When We Sold God's Eye

Starred review from September 9, 2024
An Amazonian tribe fractures, turns to illegal pillaging of their own lands, and perpetrates a shocking massacre in this intricate and tragic account. Journalist Cuadros (Brazillionaires) follows the Cinta Larga of western Brazil after their first contact with white men in the 1960s. He paints their lives before contact as an idyll of hunting, horticulture, and feasting in the rainforest. (Downsides included bloody feuds and the exploitation of women.) Their encounters with non-Indigenous Brazilians featured occasional violence, but also curiosity and a hunger for the intruders’ steel tools—and finally a series of epidemics that left fewer than 400 survivors. Cuadros recaps the cross-cultural coming-of-age of Nacoça Pio, an orphaned boy who became a Cinta Larga leader skilled at working with government agencies and white settlers, and Oita Matino, a hot-headed, semicriminal hustler; both became involved in despoiling their tribe’s land, selling valuable but banned mahogany wood, and later operating an illegal diamond mine. The latter brought riches, but also conflict with white prospectors who resented their Indigenous bosses; in 2004, that tension exploded into a shocking killing spree. Cuadros depicts the Cinta Larga’s fall from grace with vivid prose (“Now he felt the full weight of open-eyed regret, a kind of regret his father could never have imagined, because his world was so much smaller”). Readers will be riveted.

November 1, 2024

Journalist Cuadros (Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an American Country) spent six years in Brazil reporting this story of modern-day colonialism. In the 1960s, the rainforest home of the Cinta Larga tribe was invaded by prospectors, loggers, and ranchers seeking resources and wealth. Cuadros explains what happened and the ruin and change it brought and reflects on the fallout for individuals and Brazil as a whole. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from November 15, 2024
Stone Age people encounter the modern world, with predictable results. Journalist Cuadros, author ofBrazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an American Country, has immersed himself in Brazil's expansion into its Amazonian frontier, a process that began early in the 20th century, exploded after World War II, and is still in progress. He focuses on the Cinta Larga, an Indigenous society of 1,000 to 2,000 people living in the remote jungle near the Bolivian border. Lacking clothes, boats, and domestic animals and perpetually at war with neighboring tribes, they had no trouble feeding themselves. Following the usual scenario, ranchers, loggers, and miners poured in with their magical technology, guns, greed, and diseases, and tribal members who did not go to work for white men became beggars. As one anthropologist put it, "The Brazilian state turned Indians into poor people." Cuadros tells his story through the lives of half a dozen Cinta Larga and an idealistic member of Brazil's Indian Protection Service, a government office designed to protect Indigenous people and encourage them to assimilate. Underfunded and with no enforcement power, the agency could not keep newcomers out or control them, and he eventually grew discouraged. His Indigenous clients are survivors--despite disease and violence vastly reducing their numbers--and they entered the 21st century in an uneasy truce with a rapacious free market culture. The discovery of diamonds in 1999 produced a massive influx of prospectors that dwarfed the native population. Mining in tribal protected areas is illegal, but Brazilian authorities, understaffed when not corrupt, were little help. Near the book's end, a band of warriors massacres about 30 miners, a climax that turns into an anticlimax because mining continues and government investigation and prosecution are still in progress 20 years later. An impassioned story with many parallels to the American Indian experience, and equally dispiriting.

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December 1, 2024
The indigenous Cinta Larga nation in the rainforests of Brazil's Amazon basin were f irst contacted by the outside world in the 1960s. For untold generations, they freely practiced their traditional ways, obtaining everything they needed from the forest and maintaining a distinct society. Contact with white people came slowly at first, from latex prospectors and various iterations of an Indian Protection Service. As the number of strangers increased, the Cinta Larga suffered shocks from new technologies, disease, and even alien foods. They also discovered that the bright, clear stones that washed out of the river from time to time were extremely valuable in the white people's world. Journalist Cuadros details the history and lives of the tribe through extensive interviews with elders, focusing on the challenges they face to preserve their lands and culture. Add to that the ripple effects of their running a diamond mine, as Cuadros documents how friction between white prospectors and the tribe resulted in a massacre. A vibrant, in-depth, and eye-opening account of conflict in the Amazon with dire cultural and environmental consequences.

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