War of Shadows: The Struggle for Utopia in the Peruvian AmazonWar of Shadows is the haunting story of a failed uprising in the Peruvian Amazon—told largely by people who were there. Late in 1965, Asháninka Indians, members of one of the Amazon's largest native tribes, joined forces with Marxist revolutionaries who had opened a guerrilla front in Asháninka territory. They fought, and were crushed by, the overwhelming military force of the Peruvian government. Why did the Indians believe this alliance would deliver them from poverty and the depredations of colonization on their rainforest home? With rare insight and eloquence, anthropologists Brown and Fernández write about an Amazonian people whose contacts with outsiders have repeatedly begun in hope and ended in tragedy. The players in this dramatic confrontation included militants of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), the U. S. Embassy, the Peruvian military, a "renegade" American settler, and the Asháninka Indians themselves. Using press reports and archival sources as well as oral histories, the authors weave a vivid tapestry of narratives and counternarratives that challenges the official history of the guerrilla struggle. Central to the story is the Asháninkas' persistent hope that a messiah would lead them to freedom, a belief with roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jungle rebellions and religious movements. |
Contents
| 15 | |
Return of Lord Inca | 34 |
Amachenga | 54 |
Toward Armed Struggle | 79 |
Tupac Amaru | 97 |
Itomi Pava | 115 |
White Angel | 141 |
Death of a Chronicle Foretold | 164 |
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Common terms and phrases
amachénga Amazon Amazonian American Amich Andamarca APRA armed army Artola Azcarate 1976 Ashá Asháninka Béjar Belaúnde Bohórquez cacique Campa Chanchamayo Civil Guard colonists Colony communist Conibo Correo counterinsurgency Cubantía Cuzco David Pent Deborah Hudson Elías Murillo embassy Ernesto Fernández Fitzcarrald forces Franciscan Gran Pajonál gringo guerrillas Guillermo Lobatón hacienda highland Huancayo Ibid Inca Indians insurgency Interview Itomi Pavá Javier Dávila Juan Santos Juan Santos Atahualpa June jungle killed la Puente land landowners leader Lecuona leftist Lehnertz Lima live Lobatón Mazamari ment Mesa Pelada military millennial MIR's mission missionary movement MRTA named native ninka officer Padre Pangoa party Paucarcaja peasants Pedro Pent Pent's Peru Peru's Peruvian pishtaco police political priest Pucutá Puente Puerto Puerto Ocopa Quimirí rebels region reports revolutionary Río Perené Río Tambo rubber Satipo Province settlers shaman Shining Path social Sonomoro Spanish story struggle Túpac Amaru Ucayali Varese Velando village viracochas whites
Popular passages
Page xiii - Lobaton was also a leading member of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolutionary Left, or MIR), a group of Marxist revolutionaries inspired by the teachings of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
Page 22 - ... to wipe out a reality grown beyond law and order, beyond utopia. Utopia contained many houses. If some men longed for gold, to build upon it their untrammeled liberty, and if others sought Indian subjects to rule and exercise in the spirit of the new order, so there were men who came to save souls. Upon the ruins of pagan shrines and idols in a new continent filled with souls hungry for salvation, yet uncorrupted by the age-old vices of the Old World, they would erect their own utopia: the prelude...
Page 13 - Tasorenci will destroy the world or, rather, transform it into a new world. When that occurs, sky and earth will again be close together, the earth will speak once again, and its inhabitants will be a new race of humanity knowing nothing of sickness, death, or...