TERROR IN THE ANDES: The Flight of the Ashaninkas

By Gustavo Gorriti; Gustavo Gorriti is a Peruvian journalist. Volume 1 of his three-part history of the Shining Path insurgency was published in Peru this summer Published: December 02, 1990

As The Little Cessna 185 approached the last stronghold of the Ashaninka Indians, the harmony of the heavily forested mountains and spectacular cascades made it possible to forget for a moment the deadliness of the jungle below us. We flew close to a towering waterfall, and barely a minute later reached our landing place, a plateau on the summit of a mountain the native people call Tzibokiroato -- "the place of ants." I had an idea of what a jungle landing strip should look like, but couldn't see this one until the young pilot pointed it out. It wasn't straight but curved along the rim of an abyss. It wasn't flat either, but full of mounds and depressions. I thought that whatever was going to take place there shouldn't be called a landing but more appropriately an accident. This was in early September, in the central highlands of Peru. Five months earlier, several hundred Ashaninka Indians, part of the largest group of native people in the South American Amazonian jungle, had been pushed to the mountain redoubt after a succession of bloody attacks by the Shining Path, a Maoist insurgency that controls growing areas of Peru. In August, the Rev. Mariano Gagnon, a salty, chainsmoking 60-year-old Franciscan priest from New England who many years ago welded his destiny to the Ashaninkas, had left the mountain to seek help in Lima, 200 miles to the west. Now Father Mariano, as he is called, was returning to discuss with the natives the momentous decisions they had to make. The Ashaninka refugees could try to stay at Tzibokiroato, which could be defended. But they would have to fight off the well-armed Shining Path guerrillas with bows and arrows and a few shotguns. They could surrender, but they would face virtual enslavement and forced indoctrination in the Shining Path's rigid Communist dogmas. Or they could disperse in small groups, as some other Ashaninkas had done, hoping that the guerrillas would no longer regard them as a threat. (The Shining Path had sent word that they would stop the killing if the American priest did not return, an unconvincing vow.) Finally, they could try to cross the Andes, to seek refuge in the land of another tribe. But it would be dangerous for even the fittest Ashaninkas to scale the steep mountains. Just that morning, we learned that the native leaders had reported by radio that the guerrillas had surrounded them. When told that the priest was on his way, they said they would try to hold off the enemy until he arrived. Later, flying over Tzibokiroato (pronounced tzhee-bo-kir-WAT-oh), we peered anxiously at the huts built on the mountain; those on the lower levels had been

charred in a recent rebel attack. We were waiting for the Ashaninkas to come out and give a signal to land (or, I thought, to crash). The plane circled several times, as close as possible, but the place was desolate. We headed back to Satipo, the provincial capital about 50 miles to the northwest. Father Mariano's rough face showed his dejection, and he became more depressed when we flew over what was left of his mission at Cutivireni, for years the communal hub for 5,000 Ashaninkas of the Ene River parish. In the clearing near where three rivers met, only blackened foundations were left of 80 houses -- the former homes of some 700 people -- and 11 other structures. Like somebody visiting the graves of dear ones, Mariano pointed to the places where some buildings had been: the bilingual school and the smaller chapel, which had been torched by the Shining Path. The generator building and the landing strip, he said, were blown up later in an operation directed by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, which said it wanted to keep cocaine traffickers and guerrillas from capitalizing on what was left of the abandoned mission. Back in Satipo, we tried to figure out what could have happened. In the morning, the native leaders hadn't given their location, no doubt because the Shining Path monitors radio traffic. Maybe they had evacuated Tzibokiroato. After a couple of melancholy hours, the voice of an Ashaninka leader named Nicolas came over the radio. He sounded nervous, and communication was brief. They were not on Tzibokiroato, but in a fallback place that Mariano knew about. Despite the news, the priest beamed. Tomorrow at 8 A.M. Nicolas would radio again. The next morning, the native leader reported that the refugees were very worried, their food was scarce. He gave his position -- "to the left of the waterfall" -- and said they had prepared a spot where a helicopter could land. He said they had been chased by the guerrillas the day before, but had shaken loose of them. Tzibokiroato, he said, was now controlled by Sendero Luminoso -- Shining Path. I have known Father Mariano since 1984, when he sought help after his mission was burned for the first time. In August of this year, more desperate than ever to aid the Ashaninkas, he contacted me and a few other journalists, asking us to see the people's plight for ourselves. He gave me his diary and other documents, and over many weeks I talked to dozens of witnesses. This is the story of the Ashaninkas' struggle, based on those sources. The road that led Mariano Gagnon to the Peruvian jungle began early, in his poor, Catholic upbringing in New Hampshire. He was born Joseph Theodore Gagnon to a French-Canadian mother and a father of French and Iroquois descent. Restless and stubborn, Joseph dropped out of public high school and went to a Franciscan seminary in Callicoon, N.Y. There, he finished high school "with great difficulty," he says, and began studying for the priesthood. He had already decided he wanted to do missionary work with a native people, the farther away and the more difficult the circumstances, the better. His decision was

