When We Sold God's Eye
Diamonds, Murder and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
'A first-class work of reporting [and] a work of compassion for Indigenous peoples everywhere' BENJAMIN MOSER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of SONTAG
'A non-fiction novel of modern conquest, capitalism and murder . . . a stunning work' GREG GRANDIN, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of FORDLANDIA
Growing up in a remote corner of the Amazon, Pio, Maria, and Oita learned to hunt wild pigs and tapirs, gathering Brazil nuts and açaí berries from centuries-old trees. Then the first highway pierced through. Loggers and prospectors invaded, and they lost their families to terrible new weapons and diseases. Pushed to assimilate, they struggled to understand their new, capitalist reality. They ended up forging an uneasy symbiosis with their white antagonists - until a seam of diamonds erupted in their territory and decades of suppressed trauma burst out in a shocking act of retribution.
Based on six years of immersive reporting and research, WHEN WE SOLD GOD'S EYE tells a unique kind of adventure story, a story of survival against all odds; of the temptations of wealth and the dream of prosperity; of a vital ecosystem threatened by the hunger for natural resources; of genocide and revenge. It's a story as old as the first European encounters with Indigenous people, playing out in the present day. But most of all, it's about a few startlingly clever individuals and their power to adapt - even thrive - in the most unlikely circumstances.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
