With a bent back and bare feet in the black soil, Ruben Gutierrez Escobar, 63, uses a hoe to plow his fields in Bella Vista, a hamlet near Cusco in southern Peru at an altitude of 3,500 meters. He has no tractor, no fertilizers, only "sweat, work and sacrifice." "Lima has completely forgotten about us," the subsistence farmer tells AFP -- a common complaint of rural Peruvians who have taken to the streets en masse since early December. The protests have pitched the people of the Peruvian Andes against the elites in the capital. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES