The peasant patrols and the defeat of Shining Path.

The book constitutes, in its own way, a tribute to the Quechua peasants of Ayacucho. Men and women who were at first entirely unarmed, destined to play the role of a Greek chorus, movie extras, a maneuvering mass or cannon fodder, who managed to retake their destiny into their own hands, as far as it was possible for them. Men and women who, defying forecasts and analyses, managed to find their way through the labyrinth of a war that was not their own, blending ambiguity, cunning, tenacity and patience, boldness and prudence, adapting, resisting or fleeing when there was no alternative, until they pragmatically chose an alliance with the FFAA when the latter changed their conduct toward the peasantry, and emerged victorious from the war, poorer than before and bearing scars not yet fully known, but proud and at times surprisingly optimistic about their future. They are not, as one can see, celluloid heroes, but they are real. In some places, seduced or pressured by SL in the early days; in others, pushed by misery, state abandonment, and the anything-goes of total-competition capitalism, to ally with drug trafficking in that tortuous form of savage capitalism.