Ayahuanco: Under the Shadow of Shining Path

For more than a decade the district of Ayahuanco, located to the north of the Ayacucho province of Huanta, was ravaged by political violence. As a result, a great number of its inhabitants were killed or disappeared; others were savagely tortured and abused. Their homes and public buildings were destroyed; almost all their property was taken as war spoils, and both their lives and their social organization were subjected to the logic of war. More than 80% of its residents were forced to flee, carrying with them in their memories the nightmares and horrors they had experienced. In that climate of unbounded fear and terror, the most conflicting human passions and feelings surfaced: acts of great nobility alongside the most vile forms of human behavior; gestures of selflessness and dedication alongside acts of servility and submission. In sum, love and hatred of life combined in a mixture difficult to understand, giving rise to the "trauma of war" — a war, moreover, that was "dirty" and unlimited. A war that sought to cut away our souls. Edilberto Ore Cárdenas is not only the author and gatherer of the events and accounts before the reader; he is also a direct witness to them, as a native of Ayahuanco and member of the district's reconstruction committee.