Antonia Sanchez Huarcaya

My mother and father are from Lucanas, the largest province in the Ayacucho region. I was born there too, and I moved to Lima when I was 14 years old, without knowing how to speak Spanish. I only spoke Quichua, which is my native language. There were nine of us children and my father brought us here, escaping from terrorism, from the Shining Path guerrillas because it was very dangerous. If you didn’t collaborate with them, they killed you. On the other side were the military who also mistreated us, perhaps thinking that we had something to do with the Shining Path, and they also killed.

My mother was killed by the terrorists - my youngest brother was only nine months old when it happened. I was 19 years old when they killed my mother. When it happened, I was