in Rosario they wanted to kill me. They beat me up and left me bloody. Well, there were police stations then, so the hermanos got an order and they made the Catholics go to the police station. How those police looked at me! They threw them in jail—it was the comuneros themselves who’d beaten me. I spent three days in the hospital. I was all swollen up, blood, fever, everything.”
“So it was the Catholic comuneros who did this?” I asked incredulously.
He nodded.
“And why did they say they’d done this?”
“Because I was Evangelical, because I was preaching. They told me I had no right to preach because they were Catholic.”
“Did this happen more than once?”
“Oh, they almost killed me several times.”
“And the priests? The catechists?”
“They were against me too. They said, ‘Those Evangelicals are enemies. Don’t allow them in.’ They said we were condemned. Because we denied the images, they said we were diabolic men.” Vidal shook his head as he recalled those early years. “It wasn’t easy at first. That’s how it was, hermana. Later we won in spite of it all. We won against the Catholics because they became fewer and fewer in number.”
“Hermano Vidal, did they have catechists in these communities?”
“No, nobody. They just had chapels and the priests visited once a year.”
“Were there Catholic churches in the communities then?”
“Yes, in some of them.”
“But now there aren’t.”
“No, not now. The priests traveled. They would bring the priests—people would come with horses to take the priests with them. The priests rode on horses, with saddles. The horses ran and so did the men, just looking up at them. But we didn’t do that. We helped with everything.”
Vidal paused, taking a swig of his Kola Real. “It was stronger then, not like now. We still go out, but we don’t have any support. And that Senderismo … ” his voice drifted off.
“What about Senderismo?”
“Because of that Senderismo, it dropped. There was nothing to eat. And there were massacres from all three sides—from the Senderistas, the military, and the ronderos.”
“Ronderos too?”
He nodded. “Powerful massacres.”
Things began to change in the selva and the sierra. There was another group with a message to share in their own search for converts: Sendero Luminoso. As the violence spread throughout Ayacucho, traveling in the countryside became increasingly dangerous. Being an Evangelical pastor conferred no protection, in part because Senderista militants considered the Evangélicos to be one of their key ideological enemies. As the threats mounted in the early 1980s, the North American missionaries withdrew from Peru, leaving the church in the hands of local pastors like Vidal. However, it was not only the North Americans who retreated from rural areas; many Catholic priests ceased to visit as well. One Peruvian colleague wryly noted that in many rural areas, the Catholic Church was among the first casualties of war. This would be another chapter in the complicated history of a church that, in the eyes of many campesinos, had never come down off its high horse.
In Ayacucho, the growth of Evangelismo occurred against the backdrop of a historically conservative Catholic Church.10 Catholic priests had been closely associated with the hacendados (large landowners) who comprised the regional elites.11 However, with the Agrarian Reform of the 1960s, the hacienda system—already in decline economically—further crumbled. The decay of the hacienda system in turn weakened the presence and authority of the Catholic Church in rural areas.12 With the internal armed conflict, the Catholic Church further retrenched to the cities, leaving a spiritual and ritual void in rural areas.
Huamanga, the capital city of Ayacucho, boasts thirty-three Catholic churches, colonial structures so impressive they have become tourist attractions. The city is famous for its glorious celebration of Semana Santa, the crowds compressed shoulder to shoulder to celebrate the last week of Christ’s life and his resurrection. Ornate religious images are paraded through the streets, suspended on wooden beams hoisted in the air by the faithful. When Jeffrey Klaiber wrote his history of the rise of the conservative Peruvian Catholic Church, he turned toward Ayacucho and a “living church [that] looked as though it had not changed much since colonial times,” just as impervious to the passing of the centuries as those thirty-three steadfast structures.
Yet this is only one facet of the Catholic Church. At the national level, the progressive wing of the Catholic Church was heavily influenced by liberation theology and vocally denounced both armed and structural violence. The Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez of the Dominican order is widely considered the founder of liberation theology and one of its most eloquent proponents. In 1986, against the backdrop of indiscriminate repression, an escalating death toll, and the abuse of human rights—particularly those of the rural poor—Father Gutiérrez wrote:
How do we make theology during Ayacucho? How do we speak of the God of life when people are cruelly and massively assassinated in the “Corner of the Dead”? How can we announce the love of God in the midst of such profound contempt for human life? How can we proclaim the resurrection of El Señor where death reigns, especially the death of children, women, the poor and the indigenous—the death of the “insignificantes” of our society?13
Unfortunately for Ayacucho, the man “making theology” during the worst years of the violence in the region was Monseñor Juan Luis Cipriani.14 A representative of Opus Dei, Cipriani denounced human rights as a cloak for “terrorist organizations” and a form of “imperialism,” going so far as to post a sign on the door of the archbishopric: “No se aceptan reclamos sobre Derechos Humanos” (“Human rights complaints not accepted here”).15 He also marginalized the more progressive Jesuits and Dominicans, insisting the church should focus on mass and prayer and leave the social and political work to others. Cipriani was such an obstacle to human rights work and to progressive clergy and laypeople that he warranted individual criticism in the PTRC’s Final Report. Following a detailed chronology of the important role the Catholic Church played in accompanying and protecting people who were besieged by the violence of both the state and Shining Path, they turn to the grave exception of Monseñor Cipriani, “who repeatedly issued statements condemning the work of the Coordinadora Nacional and other organizations who worked in the defense of human rights.”16 Thus the Catholic Church presented meager competition for the Evangélicos in the alturas of Huanta, where the conversions were massive.
I was interested in hearing more about those conversions and Vidal’s perspective on the rise of Sendero Luminoso, which he had experienced firsthand.
“Oh, it must have been ’82 or ’83 because the subversives had started in Ayacucho. I was walking, forming churches in the selva when the subversives started. I was working with my son Isaías. Oh, the Senderistas were watching everything I did! Baptizing, marrying people—everything. One time this young man, a Senderista, was watching me, all curious. I could tell I was making him think, no? He asked me afterward to sell him a Bible! I just gave him one. That young man, he’d been formed by the curas de esos Senderistas [the priests of those Senderistas].”
“The Senderistas had priests?”