not unusual: the Franciscans have long reached out to indigenous ethnic groups, especially in the Amazon jungle. He arrived in Peru in 1948. It was hard for an independent-minded, cussing gringo to adapt to the rigorous Franciscan discipline, but he somehow did it. He changed his name to Mariano -- a not uncommon name in his order -- and was ordained a priest in 1957. Soon, he set out for missions in the jungle. In the late 1960's, eager for a parish limited to a native people, he began a closer relationship with the Ashaninkas -- Campas, as they are called in Peru -- and was eventually sent to a small new mission at Cutivireni, in the mountainous jungle of the Ene River Valley. The Peru Ashaninkas (pronounced ah-SHAN-in-kahz), which means "people" in their language, number roughly 20,000 and are scattered over a wide territory in the central jungle highlands. About 5,000 of them were known to have lived in the Ene Valley in the early 1970's. They are nomadic hunters and slash-and-burn farmers, whose basic crop is manioc, an edible root and the mainstay of their diet. They also grow cacao, which provides them with the cash needed to buy machetes, knives, batteries and other essential items. Until the early 1950's, the native groups had been able to maintain most of their traditional area. But outside settlers began moving in, and their land began to shrink. The missionaries and colonizers who came in contact with the Ashaninkas over the centuries described them as a simple people. "The Campas are childlike," the Rev. Dionisio Ortiz, author of about 10 books on Franciscan missions in Peru, told me. "It is very easy to control them." Father Mariano bristles at the stereotype. "Yes, they are childlike," he says, "but in the biblical sense, free from pretension, ostentation or calculation. Obviously, these uncommon virtues in a modern society make them victim to many abuses." Realizing that the colonization pressure was only going to increase, Mariano tried from the outset to persuade the Peruvian Government to create a reserve, closed to other settlers. The Cutivireni area not only had a concentration of Ashaninkas, but also magnificent steep forests and abundant cascades the priest believed should be made into a national park. Though his campaign failed, he helped to preserve Cutivireni as the only Ashaninka land free from colonization. Unlike most Franciscans, Mariano did not try to make his flock change its traditional ways, even when, as in the case of female breast nudity or polygamy, it offended Catholic sensibilities. He also cooperated with Protestant organizations like the Summer Linguistics Institute, which taught Indians Spanish. Despite his devotion to the Ashaninkas, Mariano never learned their language, communicating instead in Spanish.

Though he could be blunt with outsiders, he was by all accounts gentle toward the Ashaninkas, acting like a mother hen. Photographs show the gray-haired priest -invariably in shorts, T-shirt and tennis shoes -- tending to everyday chores. He did make some concessions to the outside world: he tried to teach the people about the market economy and modern technology. "I tried to prepare them for what was coming," he says. The Cutivireni mission had a bilingual school, farm machinery, workshops and a well-stocked infirmary. Despite the Indians' dislike of large groups, they formed a small town around the mission. They built a plaza, with a much-admired fountain in the form of a lion. Meanwhile, outsiders continued to settle around the area, and by the 1970's, they had reached the opposite shore of the Ene River. Mariano discouraged contact with the settlers, and while he says he never refused them the sacraments, he chose not to include them in his parish. "The Ashaninkas would have thought that a betrayal on my part," he explains. The colonizers considered him arrogant, and hard feelings arose. "I was probably tactless," he now acknowledges. In the late 1970's and early 80's, cocaine trafficking boomed in the Ene Valley, as it did all over Peru. The local economy changed rapidly, raising the premium on landgrabbing. The airstrip near the mission, built by the Indians under Mariano's supervision, became increasingly busy, and Colombians appeared. They were considerate toward the priest and offered him a regular "contribution," which he rejected. The Ashaninkas were asked to give up cacao for the more lucrative coca, but Mariano warned that he would leave the mission if they accepted. None of the 700 people in his mission took the Colombians up on their offer. Coca-growing flourished nonetheless, and in 1983 Mariano decided to tell the authorities. He sent a note to the commander of the Peruvian security police base in nearby Mazamari, and had a conversation in Lima with a United States Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Soon afterward, two drug traffickers visited the mission. They told Mariano the contents of the letter he had sent to Mazamari, and playfully advised him to steer clear of their business. Mariano decided it was good advice. He never knew who had tipped off the traffickers, but he thinks the leak came from the Lima office of the Peruvian Investigative Police, where the letter had been sent for "processing." It was already clear to Mariano that his vision of an Ashaninka Arcadia, immune from the world, was not going to be. He realized that a tough struggle for cultural and territorial survival was ahead. But he did not foresee a greater threat to his physical survival and to that of the Ashaninkas. IN MAY 1984, 20 ARMED MEN invaded the mission. Mariano was in Lima at the time, and Brother Pio Medina, an old Peruvian Franciscan, had been left in charge. The assailants looked for Mariano, and told Pio that they intended to kill the American priest.

Then they looted the mission and burned it to the ground. Mariano heard the news two days later on his way home from Lima, and hurried to Satipo, the provincial capital, where he waited for his Franciscan superior, the Rev. Felix Saiz. The only pilot willing to take them to the mission was flying the plane used by the Colombian traffickers. When the village Ashaninkas found out that he had landed, they came out of the forest and back to the mission. They saw him standing over the ashes of his lifework, crying. The attackers were never identified. Father Mariano maintains they were settlers and local traffickers who wanted to get rid of him and dislodge the Colombians. Rebuilding began immediately, but the work was strenuous and the mission was not complete until May 1988. That year, the Shining Path, the shadowy guerrilla movement that had begun fighting "a people's war" eight years earlier, closed in on the Ene River Valley and Cutivireni. Until then, the mission and neighboring area had been on the periphery of the war. But the rebels were spreading north from Ayacucho and southeast from the high Andes, and the valley was in between. At first, the Shining Path existed only in rumors and in signs of underground organizing and proselytizing, mainly among the settlers, but also among some Ashaninkas. The guerrillas often stay in an area for years before making their move, a strategy perfected by their elusive leader, Abimael Guzman, a former philosophy professor who spent years in Ayacucho organizing students and then Indian peasants. In June 1989, four armed guerrillas visited Mariano. They didn't try to conceal their identities. They asked for food, tools and other help, which Mariano, knowing the risks of acting otherwise, promptly gave them. They came back several times and asked for more specific things, like sneakers and mimeograph stencils, which he provided. Then they also asked him to recruit young Ashaninkas for indoctrination. Mariano refused, saying he had no authority to do so. A few months later, as the Shining Path presence became more evident, Mariano decided to take a long-overdue trip to the United States, thinking it might be his last opportunity to visit his homeland. While he was away, a United States helicopter landed at the mission, carrying Drug Enforcement Administration agents and State Department contract personnel. They had been appearing at the Peruvian police base in Mazamari since the arrival of a dozen or so members of the United States Army Special Forces, who were training the Peruvian paramilitary police. In operations, the Americans and the Peruvians combed the coca-carpeted Ene Valley for clandestine airstrips and laboratories -- which were then blown up. The American presence at the mission, however brief, emboldened some Ashaninka leaders to stand up to the Shining Path. A few even taunted the guerrillas, telling them that if they dared to attack,

