The name Gran Pajonal puzzles visitors expecting savanna. The plateau lies in the upper Amazon basin, surrounded by tropical rainforest on every side. But at its elevation - ranging from about 900 to 1,400 meters - and after centuries of Asháninka agriculture, small patches of grassland cover roughly 4 percent of the total area. These are anthropogenic grasslands, meaning they exist because of human activity. The Asháninka practice slash-and-burn agriculture focused on manioc (yuca in Spanish), though a single farmer might cultivate as many as 50 different plants: bananas, peanuts, beans, and many more. The grass appears where gardens have been abandoned long enough for the soil to shift toward open meadow. Since 1975, an additional 3,500 hectares of grassland has been created by Andean immigrants, mostly for pasture - a different kind of land use, with different consequences for the surrounding forest.

In 1733, a Franciscan named Juan Bautista de la Marca became the first Spaniard to visit the Gran Pajonal. The plateau was attractive to missionaries: it had a relatively dense indigenous population and a cooler, healthier climate than the Amazon lowlands. By 1735, an armed Spanish expedition was working among the Asháninka, and by 1739, Franciscans had established missions in ten villages. The Spaniards followed their standard strategy of reductions - forcing indigenous people to abandon dispersed settlements and live in mission towns where they could be controlled, converted, and taxed. In 1742, Juan Santos Atahualpa, who claimed descent from the Inca royal line, led a rebellion that swept through the missionary enterprise. The missions were burned. The Franciscans fled or died. The Spanish never regained control of the Gran Pajonal. Juan Santos remained a largely legendary figure - he disappeared from historical records around 1756 - but his rebellion held.

For a century and a half after 1742, the Gran Pajonal was Asháninka territory in a way few places in Peru remained. The plateau is difficult to reach: it has no navigable rivers crossing it, and its elevation creates a hard transition from the surrounding lowland forest. Mountains on nearly every side - the El Sira Communal Reserve to the north, the Cerro de la Sal range to the south - compound the isolation. The Asháninka of the Pajonal speak a distinct dialect that scholars often call Ashéninka to distinguish it from the more widespread Asháninka language spoken closer to the Ene and Tambo rivers. European diseases still took their toll during these centuries, brought through occasional contact, and in the late 19th century slave raids by rubber companies began penetrating the plateau. But the core fact of Asháninka sovereignty persisted in a way few comparable peoples managed.

In 1896 and 1897, the Franciscan priest Gabriel Sala visited the Gran Pajonal accompanied by armed men. His expedition opened a second wave of outside attention: plans for roads and railroads, new missions attempted and mostly failed. By 1935, three Catholic missions had been re-established, and in 1938 an airstrip was built at Oventeni, the largest of the mission settlements. In 1965, the Peruvian army entered the plateau in pursuit of the Left Revolutionary Movement, a Marxist guerrilla group. The army defeated the guerrillas and then stayed in Oventeni for three years, during which the Catholic missions were closed. That same year, the Wycliffe Translators - Protestant missionaries - began working in the area, and most Asháninka who converted chose Protestantism. In the 1980s, the Shining Path insurgency brought devastating violence to Asháninka communities further east, along the Ene and Tambo. The Gran Pajonal itself was less affected, but the memory of those years shapes everything about how the community organizes.

In the 1980s, with assistance from the World Bank and the government of Denmark, the Asháninka of the Gran Pajonal achieved legal title to most of their land. Ownership was formally deeded to 36 separate communities, with non-Asháninka allowed to reside and own land only within the community of Oventeni at the center of the plateau. The population balance held: roughly 6,500 Asháninka against about 650 outsiders, mostly Andean Peruvians who had migrated in seeking farmland and work. Some Asháninka worked as cattle herders or coffee harvesters for the outsiders. Others continued traditional agriculture on community land. The legal titles did not end the pressures - they continue, from logging, from coca cultivation, from the general encroachment of modern Peru - but they provided something the Asháninka had not previously had in writing: recognition that this land was theirs. Juan Santos Atahualpa's rebellion had won it. Centuries of stubborn persistence had held it. The paperwork finally caught up.