we thought he would be helpful in our efforts to occupy the jungle region. So we decided to give him a little time. And then he escaped, hid in the vast rainforest only to return a few months later, armed and accompanied by a band of thirty men with painted faces. They ambushed us and liberated all our Ashaninka prisoners. We thought that was the end of it, but then he would come again and again, attacking our settlements and then disappearing into the jungle. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the songs about him, saying he was protected by the white-tailed hummingbird, the Holy Spirit that you have taught the natives to revere and whom they call Tasorensi in their language.”
“I’m glad to hear they fight under the banner of the Holy Spirit. That should strengthen them. But I know very little about the leader of the Ashaninka Army.”
“Well, now you shall be sacrificed like your God,” said the senderista. “Know that we intend to crucify you outside, in the middle of the soccer field. You’ll die just like your Christ and all the Ashaninkans will know that your faith is useless in the end. Even your boy, leader of the Ashaninka Army, will realize how futile it is to wage war against the Shining Path.”
Shirampari repeated the question. “What do I have to do with the Ashaninka Army?”
“It is you who encouraged its formation. It is you who has obtained the weapons for them. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the name of the notorious Adam Ashaninka. He’s liberating Indian villages right and left. The rumor is that you brainwashed the man and encouraged him to rebel. We know he got his machine guns and grenades from the Americans trying to oust Sendero and the coca lords from the jungle region. Don’t forget the Shining Path has a thousand eyes and ears. We know you’re an American just like the colonizing military gringo.”
“I’ve heard about Adam Ashaninka, but I have never met the man. Nor have I ever procured weapons for him. He’s a modern-day Juan Santos Atahualpa, liberating the jungle peoples from those who want to enslave them. And his appearance should not surprise you. What did you think the Ashaninka people would do given your relentless persecution? It is you, not me, who have created Adam Ashaninka.”
* * *
The senderistas moved Shirampari and the other religious to the soccer field next to the classrooms. Two-hundred Ashaninka natives were already there, those who had survived the initial blast of dynamite. They were powerless to escape, as the Shining Path guerrillas surrounded the entire mission compound. Some of them prayed to the Christian man-God, for Shirampari had taught many of them the Catholic faith. Others lapsed into despair, expecting the worst, just huddling together with their families beneath the immense jungle sky.
Shirampari was pushed forcefully to the center of the soccer field. The senderistas did not bother to tie him up. After all, where could he run? He had to wait as the guerrillas formed the cross where he was to be crucified. Shirampari said a silent prayer while he waited.
“Let this cup of suffering be taken away from me, my Lord,” he said. “Yet your will be done, not mine.”
Shirampari knew he was asking for a miracle, an outlandish miracle, but he had long known that miracles are commonplace. As so many times in his life, as when he had escaped a Sendero camp one dawn several years earlier, the sixtyish American priest prayed to a God that he knew could achieve the impossible, a God who could avoid the inevitable.
Finally the guerrillas finished building their cross. But they said that first they would flog Shirampari, to remind him of the suffering endured by the man he called the Christ. The priest was undressed by the senderistas, to add to the public humiliation. Then a swarthy man—he looked to be a young Quechua peasant—lashed him a hundred times, until Shirampari’s entire back was scarred and red, like the remainder of a bovine carcass. Another Shining Path terrorist placed a crown of thorns on his head. Apparently they had brought it with them from wherever they came, just for him. In their sadistic imagination, they were trying not only to mock Shirampari but also the entire Passion narrative. And amid his pain, Shirampari was deeply troubled by the fate of his Ashaninka wards. He knew that to the Shining Path guerrillas the massacre of two hundred natives was par for the course. Some of the Ashaninkans watching from the sidelines tried to avert their eyes, but many were drawn to the horror of Shirampari’s flagellation by an atavistic fascination, like a moth to the heat of a light bulb.
And then it happened. Suddenly the night was pierced by the insistent rattle of machine gun fire. The Ashaninka captives ran in all directions, not knowing what was happening. At first Shirampari thought that the senderistas had decided to decimate the natives then and there, but then he realized that the Shining Path rebels also seemed to be alarmed. The man who had been flogging him fell to the ground, with several bullets in his chest. Multiple grenades exploded where large groups of guerrillas were congregated. After the initial machine gun volley, the Shining Path rebels attempted to regroup, but they had been caught by surprise, which gave an advantage to their adversaries. They were a hundred warriors, their faces painted red and black, under the command of Adam Ashaninka, wielding machine guns, rifles, pistols, machetes, huaracas16, kitchen knives, and even sharpened tools. They had come to kill the senderistas and rescue their Ashaninkan brothers and sisters from near certain death. And Shirampari noticed that a great many of them were wearing wooden crosses hanging from their necks. There was another exchange of machine gun fire—the terrifying sound came from all directions—but the Ashaninkans were able to prevail. They were aided by the natives from the mission who quickly turned against the dreaded senderistas. The Indians were not armed, but there was strength in numbers. In the confusion that ensued, the Ashaninka captives were able to mob the guerrillas and tear many of them to pieces despite their weapons. Finally, what was left of the Shining Path forces scattered and disappeared into the night as Adam Ashaninka approached Shirampari and gave him a hug.
“Shirampari!” he exclaimed jubilantly and the priest immediately recognized him despite his green fatigues and soldier’s cap.
“Chayeki!” responded Shirampari. “So you are the famous Adam Ashaninka, feared by the Shining Path. I’ve heard of your relentless war against the terrorists. I never imagined it was you.”
“Sometimes God chooses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Saint Martin de Porres was a simple man with a broom, humiliated because he was black, and yet he was able to bilocate and levitate. The Good Lord has always been with me, beginning when I escaped the Sendero camp by building a boat of logs and navigating the rushing Ene river.”
“I’m glad to see you’ve become a man of faith. How did you know we were to be attacked today?”
“My brother Shinanki was forced to join the Shining Path. But he feels no loyalty to them. He only allowed himself to be recruited because they kept his wife and three children captive. He secretly met with one of our men in Satipo, just at the edge of the rainforest, and told him the Shining Path planned to attack your mission tonight. I brought my men and women and we waited in the nearby jungle until we saw Sendero in the distance. We felt it was best to ambush them in the mission.”
“I prayed for a miracle and you were the answer to my prayers.”
“That shouldn’t surprise you. You were the one who taught us the Ashaninka were the ‘people of God.’ But there were so many words you didn’t teach us, Shirampari, the language of war: bombs, casualties, dynamite, torture, helicopters, revisionism, Green Berets. It was your countrymen who helped arm us in the end. It was the Americans who protected us from above as we traversed the vast jungle in search of the concentration camps where our brothers and sisters were being held. I even learned a little English along the way.”
“Sendero will say that the Americans own you now. Didn’t you once tell me that the one who names things is the one who owns them?”
“The people—you know that’s the meaning of Ashaninka, don’t you?—the people will always own the Peruvian jungle. You once compared our world to Eden. That is why I chose the name Adam instead of that of a saint. Well, Adam has chosen to return to paradise. Neither the Shining Path nor the coke lords nor the loggers claiming to believe in ‘private property’ will ever take that away from us. At some point, it will be necessary to oust the Americans too, since their spraying of herbicide to eradicate the coca leaf has caused great harm to the people and to the land itself. Nothing will grow where the herbicide has been sprayed. You’re right. I’ve told you the land belongs to those who name it. The Americans are already giving English names to their bases in the Ashaninka jungle. And we, the Ashaninkans, must change that with patience and resolve.”
1. Leader of an Ashaninka village
2. Shining Path terrorist
3. Shining Path
4. Long tunics worn by Ashaninkas
5. Panpipe used for Quechua music
6. Small guitar-like instrument for Quechua music
7. Flute-like instrument for Quechua music
8. Shining Path guerrillas
9. Ashaninka drink made by chewing yucca leaves
10. Literally “red zone”, a zone under the control of the Shining Path
11. Slang term for terrorists
12. People of Lima
13. People involved in the cocaine industry
14. Member of a ronda, a local self-defense committee
15. Local self-defense committee
16. A type of slingshot
About the author
Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is a writer of Ecuadorian and Peruvian descent, with a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College. His stories usually revolve around Latin American mythical or historic themes. Mr. Piedrahita's work has been accepted for publication by The Acentos Review, The Ganga Review, Carmina Magazine, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Faultline Journal, Synchronized Chaos, Peauxdunque Review, The Write Launch, Limit Experience Journal and Foreshadow Magazine.
About the artist
Kaci Ellison, a mother of two children from rural Western Kentucky, lives in a log home on ten acres of forest. The homestead is also home to bunnies, chickens, a cat, and a dog. An art major from Murray State University, she works as a home designer for Champion Homes. Her hobbies include gardening, illustrating, hunting, fishing, running, and watching her children play sports.
Kaci Ellison is enchanted by nature. She loves bird watching. Sunrises and sunsets remind her everyday is a new beginning. Kaci is passionate believer in God. She believes everyday kindness is the lifeblood of our own happiness.