Father Mariano would call the Americans in with their helicopters to wipe them out. On Nov. 12, 1989, there were national mayoral elections, which the Shining Path tried to sabotage by attacking candidates and voting places. At the mission that day, Mario Zumaeta, the head of the bilingual school, and other Ashaninkas tore up a red hammer-and-sickle flag the guerrillas had raised and replaced it with the Peruvian flag. For several days nothing happened. In the meantime, Lucas Adins, a 43-year-old Belgian volunteer who had worked in the Ashaninka region as a medic and agricultural adviser, arrived at the mission. The next Sunday, he was working in the infirmary when the Shining Path entered the mission. Adins directed his companions to sit still and wait. About 60 guerrillas, young men and women armed with submachine guns and assault rifles, detained Adins and the Ashaninka leaders. Unaware of the raid, Mario Zumaeta arrived during the night and was arrested. "Don't make any error or it will be too late," Adins remembers saying to himself. The guerrillas sacked the mission and forced him to drive a tractor to the river with the loot to be shipped to the other side. The next morning, while Adins was driving the tractor with more stolen goods, the invaders burned the mission. In the afternoon, as he headed back from his last trip, he saw a group of guerrillas walking with three Ashaninka leaders: Mario Zumaeta, Roy Ponce, who was in charge of the mission in Mariano's absence, and Alberto, a schoolteacher. Adins was told to drive them to the river. He knew what was going to happen, and he thinks the prisoners did, too. He was shaking when they reached the river, and was told to put his hands over the wheel and look straight ahead. But he saw the three prisoners being led away, walking with a strangely eager gait, and soon heard seven or eight shots. The guerrillas came back alone. "You could see by their faces which guys had done the killing," he told me later. He was ordered to drive back to the mission. When he arrived, he was alone amid the smoky ruins. Adins remained alone for several days. Then, early on the morning of Dec. 2, two American helicopters landed at the mission site with three United States advisers and six Peruvian commandos. They took the starving, distraught Belgian to the Mazamari base, and from there he was taken to Lima. That afternoon, he was debriefed at the United States Embassy. The Ashaninkas found the bodies of Roy, Alberto and another teacher, probably killed later, several yards apart. Mario Zumaeta's body was never found. But the natives soon heard a horrifying story about his death: Mario had been taken to the settlers' town across the river, where he was crucified, castrated and disemboweled. What remained of his body was stuffed with stones and thrown into the river.

The information came from some mission Ashaninkas who now sided openly with the Shining Path. They were a minority, recruited clandestinely, but now they had the power to enforce their views. Their leaders were a paramedic who had worked at the mission and Nicolas's sister, Claudia. In nearby Ashaninka settlements, several native leaders -- including an evangelical priest and a bilingual teacher -declared themselves openly as followers of the Shining Path. Evidence of underground organizing became clear, as guerrilla settlements formed rapidly. The killings continued, and the mission was now almost desolate. A week after the execution of the three leaders, a group of guerrillas returned, looking for other Ashaninkas. They found the village shaman and a few young men. When they asked the shaman about the natives' whereabouts, he retorted that he wouldn't talk with assassins. He was killed on the spot, as were two boys who tried to protect him. A few days after those shootings, a small Shining Path patrol returned to the mission for the tractor. A larger Ashaninka group, armed with bows and arrows, ambushed them, and most of the guerrillas were killed. A full-scale war had broken out. As the mission's 700 inhabitants escaped into the forest, they knew they were outnumbered, outgunned and outmaneuvered. If the rebels had come from far away, the natives would have had tactical advantages. But the Shining Path commanded a base among the Ene Valley Ashaninkas and used their captives as slave laborers or soldiers. Other native groups, sensing that the balance of power was tilting to the Shining Path, were careful not to antagonize the guerrillas and tried to reach accommodation. Only those Ashaninkas close to Mariano, now under the loose leadership of Nicolas and another native, Matias, the community's president, actively opposed the Shining Path. Mariano learned of the killings when he returned from the United States in early December. From Satipo, he was flown by plane over the mission's rubble, and when he saw a small group of mission Ashaninkas, he dropped them a letter asking for news and whether it was safe for him to come back and be with them for Christmas. He heard nothing. Later he would learn that the natives had sent him a letter with three messengers who tried to reach Satipo on foot. Shining Path guerrillas intercepted them and they were killed. On Dec. 26, Mariano flew over an area near the mission, and saw a group of natives. They made signals telling him not to land, that there was great danger. He dropped them salt and Christmas presents. The violence grew worse. In February of this year, the guerrillas raided the Ashaninka camp and killed 15 people. Most victims were women and children, because the men were able to run faster. Ashaninkas are no cowards, but they have a different way of waging war. They rely on surprise attacks and ambushes, and the concept of territorial defense is alien to them. If attacked, they will run until they think they have outdistanced the attackers. Then they will counterambush.

