Written in Blood, the History of the VRAE - Opinion Column
If the present of the VRAE abounds in dilemmas, its past offers more than lessons. The defiant beauty of this valley was the stage for an uninterrupted and brutally lethal war over the last twenty-six years, whose events are today memories that some have forgotten but others remember well. The texts of the first Franciscan missionaries referred to the 'mountain' of the Apurímac and Ene rivers, and they were right. That mountainous jungle, with its rugged crags, ravines, and abysses covered in dense vegetation, briefly softens in the valley before returning to the hills blanketed in forest and cloud, crossed by towering waterfalls bearing harmonious Asháninka names. Published on November 13, 2009.