When We Sold God's Eye

Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon

By: Alex Cuadros

Narrated by: Alex Cuadros

In this "remarkable" true story, an Amazonian tribe is forced to reconcile with Westerners entering their territory and running an illegal diamond mine (Douglas Preston).

Growing up in a remote corner of the world’s largest rainforest, Pio, Maria, and Oita witnessed the first highway pierced through the century-old trees, and they lost their families to terrible new weapons and diseases. Pushed by the government to assimilate, they struggled to figure out their new capitalist reality, discovering its wonders as well as its horrors. They forged an uneasy symbiosis with their white antagonists—until decades of suppressed trauma erupted into a massacre; an act of retribution that made headlines across the globe.

Based on six years of immersive reporting and research, When We Sold God's Eye is 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. Most of all, it’s about a few startlingly clever individuals and their power to adapt and even thrive in the most unlikely circumstances.

Critic reviews

“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.”—Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God

“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.”—Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth and Fordlandia

“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.”—Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Sontag

"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."—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

“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.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“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.”—John Hemming, author of The Conquest of the Incas and People of the Rainforest

A sad, sad tale, well told

In-depth examination of the experience of one specific tribe of indigenous Amazonians called the "Cinta Larga" from the time in the 1960s when they first came into contact with whites, to the present day. The book tells the story of how, over the course of one generation, the Cinta Larga went from living in the jungle with no idea about electricity or clothing or money, to having their lands invaded and plundered for resources valued by the outside world--primarily timber and diamonds.

It's a harrowing, sad, and ultimately frustrating story of how extractive capitalism and greed were used once again as an excuse to deny indigenous rights and colonialize native peoples nearly to the point of disappearance.

[I listened to this as an audio book read by the author. He was easy to listen to and I liked being able to hear the names of people and places pronounced correctly.]