Picture Stories by Stephen Alvarez

Don Beni part 8: What do do with the gold

This is # 8 and the final installment of Don Beni

What do you do when you are offered kilos of gold by a confessed murderer while sitting in a terrorist controlled jungle?

I figured that the thing to do was turn the offer down as politely as possible. The writer agreed and with the German ethnohistorian we decided to talk to Don B alone. The following morning the 4 of us went to the river by ourselves under the guise of shooting more portraits.

We had 2 concerns. 1 is that carrying gold out of the jungle the way we were headed seemed a suicidally bad idea.

2 that word of Don B's cache would get around and his life would be in danger. The first concern was pretty valid. But thinking back now, Don Beni hacked his way into the jungle and existed just fine there for years without our help it was a little presumptuous of us to think that he needed our help. In any event as I shot a new set of portraits we talked about what to do with him.

Eventually we decided to take back the assay and the German would help make some decisions about how to turn the gold into money that Don B could use. That decision allayed my fears, made Don B happy so the next day we packed to go.

The walk out was blissfully easy. 2 or 3 days walk along the Rio Verde. The terrorists, if they even were terrorists, were all very nice to us. With the end of the trip in sight even the porter's mood improved.

I got back to the US without incident. Got stuck in Chachapoyos for a bit, then had to fight the magazine tooth and nail to get them to pay the pittance that they had promised -par for the course with magazines.

It was such an amazing experience. Walking through the jungle day after day in search of a legend and then finding him. Don Beni was a diminutive yet larger than life character. What a privilege to meet him.

-Stephen Alvarez

Don Beni part 7: "I have all this Gold"

This is #7 in a serialized post about one of my first assignments. It comes up most Mondays.

I didn't get really scared on this whole long weird trip until Don Beni offered me 2 kilos of gold. But I am getting ahead of myself....

We left Fabion's house and walked the 1/2 day to Don Beni's. At this point we had been on the trail a couple of weeks and were used to walking. But this was different. Previously we had walked up mountains, down mountains, across rivers, through the jungle. Now we were walking on level ground for the first time, through pasture, past Don Beni's herd of cows. THIS was the piece of flat land he had seen as a boy and decided to buy! The story was true after all.

Arriving at Don Beni's house he simply looked up and said, "ah Gringos" as if it were the most natural thing in the world that we would show up and want to talk with him. Almost the next thing from his mouth was that he had a calf he was wanting to kill.

That was a project that we all jumped into with gusto. Fresh meat and lots of it. Over the course of the next few days Don B was very forthcoming with his story. He described his life in the jungle, his decision to keep going after his wife quit, killing his son in law. In his version of the story the son in law was going to kill HIM in order to put a clandestine drug airstrip on his pasture.

Sometime during our visit 2 strangers showed up from Fabian's direction. They were there, they said, to look at one of his cows. They were very interested in what we were doing there, very friendly with the guides who where planning on extorting more money, very curious about what my cameras were worth...

By now, given how weird things were with the guides and the strange inter-group dynamics, I had a creeping sense of paranoia. I knew we were about to walk through the MRTA controlled valley to leave. I knew the guides were trying to figure out how to get more money out of me...

About then, the writer and I got left alone Don Beni. Everyone else had gone off to look at the level of the river to see if we could leave the next day.

Now my Spanish at the time was practically nonexistent but Don Beni and I talked through the writer. We talked about exploration, and my inexplicable drive to visit caves and find new passages. He thought about that for a long time then said something that made my heart stop.

"Tengo mucho oro" I have much gold perhaps you could take it with you, sell it and we could use the money to start an exploration company.

How much gold? Several kilos but I can get more. Where is it? Buried here and there. It seems that when Don B first explored the jungle he came across Inca sluice boxes in the rivers that were collecting ore.

This generous offer on Don Beni's part played straight into my paranoia. I was certain that if the guides got word that I had 2 kilos of gold in my pack they'd sell me out to the MRTA in a heart beat. I excused myself, went for a walk alone in the cornfield and started to bargain with God. "If you get me out of this alive, I swear I'l be a better person." Then I thought, next time fewer cameras and more guns...

Don Beni part 6: "We'll give you a Machine Gun"

This is #6 in a serialized post about one of my first assignments. It comes up most Mondays.

"We'll give you a machine gun if you join us" is what the Tupac Amaru rebels told one of Don Beni's sons. At least that is the story he told us as we hacked through the jungle in search of a lost "Incan temple."