In the days that followed, the Ashaninkas managed to ambush and kill about a dozen guerrillas, but they suffered even more casualties. Shattered, they dispersed into the forest in small groups. MARIANO WAS TOLD by informers that if he returned to the jungle, the Shining Path would kill him in a way that would leave a lasting impression on the Ashaninka memory. He had been joined in Satipo by Michel Saenz, a French explorer who had lived among the Ashaninkas, spoke their language, wore the native robes and went barefoot. His emotional attachment to the Indians rivaled Mariano's. The Americans began to help them, beginning a brief relationship that would soon unravel. Mariano befriended the head of the United States Special Forces group in Mazamari. At first, Mariano saw them as a godsend. Desperate to save the Ashaninkas, he did not foresee conflicts with the United States agenda of the war on drugs. In mid-March, two American helicopters dropped him and Michel Saenz off at a settlement of Ashaninkas that the Frenchman knew well. The group's leader was clearly worried that the pair's presence put his group in danger of retribution by the Shining Path. A few days later, the helicopters picked them up. Flying back to the base in Mazamari, they passed over the mission airstrip, and Mariano was horrified to see that it had been bombed during the brief time he was in the jungle. He realized then that the same people who were ferrying him were responsible. (The Americans would later say that Mariano had once asked them to destroy the strip, as a way of hampering drug traffickers. He denies it.) Now, there was no place for a plane to land in the Cutivireni area. "My God!" he wrote that day in his diary, "how much work and sweat went there! More than one year's toil, and now if the Americans don't help us, how are we going to get in?" Two days later, the helicopters carried Mariano and Saenz to a place where the priest hoped some mission refugee families were. He was right. They found Nicolas and Matias, the community's leaders, and other familiar faces. Uncharacteristically, the Ashaninkas gave free rein to their anguish, crying while they embraced the priest. As they recounted their tragedies, Mariano saw how thin and gaunt they were. He decided to stay with them, believing that as long as he remained, some people would care about their fate. Two days later, the Americans returned and picked up Saenz, who said he would go to Lima for help. He and Marino agreed it was vital to obtain some shotguns for the natives, who, armed mostly with bows and arrows, were easy prey for the Shining Path. Every day, more families arrived, as they learned of Mariano's return, and by March 27, nearly 300 Ashaninkas were at the camp. The mood was dark. They knew that the Shining Path was aware of Mariano's presence and that an attack was imminent. Those who had escaped from the guerrillas were the most afraid. Their

testimonies about the heavy-handed indoctrination and brutal discipline were chilling. Alarmed by the extent of Shining Path strength in the valley, Mariano decided to return to Mazamari to seek help. He contacted the base with the two-way radio he had brought with him, and was told he would be picked up shortly. In the meantime, he tried to improve morale and made plans for a fortified town. On March 29, Mariano, Matias and some other Ashaninkas hiked to a steep rocky hill that they thought would be an ideal place for building. When the inspection was over, Mariano, a slower walker, decided to return to camp first. Soon after he arrived, there was a sudden commotion. Women and children wailed, and ran around in a panic. They told Mariano that Rigoberto, an Ashaninka who had become a feared guerrilla, and three other armed men were headed toward the site Mariano had just left and where Matias still was. Bellowing commands, the priest sent most of the men to rescue Matias, organized the rest in two ambush parties and sent the women and children to safer ground. He then positioned himself with a pistol and two hand grenades he had brought from Mazamari. The encounter on the rocky hill was brief. Matias's group fell on the guerrillas, killing Rigoberto and another rebel. A third tumbled over a cliff, into the abyss. The fourth escaped. When the men came back, Mariano praised the fighters and chastised one who had hesitated to use his weapon. Now the priest was a military leader. A heavy storm moved in that night, and the Indians thought they heard the spirits of the dead rebels wailing in the rain. After waiting all the next day for the American helicopter, Mariano was told by radio that it had crashed. It wasn't known when another helicopter could pick him up. The Ashaninkas decided to flee. They thought the Shining Path was going to wipe them out at any moment and they were almost mad with fear. They wanted to escape to another mountain, much farther away. There was water there, and fields to cultivate manioc. And because it was difficult terrain even for an Ashaninka, the likelihood of a Shining Path attack was lessened. Mariano resisted the idea, then relented. At least 230 people began a five-day trek through rainy, slippery jungle up to the mountain called Tzibokiroato. They ran out of food the second day, and, after eating worms -- "green and hairy," Mariano remembers them -- the priest suffered debilitating diarrhea. Throughout the hellish journey, the Ashaninkas kept an even disposition. "Without a doubt, they are the Lord's chosen," the priest wrote in his diary. When they finally reached the mountain in a storm, he saw that an advance party had almost finished a thatched hut for him. He was overwhelmed by this testimony of love and care.

