In 1969, at the age of forty, Friar Mariano Gagnon, a New Hampshire-born Franciscan priest, persuaded his bishop to allow him to work with the Ashaninka Indians in the remote jungles and mountains of Peru. At the time, the twentieth century was encroaching upon the primitive Indians, who, in order to survive, needed health care, job training, a basic knowledge of modern economic realities, and, above all, literacy and education.
For the next ten years, Friar Mariano and a handful of equally dedicated colleagues established and nourished a small mission compound at the juncture of the Ene and Cutivireni rivers, only to find their existence threatened from three directions. The Ashaninka's land was coveted by the "narcos," an alliance of coca growers, cocaine processors, and drug smugglers. Almost as dangerous was the indifference of Peru's elitist government, which took the servitude of the poor and underprivileged for granted. But most dangerous of all were the forces of Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path, a violent and merciless revolutionary group of the far, radical Left.
Led by a former university professor Abimael Guzman, Sendero had as its goal the eradication of the old order in Peru and the establishment of a People's Republic for the New Democracy. Its strategy was not to make life better for the common Peruvian but to make it so intolerable that revolution would be the only answer. And it was the misfortune of the Ashaninka to occupy the area the Shining Path wanted as its headquarters.
In Warriors in Eden, Friar Mariano tells the full story of how, in the years between 1990 and 1992, a man of peace and God led the Ashaninka in their struggle to avoid extinction. Twice he had to take them across seemingly impassable terrain to new homes while simultaneously teaching them how to arm and defend themselves against their enemies. But an even greater triumph for him was the trust, devotion, and love that developed between him and the Ashaninka. These, in the end, were the real forces that enabled him to keep alive a people and a heritage that the rest of the world would have sacrificed to expediency.
