Old woman threshing, guys throwing up grains, traditional costumes

VO: The Incas call it In-ee "Today for me - tomorrow for you".

01.00.00.00

A system of work, as here at harvest time - in which neighbours help each other.

After the harvest an offering is made to the Pachu Mama - Mother Earth.

00.48

A potent liquor, Chi-cha, is poured into the ground and offered to those who have worked together.

All make a small prayer.

Mother Earth

For all of those who have father and mother. Don't forget about my family - My father and mother"

VO: Then the head of the family whose harvest this is offers a libation to the Gods of the mountains.

Salut. Salut

VO: The Inca's beliefs survived the Spanish Conquistador 500 years ago but were almost destroyed in the last decade by the savagery of the Shining Path.

01.49

Alfredo Hinjosa

Alfredo: The more powerful damage was interior or in the spirit. In the spirit. In the soul of the Indians.

Professor Carlos Ivan Degreogori

Carlos: They despised the culture of the people. They were Mestisos and they felt superior to the Indians. Even though they were revolutionaries and they said they were going to transform the world.

02.11

Andes

VO: Not long ago these roads were deserted ... the Indians had abandoned much of the high plateau of the Andes.

For here in the far north of Ayachucho Province was the stronghold of the shining Path who almost wiped out their culture.

Sellers, Llamas

But now the old patterns of life are returning.

03.05

Every Friday people from the remote villages come to this patch of ground where the road ends.

They come from all directions. Herding their llamas to the weekly market.

Few  of these traders are here to make a profit. They are mostly battering for the things they need. A little of this for a little of that.

03.45

The young women wear flowers in their hats ... not out of vanity but as  a sign that they are unmarried. A practise that was forbidden by the revolutionaries who tramped into these mountains to change their lives.

Professor Carlos Ivan Degreogori

Carlos: When Shining Path came and tried to impose their way. They quickly began clashing with the way of life of these people. They thought that it was that these people were ignorant that they couldn't understand the scientific truth of Marxism.

They couldn't imagine that these poor peasants beyond being poor peasants were Quechua people and had their own system of authority their own religion their own fiestas their own way of working the fields etc.

Shining Path woman - Maria

Maria: It was easier to impose on the peasants. To change the rules. The people from the city know more than peasants. They're more cultured.

05.06

Maria was recruited by the Shining Path when she was 16. Fearing for her life she set strict conditions for our interview. But agreed to talk about her indoctrination.

Maria: They taught us that only by seeing the violence could we learn to impose it on others.

Cooking pot

A short drive from the hillside marker is the village of Purus.

05.47

Caught between the army and the Shining Path the Indians abandoned Purus for nearly a decade. But now they're slowly returning to rebuild it.

In 1982 the Shining Path climbed up to Purus to take control. They called the townsfolk together for a meeting.

06.34

Adrian N'Aupa

Community Leader

Adrian: Here nobody will own their own animals. There will be no Fiestas. There'll be no Church. All of you will eat the same. Nobody will eat anything. There will be no more poverty, no more rich, no more poor, and no more leaders. We're all going to be the same.

Building work

VO: People who openly refused to co-operate were killed. Their houses burnt. Their animals stolen.

Adrian

Adrian: It was a revenge. Because we wouldn't agree to join their organisation.

07.20

Carlos

Carlos: The ones against whom they exert the most brutality are the most Indian ones.

VO: The Shining Path baptised its own into a cult of violence.

Maria

Maria: We went into the village - It was like a baptism. The first time we'd been in a situation like that and we had to kill. We were all women and they gave us revolvers but we were so nervous. We couldn't pull the triggers.

The baptism was completed when one of their leaders finally shot two of their leaders in front of them.

Maria: They told us it was to change society.

08.16

Street scenes

VO: Down from the highlands is Ayachucho City ... the real birthplace of Latin America's most violent revolutionary movement.

In the old recruiting ground at Ayachucho's university urban, Mestiso students - that is, with mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry - were transformed by the same thought.

08.38

Boys sitting on wall

They would carry the ‘good news' to the countryside with a religious zeal.

But at the same time they bore old hatreds like an infection.

Kite, slums,

Jose Paiwa

Jose Paiwa: They insisted we join them, that if we collaborate. They would insist and if we didn't. They would kill like an animal.

Jose carrying bucket

Jose Paiwa and his family live in two shacks built on a wasteland outside the Peruvian capital Lima.

09.41

Pigs

Along with their own children the Paiwa's look after their granddaughter whose father was killed by the Shining Path along with 18 others.

Jose in shack

Jose: They killed all the men with knives, clubs, rocks, hatchets and machetes.

VO: In a little over ten years more than 30 thousand people were killed.

10.32

Man pushing cart.

Jose Paiwa took his family from Ayachucho and joined up to three quarters of a million others who fled to cities and large towns.

Children with fire

Now the government says the war is over. And there's a campaign to encourage the refugees to go home.

10.50

Thousands are returning. But many like Jose Paiwa come right back when they find that life in their destroyed villages is even worse than the shanty towns they have left.

Jose Paiwa

Jose: The government promised they would help us but they didn't. There was no food. There were no tools to work with. They gave us only a shovel which was to no use.

Like the exodus the return is slow and painful.

11.34

Mother with children, weaver

But the Indians are repopulating their devastated highland villages. 380 people, about half the families who once lived here have come back to Purus.

Adrian

Adrian: Up to today we don't have anything but we  are her because we love this place.

Ronderos, Leader talking

Those who've come back to stay are determined not to be forced out again.

12.22

For here in the mountains - among these descendants of the Inca is where resistance to the Shining Path began.

And although the army was for years as violent as the rebels - these men have accepted training from them and ÿasic weapons to form local militias.

Ronderos getting in trucks

For the Indian that's the lesser of two evils - since in the end the Shining Path offered them nothing but death.

12.57

We don't understand. They say they're fighting for the poor but it's the poor they kill - peasants like us.

Praying

While the men put their faith in shotguns ... the women look to heaven.

13.36

Though even here the returnees find much has changed.

The power of the old church like that of that of the old colonial landowners has been broken in the highlands - since few priests dared stay during the war.

Holding candles

Evangelical Christianity has taken its place. It's themes of apocalypse and salvation from the world of suffering - resonate for the survivors of the long conflict in the mountains - and for those who have come home.

ENDS

14.40