Tzibokiroato could be defended. Most important, the Ashaninkas could carve a short landing strip on the plateau at the summit. For a few days, the priest and the refugees enjoyed the idea of a new beginning. Still, the fear of an all-out Shining Path attack remained. Mariano thought the natives needed to be trained in territorial defense. He radioed his new position, and on April 10 a Peruvian Air Force helicopter came to get him. Michel Saenz and Luc Adins were waiting in Mazamari. Saenz had brought food and medicine, and some rudimentary shotguns would arrive later. All three felt it was necessary to help the natives adapt to the new place, and they waited for the American helicopters to take them back to Tzibokiroato. THE TRIP WAS NOT to happen. Instead, Mariano received a letter from Father Felix Saiz, his Franciscan superior, ordering him to Lima immediately. Mariano stayed in Mazamari. Six days later, Father Felix's message was repeated: Mariano was to board an American supply plane that was returning to the capital. This time, he had no choice. In Los Descalzos convent in Lima, Mariano had a long talk with Father Felix, a Spaniard of lively expression and intelligence. Their exchange, while not bitter, reflected a centuries-old debate in the Catholic church. Was Mariano's presence helpful or harmful to the natives? Felix asked. Mariano argued that, all things considered, it was helpful. Wouldn't it be better if the natives were left alone to decide their own fate? the Franciscan leader said. That, Mariano snapped, would be tantamount to handing them over to the Shining Path. Father Felix then said he had heard from the American Embassy that Mariano had lost his sense of proportion, that he was organizing guerrilla units. This wasn't the church's calling and would put all missions in Peru, and the church itself, in jeopardy, Felix said. The embassy had also implied that Mariano was responsible for the loss of the downed helicopter and had otherwise cost the United States Government a lot of money. The Franciscans didn't oppose self-defense in principle. But practicing it, especially with a priest in charge, could only make things worse, Mariano's superior argued. Many priests and nuns at the jungle missions in Peru survived through the daily crafting of a volatile coexistence with the Shining Path. They had to give food to the commissars, and watch helplessly as people were led to their deaths. At one mission, the guerrillas killed an uncooperative nun. Some missions couldn't take it anymore, and were closed. At others, priests and nuns braved great danger every day. They would be hostages if Mariano led a war. Mariano no doubt knew of another Franciscan concern: reports of human-rights abuses by the Peruvian military. It was feared that if a priest was in league with the armed forces in any way, the cooperation might blunt the church's efforts to press for reforms.

