One man came here and said their boss had made them do this. He asked us for forgiveness, to pardon him.”
“When did that happen?”
“When a marino came here, one of those from that night, he came here and said, ‘We killed. I participated in it but now I’m a Christian and I want to ask for forgiveness.’ So all the relatives came here. With tears he asked them for forgiveness.”
“As hermanos, there’s an emphasis on reconciliation in the church, no?”
“Yes,” he insisted. “We always talk about that.”
“And the relatives, weren’t they resentful?”
“Yes, some were, some weren’t. One hermana, she’d lost her husband and that resentment [rencor] didn’t go away. She said, ‘Those animals killed my husband, they have to answer for that. They have to do something—they’ve destroyed me.’ Even though we try to understand, it’s difficult. Even now she’s resentful. But some of the hermanos are forgiving from their hearts. She says, ‘You can forgive because you lost sons. I lost my husband.’”
“Is it worse to lose a husband?”
“Yes, a husband is worth more—it’s a greater loss. One hermana lost two sons and she forgave. She said, ‘What am I going to do? I can’t live like her—can’t live hating.’” He shrugged his shoulders.
I nodded and followed him back out to the front of the church. We said our good-byes and I thanked him again before heading down the dirt road and past the stadium, where the shouts of the soccer fans echoed against the walls.
Reel Life
When I watched the evangelical films, I began to imagine. I imagined that life really must be that way.
—Juan, twenty-five years old, Canrao
Although individual conversion was frequently the result of revelation, in the alturas of Huanta—where the conversions were massive—the growth of Evangelismo had both individualizing and “collectivizing” aspects. Armed communities of faith were forged, and the Evangélicos would prove to be one of the most tenacious enemies the Shining Path militants would confront. Listening to Evangelical friends confirmed that the struggle between Evangelismo and Senderismo was a struggle of biblical proportions—an apocalyptic battle waged at the end of time.20 How this happened becomes clearer once we go to the movies.
A few weeks after we crossed paths in Callqui, Pastor Isaías Trujillano arrived in Carhuahurán en route to the selva. He was talking up the Fiesta Espiritual that would take place the following month. He went door-to-door during the day, visiting the Evangélicos. As darkness fell, he enlisted the help of several villagers to prepare for showing the Bible movies he had brought with him. Just as his father before him, Isaías traveled with films and a generator as he made his way up and over the mountains.
After much debate it was decided the best place to show the films was on the side of Feliciano’s two-story house. Several of the ronderos helped him hang a large white sheet with nails they hammered into his wall, and this rippling screen provided the background for the images projected that night.
Other men brought piles of ichu (straw) to soften the ground. Women began to arrive with their children, nestling into the ichu in a semicircle in front of the white sheet. Farther back, long planks of wood were dragged to the field and set atop adobe bricks to form benches. I sat down on one of the planks, Efraín, Shintaca, and Yolanda crowding together beneath my poncho. The cold fluctuated with the cloud cover, rolling in and out on the wind.
Feliciano opened the padlock on his door and called Simeón and Satú over to help him carry out a rickety table and set it up on the far side of the field. The table legs were uneven and after trying several rocks, Feliciano slipped a large flat one beneath one of the legs and the table finally stopped wobbling. An extension cord ran the length of the field, hooked up to the big truck battery that sat in Feliciano’s store.
Isaías pulled two enormous reels from his backpack and opened a worn cardboard box. He had brought along a projector, the sort we used in grammar school when Mrs. Hauser threaded the thick brown coils into the machine and we took flight. He set his generator up on the table as far away as possible so the noise would not drown out the film. The crowd grew as the motor began and the white sheet came alive with Bible scenes.
I did not catch the title of the first film. I had run up to our room to bring down a pocketful of Sublimes—chocolate squares loaded with almonds. By the time we settled into my poncho again, the Virgin Mary was already pregnant. There were lengthy scenes of Joseph and Mary heading across the desert on a mule, prompting several people in the audience to remember how they had been forced to flee their homes with only the clothes on their backs. They, too, had walked for days on aching feet only to have people refuse them shelter, shouting, “Filthy chutos [savages]! Get off my land before you dirty it.”
Mary’s eyes were cast downward for virtually the entire film, thick eyelashes resting piously upon milky white skin. On the few occasions when she did look up, it was to heed the voice of God speaking to her from heaven. The films were worn, and the generator was not working at full force. Manuco suggested it was suffering from sorroche (altitude sickness) and thus the films were slow, as though a tired arm was turning a handle at too slow a pace. The soundtrack was garbled and the speed lowered all of the voices to the baritone-bass range. It was a bit of a shock to hear the Virgin Mary respond to God in the same thundering bass voice He used with her. I heard laughter coming from behind us. A group of men were standing at the back, the ronderos with both guns and blankets thrown over their shoulders.
In a few turns of the reel, the Assyrians appeared in chain metal gear, enormous men outfitted for war. As night fell upon the battlefield, two spies sneaked up outside a tent to eavesdrop and learned the following day’s battle plans. The Spanish dubbing was virtually inaudible, and most of the villagers were Quechua speakers anyway. So it was the audience that provided the script. The spies were just like the ronderos, and spying was part of vigilancia to see what the Senderistas had planned. Film viewing was improvisational theater.
When the first film garbled to a close, Isaías gave a thirty-minute lecture on family and community life. The main theme was simple: he exhorted the women to stay home and fulfill their roles, leaving the men to go out and work hard. While he preached, Feliciano carried over a can of gasoline to stir the generator out of its sorroche.
The crowd was eager for more, and Isaías threaded Heinz Fussle’s My Brother’s Keeper into the projector. The opening scene consists of three little gringos shoplifting in a large department store, gleefully stuffing merchandise inside their jackets. The boys run up and down the aisles on a spree. However, as they turn up the fateful final aisle, three security guards close in on them. As the guards tower over the boys and begin to lecture them on the sins of shoplifting, the sneakiest little gringo breaks loose and manages to escape on his newly acquired skateboard. The next scene shows the same mini shoplifter, defiantly eating an orange as he swaggers down a blind alley.
In the alley, juicy orange in hand and mouth, he encounters a tall black man. Racist stereotypes dictate his role: he is dressed in tight polyester pants, and his lunar-sized afro is straight out of Shaft. People in the audience began pointing: they recognized this man from the department store, where he had watched the scuffle between the boys and the security guards. He begins by praising the boy for his clever escape, suggesting he consider the benefits of a life of crime. Fade out to evil chuckles.
The
