When We Sold God’s Eye
‘A first-class work of reporting [and] a work of compassion for Indigenous peoples everywhere’ BENJAMIN MOSER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of SONTAG
‘Reads like a wondrous mixture of Heart of Darkness and In Cold Blood. A non-fiction novel of modern conquest, capitalism and murder . . . a stunning work’ GREG GRANDIN, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of FORDLANDIA
When We Sold God’s Eye tells the astonishing true story of the Cinta Larga, an Amazonian tribe uncontacted by the Western world until the 1960s. 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.
‘Reads like a wondrous mixture of Heart of Darkness and In Cold Blood. A non-fiction novel of modern conquest, capitalism and murder . . . a stunning work’ GREG GRANDIN, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of FORDLANDIA
When We Sold God’s Eye tells the astonishing true story of the Cinta Larga, an Amazonian tribe uncontacted by the Western world until the 1960s. 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.
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Reviews
To the shelf of anthropological classics that includes Gregory Bateson's Naven, Levi Strauss's Tristes Tropiques, and Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, we can now add Alex Cuadros's When We Sold God's Eye. Cuadros takes us into one of the most forbidding regions of the globe, and inside the minds of an ancient people as they take their first - diseased, bloodstained - steps into so-called civilization. A first-class work of reporting, this book is above all a work of compassion for Indigenous peoples everywhere, forced to navigate a nearly impossible passage
So powerful . . . Cuadros, an American reporter who spent years living and working in Brazil and speaks fluent Portuguese, found the perfect man and incident to tell this achingly tragic story. And unlike so many others, he tells it from the point of view of the Indigenous people themselves, at a scale small enough to hold in your hand
Fascinating . . . The quandaries play out on an intimate scale thanks to the details Cuadros gleaned in extensive interviews with Pio and his peers. This book has the pace of a novel and the whodunit suspense of investigative journalism
Cuadros, a veteran journalist of South American political economy, spent months on the ground reporting this story and years digging into the history and honing his sense for contradiction to a fine edge, revealing how a tribe found both freedom and catastrophe in the discovery of one of the world's largest diamond deposits in its territory. Imagine Killers of the Flower Moon but set in Brazil instead of Oklahoma
Importantly, When We Sold God's Eye (the title's 'we' is a telling choice, with 'God's Eye' referring to a diamond so large it resembled something otherworldly) does not portray the Cinta Larga as mere bystanders in their own disarray . . . The mosaic result complicates the "childlike" guilelessness that white society ascribed to the nation's Indigenous people in order to enable dispossession - and renders the incessant greed of modern capitalism the true savage of the story
This book reads like a wondrous combination of Heart of Darkness and In Cold Blood, a nonfiction novel of modern conquest, capitalism, and murder. Cuadros writes with unsentimental compassion and unflinching moral clarity, investing his protagonists with human complexity while still reckoning with the broader social forces driving the destruction of the Amazon. A stunning work
Truly remarkable reporting, opening a window into one of the planet's most important places, and the people who live out their lives amidst its riches. It will complicate your view of the world, which is usually a useful thing
When We Sold God's Eye raises the biggest questions of our time and, much to its credit, offers no easy answers. Like the Amazon itself, it is rich, fascinating, and totally alive
Penetrating and wise; this book lit up a part of life that I'd known nothing about
Cuadros, a veteran journalist of South American political economy, spent months on the ground reporting this story and years digging into the history and honing his sense for contradiction to a fine edge, revealing how a tribe found both freedom and catastrophe in the discovery of one of the world's largest diamond deposits . . . Imagine Killers of the Flower Moon but set in Brazil
A remarkable feat of research embedded in vivid and compelling prose . . . Bursting with wild, chaotic clashes of human values and exposing profound greed, corruption, violence, courage, survival, and the everyday contradictions within us all, WHEN WE SOLD GOD'S EYE offers us new levels of understanding of Western society's relationship to our earth and to cultures vastly different from our own. A must read, simultaneously heartbreaking and heart-filling
An essential story, built on deep and empathetic reportage. A hugely impressive piece of work
Cuadros's narrative, based on six years of interviews, is laid out unsentimentally . . . He portrays his subjects - wide-boy Oita, the more sensitive Pio, the resilient Maria Beleza - as rounded individuals trying to navigate this new world of commerce, capitalism, temptation and laws. But this is no mere Rousseauean paradise lost, and Cuadros never shies from personal failings, domestic violence and petty jealousies: the brutality and hardship of the forest are portrayed unvarnished
Alex Cuadros spent years culturally embedded with the Cinta Larga, and tells their tragic but exciting story. He achieves the remarkable feat of understanding and sympathizing with both sides' attitudes, cultures, and motives, with a vibrant cast of real people
At the heart of Cuadros's lush, textured epic, layered with emotions and motivations both foul and fair, is an indictment of colonization itself
Beyond just a tale of conquest and assimilation, When We Sold God's Eye is a page-turner of adventure and tragedy, more akin to a fiction thriller than a typical work of straightforward reporting. Cuadros translates - literally and figuratively - a group of fascinating real-life characters for the page, giving them a level of agency and dimension rarely achieved in stories like this. This is the type of deeply reported and carefully written book that the world needs more of
In the annals of destruction of the world's wildernesses and their indigenous peoples, WHEN WE SOLD GOD'S EYE deserves widespread attention, and seems destined to become a modern classic of literary nonfiction
Extraordinary . . . Forces the reader to contend with the brutality that all humans are capable of when they receive sudden wealth and power
An extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, telling the gripping and astonishing story of how a small group in the Amazon, invaded and brutally treated by white settlers and miners, ended up exploiting an illicit diamond mine themselves. This is a complex and tragic story, deeply reported and beautifully written - a remarkable literary achievement