Young people and Asháninka children carry weapons in Cutivireni, province of Satipo

Young people and children from the Asháninka community carry weapons in Cutivireni, province of Satipo, in 1991. For more than ten years, Sendero Luminoso kept a large portion of the Asháninka population in captivity, subjecting them to forced labor, insufficient food, and mandatory indoctrination. Hundreds of indigenous people were massacred and entire communities lost their crops, animals, and homes. Nevertheless, the Asháninka people managed to organize themselves into self-defense patrols and resist the control that both Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA sought to impose on them. Between 1993 and 1995 the number of Asháninka people freed from Sendero Luminoso grew steadily. Those rescued were taken to refugee communities established in the localities of Puerto Supe, Poyeni, and Betania — in the Río Tambo basin — and Valle Esmeralda — in the Río Ene basin — all located in the central jungle region of the country and protected by the Armed Forces. There are no precise figures, but the majority of specialists and institutions estimate that of the 55,000 people who made up the Asháninka nation, 10,000 were forcibly displaced in the valleys of the Ene, Tambo, and Perené rivers, 6,000 died, and approximately 5,000 were held captive by Sendero Luminoso. It is also estimated that during the years of the conflict, between 30 and 40 communities of this Amazonian ethnic group disappeared.