Left unsaid was the wider perspective, held by many Franciscans. They believed that the natives were lost, that they would probably disappear as a culture as so many other indigenous peoples have throughout history. And there wasn't much the church could do, except to trim sails or to retreat altogether -- as it had done before in other times of rebellion. It would wait for peace to return, then resume its ministry with those who were left. Mariano accepted none of this, and took the lack of an explicit church prohibition as tacit permission to continue his struggle. He needed a ride back to Mazamari. Despite his growing rift with the Americans, he called the United States Army attache, Col. Robert Froude, who had helped him transport supplies in the past. Colonel Froude told him no planes or helicopters were flying there for several days at least. The next day, Mariano managed to hitch a ride to Mazamari on a bank's private plane. He arrived there a few minutes before the American helicopters did. And he was told that the supply plane had come that morning and had just left. The next day, Mariano returned to the base in Mazamari, determined to fly to Tzibokiroato with the two Europeans, Luc Adins and Michel Saenz. But right before a helicopter was to take off, he was told that neither he nor Saenz would be allowed to board. Only Adins was allowed to take off. The Belgian had begun supplying the Americans with intelligence after they rescued him from the burned mission in November 1989. For his part, he says that more than anything he wanted to get back to help the Ashaninkas. "In the meantime," Adins said of the Americans, "they used me." Mariano's falling-out with the American Embassy was to some extent a result of his own impetuousness. But he was also the victim of the Americans' involvement in the drug war, and their desire for information about the threat the Shining Path posed to the United States advisers in Mazamari. When Mariano's goals appeared to conflict with the embassy's, the Americans stopped helping him and began to cooperate with people they thought were more reliable and useful. Embassy officials said Adins was realistic and dependable, while Mariano wanted to drag American assets into a Peruvian internal war. "He wanted the Americans to provide weapons to the Ashaninkas," an embassy official said, "and that once he and Michel had organized them, that we use the U.S. helicopters in the event of a Sendero attack. That was their hope and their game plan." In May, Mariano wrote a letter to the United States Ambassador, Anthony Quainton, challenging some accusations the embassy officials had been making, including the claim that he was responsible for the helicopter accident. Quainton answered in July, expressing his "highest regard and admiration" for Mariano and denying that the embassy held him responsible "for any costs to the United States

Government." By that time, the Army Special Forces had finished its work, and the Americans -- and their helicopters -- were no longer in Mazamari. Without a helicopter, getting to the natives' bastion in Tzibokiroato was difficult. But Michel Saenz, in an extraordinary feat, flew to the other side of the Andes, crossed the high peaks by foot and walked all the way to Tzibokiroato. As soon as he arrived, he and the Ashaninkas began carving an airstrip. It was finished in midJuly. Soon thereafter, a local pilot, Armando Velarde, flew Mariano to Tzibokiroato. IN AUGUST, MARIANO left Tzibokiroato to go to Lima for more help and to draw attention to the Ashaninkas. I accompanied him on his return to the Ene Valley in early September. On Sept. 10, two days after our unsuccessful flight over Tzibokiroato, which was now in the hands of the Shining Path, a Peruvian Air Force helicopter took us to the new Ashaninka refuge farther east. It was called Maiobenti, which in Ashaninka means "where it is impossible to pass." The helicopter descended toward a rocky riverbed between two steep forests. We circled the hillsides a couple of times but saw no signs of life. Then I saw about 60 Ashaninkas standing amid the rocks and boulders. They had materialized out of the forest in no time. We jumped out of the helicopter, and Mariano embraced some of the natives. With the helicopter engine still roaring, the priest, all fire and action now, conferred with a small group. They listened intently, and then one native and Mariano boarded the helicopter. They took off, leaving me behind. I stayed with the Ashaninkas for about 20 minutes. Very young women nursed babies; they were feeding intensely, as if to quicken the pace of life. When the helicopter came to fetch me, neither Mariano nor the Indian were on board. As the pilot began the return trip, I asked him where they were. He pointed behind, to the fading Maiobenti mountains. I reflected on what I had seen. When the people saw Mariano, their expressions seemed a mixture of joy and pain. They obviously loved him and expected help from him. But they also knew that the Shining Path would attack with a vengeance as soon as they learned of his presence. And the Ashaninkas had probably concluded by now that their priest's noble intentions were greater than his means. MARIANO HOPED TO persuade the Ashaninkas to stand their ground. But they had no more fight left. They told him that about 400 guerrillas attacked them in Tzibokiroato in mid-August, soon after he left to go for help in Lima. The Shining Path, now an equal mixture of hardened Andean rebels and Ashaninka natives, had overpowered them after an all-night climb and burned most of the new huts. The rebels also sabotaged the landing strip, and would have annihilated the refugees if a small party of Ashaninkas had not ambushed their enemy's rear guard. About 20 guerrillas died, including Claudia -- Nicolas's sister -- and some other Ashaninka converts. The natives fled from Tzibokiroato, but it was not long before the Shining

