Back in the jungle their villages were burned, their tools destroyed and their livestock slaughtered. Now, two years later, the army is still there. There are encampments along the rivers, each with 500 soldiers. They eat US-supplied military rations and throw the cans in the water. And you know the river is central to life in an indigenous village.
Women wash clothes in it and get water for drinking and preparing foods.
People bathe in the river. But now the women are afraid even to go near the river. And the men are afraid to walk to their fields to tend their crops. Two growing seasons have been lost. There is pervasive hunger.