Return to Ayacucho
Bill Mitchell remembers an earlier time

PERU — In early September, I was in Ayacucho, in South Central Peru. The flight left Lima at the unearthly hour of 5.15 a.m. and arrived 50 minutes later. I had plenty of time in the hotel before I went to the Presbyterian Seminary at 10.00 a.m. to give a lecture and to discuss the revision of the Ayacucho Quechua Bible with students. The churches had requested Bible Society help in revising the text.

I made my way to the Plaza just after 8.00 a.m. and stood outside the cathedral, looking across the square, the sun catching the rooftops of the buildings on the other side. Sleepy students straggled into the University, a few with heads crooked in the now familiar ‘mobile phone stance’.

Under siege

It was my first visit since 1987 – hard to believe – but on that occasion I was there for the dedication of the Bible. It was in the midst of the violence wrought by the Communist guerilla group, Shining Path. It was like being in a place under siege, soldiers were everywhere, armoured cars on the streets, a 6.00 p.m. curfew at night. The university walls were daubed with Marxist and Maoist slogans.

Yet that day was different as group after church group entered the square singing, banners aloft, conjuntos (bands) playing as only Andean musicians can. But most people were dressed in black, the majority women and children and more than a few widows and orphans.

As I stood on the Cathedral steps the scene came back to my mind as if it had been only yesterday. I saw Granpa Sauñe, like a great patriarch presiding over the feast, resplendent in his dazzling poncho and red ch’ullu (woollen hat), his white beard (unusual for a Quechua) adding that extra dignity. I saw Romulo Sauñe, one of the translators and an outstanding leader in the Quechua churches, receive the Bible from Felix Calle, the chair of the Bible Society board... Then everything became a blur. Tears, unbidden, filled my eyes.

The violence had not stopped with the dedication of the Bible: some time later Romulo and his Granpa both died at the hands of the Shining Path – two of the 300 pastors (and 70,000 others) who died in Peru in those terrible years. The city lived up to its grim nickname: ‘the corner of the dead’.

When I told the students that my last visit had been in 1987 for the Bible dedication, there was a sudden hush and a few of them caught their breath. They were among the orphans in the Plaza that day. Words don’t come easily in such situations; tears do.