When they saw men with arrows and machetes bearing down on them, Daniel Braun and other Mennonites living in the Peruvian Amazon fled across rice paddies, some of their barns ablaze behind them. In Masisea, a remote settlement near Peru's border with Brazil accessible only by boat along a tributary of the Amazon or over dirt paths, members of the austere Protestant sect are under siege. Here, as in several other South American countries, the reclusive Christians, who have roots in 16th-century Europe and who eschew modernity, are accused of destroying forests as they expand their agricultural imprint on the continent. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES ARRANGED IN SEQUENCES