Path found them and attacked again. Some of the Ashaninkas were killed, and the rest broke up into small groups and fled into the forest. The Shining Path now controlled most Ashaninka communities. From about 500 families, the rebels could mobilize at least 1,000 natives, and it didn't matter whether they were eager or reluctant fighters. The refugees, by contrast, now totaled 213. They had 18 shotguns with scant ammunition and a few hand grenades, which Mariano had brought them. And they were starving because they hadn't been able to tend their manioc fields for almost a year. Hunting was poor, and they subsisted mainly on snails and worms. They had decided to try to escape over the Andes, to the territory of the Machiguenga, 125 miles east beyond the mountains. They knew that only the fit had a chance to make it, so they decided they had to kill the babies and younger children, and to leave the infirm behind. Mariano told them that he would try to arrange the exodus, if they promised not to resort to infanticide. They agreed, and he contacted the Peruvian Air Force by radio. He asked for an airlift, to carry the refugees over the Andes peaks to the Urubamba River Valley. The air force answered the next day that it couldn't help, and would return only to pick up Mariano. But Armando Velarde, the young private pilot who had aided Mariano in the past, signaled that he was willing to help with his little Cessna. So, Mariano and the natives decided to march back up to Tzibokiroato, where a plane could land, and to try to hold it for four to five days until Velarde could fly them out. They hoped the guerrillas would need longer to mount an all-out attack. They began the trek, fortified by a breakfast of invertebrates as well as some condensed milk, which Mariano brought with him. It was two days of endless climbing and precipitous descents. Heavy rain made the river crossings hazardous. For Mariano, it was a punishing ordeal. He suffered several painful falls and arrived at Tzibokiroato exhausted. But the rising rivers proved a blessing, preventing the Shining Path from swiftly moving to attack them. In one day, the Ashaninkas had fixed the crude mountaintop airstrip, and Armando Velarde managed to land his Cessna on the afternoon of Sept. 15. He took Mariano back to Satipo, where they arranged an airlift of the refugees with a priest of the Dominican order, which ran the Catholic missions in the Machiguenga region where the refugees would resettle. Velarde would fly in and out of Tzibokiroato, with logistical help from a single-engine plane from Wings of Hope, a philanthropic organization. He would have to make the flights over the 14,000-foot peaks without oxygen masks and navigational help. He also had to

count on the weather to remain cloud-free, a remote possibility, since the Andes cordillera stays cloudless for only a week or so a year. The evacuation began early on the 16th, and on the very first flight, disaster almost struck. Unknown to anyone, part of the Cessna's tail stabilizer broke as Velarde landed in Tzibokiroato. When taking off with the first group of Ashaninka women, the plane suddenly plunged into the abyss. Amid his passengers' screams, Velarde throttled the engine, pressed his knees tightly on the rudder control, and somehow maneuvered the plane out of the canyon. He headed to Mazamari, instead of over the Andes. "After two minutes, my legs were numb," Velarde said afterward. "After 10 to 15 minutes, the pain seemed unbearable." The flight took 35 minutes, and after an emergency landing, he rolled out onto the ground, racked by nausea and stomach cramps. But the plane was repaired, and he was ready to fly again. The next day, he made 20 trips across the Andes, carrying five or six natives from Tzibokiroato each time. Winds were strong, increasing the danger. The next day, he made 22 flights, and on the third he finished the evacuation. Wings of Hope made two flights to Tzibokiroato, but mainly ferried fuel for Velarde's Cessna. The mountains, normally swathed in clouds, remained clear for three consecutive days. Some thought it was a miracle. "What do you think a priest is for?" Mariano asked, using an unprintable adjective. Almost all the refugees -- 169 people -- had been evacuated. The few remaining chose not to go. They dispersed, saying they would make the trek another time. The Ashaninkas relocated to Machiguenga land were greeted warmly and given a largely unoccupied territory upriver. The prospect of settling down, of planting manioc and of forgetting the bloodshed, at least for a while, made them happy. With broad smiles and sunny faces, they set off up the river on Sept. 22. They waved to Mariano, who, after 22 years, was finally leaving his mission and the Ashaninkas, probably forever. The people would now be under the care of the Dominican order, which wanted a clean break between them and their priest. He waved goodbye, vision and remembrance mingled together. He saw Matias and Nicolas, and Capitan, who had lost his wife and three daughters to the war, and then remembered Mario Zumaeta and Roy Ponce and all the others. And as he bid farewell, he cried, and as he thanked God, he mourned.