The son, Fabian I think, was not sure what he would do with a machine gun so declined the offer. When did they ask you this? Recently. Where were you? Oh right here at my farm...

2 days before we had shouldered our packs and headed out from La Morada. Some of us happy, the writer, the historian and I. One of us indifferent, our body guard, and two distinctly unhappy porters. We had survived crossing a river, climbing a mountain and a night spent up guarding against jaguar attack only to be told we were in Rebel controlled country.

Great...

The Incan Temple turned out to be a Chachapoyan temple. Chachapoyan, wasn't Indian Jones looking for Chachapoyan artifacts in the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark when he was betrayed by his guides? The temple had been discovered years before by Don Beni's family as they cleared land for a farm.

That night back at Fabian's house I went to the porter's packs to pull out some of the freeze dried food I had brought to share with the family. I found their packs amazingly light and the food was not there! It seems that our porters had been dumping food along the way. It seems they were planning to extort more money from us when we ran out of food. The historian had found out about this plan earlier and told them to get serious. Betrayed by your guides indeed...

The good news was that Don Beni was only a day's walk away.

Don Beni: Part 5

This is the fifth part of a serialized post about an assignment to find Don Benigno Añasco in Peru. It comes up every Monday.

At La Morada we were treated very well. People were happy to see outsiders, particularly our German ethnohistorian who carried accurate aerial photos of the area. Maps at the time were not accurate and the information in the aerial photos helped people know where they were!

Even Don Beni's former wife was happy to see us and talk about her life in the jungle. It was harrowing trekking into the forest, into the unknown for the first time.

She left Don Beni mostly because she was tired of constantly pushing on. Who wants to spend their life chasing away jaguars? Everyone in town wanted to share their stories about being in the jungle, on the frontier.

No one, however wanted to talk about the murder. To find out about that we were going to have to move on and find Don Beni.

After a few days we got ready to go. Our guides really did not want to. Honestly, I am not sure now that I wanted to shoulder that heavy pack and head out again, but duty -of sorts- called, and I could not bear the thought of going back the way we came.

The way ahead was even more unknown. We were to continue downstream, cross the now sizable river and head up to Don Beni's world, La Meseta. It was the land that he had seen as a young man and ventured into the jungle to find.

Don Beni: Part 4

So we set out from Pampa Hermosa toward La Morada, on foot following trails that the Inca had built 500 years before.
La Morada was the town that Don Beni and his wife had confounded. It was at La Morada that they split up, her staying and him heading further into the jungle with his daughter. It was at La Morada that Don Beni came back to and shot his son in law. It looked like the Añasco clan had split into two distinct parts, one for and one against the patriarch.

We didn't know which we were headed to or how we would be received by either.

It was still raining, all day we would walk through the mud and mist.

Strange dynamics had begun to form within our group. We were all exhausted from walking. But things were getting easier. We were headed down hill and the porter's packs were getting lighter -much lighter I'd find out later- as we ate through our supplies of food yet the porters were becoming sullen. The German was becoming withdrawn as well.

We would walk during the day, headed toward La Morada. When we would get to a farm or house in the evening we would ask for a place to stay and inevitably the 6 of us would cram ourselves into someone's corn crib side by side and spend the night. My pack was filled with camera equipment and not getting any lighter. So, exhausted I would sleep soundly even in tight quarters.

In the morning after a breakfast of quaker oats we would walk another day away. Wash, rinse repeat... The only thing that made the hours of walking tolerable were the stunning scenery and a healthy supply of coca leaves between my cheek and gum.

At each house we would ask after Don B. He was alive, he was dead, he had joined the terrorists, he was at La Morada, he was in Mendoza, is ex wife would be happy to see us, his ex wife wouldn't want to see us. Our task was getting even more confused -if possible...

Then one day we came across a trail crew working on a washed out section of Inca Road. It was headed by Fabian, Don Beni's oldest son. We were just around the corner from La Morada, Don Beni was at his place on the Meseta Grande just a few days walk beyond!

That evening we entered La Morada and set ourselves up in an abandoned house. The weather cleared, people came by to visit. It was civilization. The town even had an aguardiente still. It was nice to be in one place for a few days.

There was also the huge relief for me that even if I could not find Don B to make his portrait I had at least made it to his town and could shoot pictures there. Maybe we could even photograph his ex wife...