The Blood Diamonds of Brazil

"In When We Sold God's Eye, Alex Cuadros traces the lineage of the Cinta Larga's remarkable journey: that of a tribe forcibly brought into Brazil and modernity only to fall prey to the predatory violence of capitalism. Cuadros's clear-eyed narrative centers on a group of Cinta Larga individuals whose lives are transformed by contact with mainstream Brazilian society, taking into account the ambiguity with which the Brazilian state and foreign actors have treated the Cinta Larga (alternately as monsters, children, and business partners)."

"What began as a peaceful attempt to end the illegal activity-"All the warriors knew they weren't to hurt or kill anyone," one of the Cinta Larga would later recall-ended in a bloodbath that put the Cinta Larga, many of whom had never had contact with mainstream society until as recently as the 1960s, under the country's and the world's scrutinizing gaze."

In early April 2004 federal agents recovered the decomposing bodies of 29 diamond prospectors in Rondônia's Amazonian thickets. The men had been dredging for diamonds on Cinta Larga territory when a small band of Cinta Larga rallied to ward off the prospectors. What began as a peaceful attempt to end illegal mining ended in a bloodbath that brought intense national and international scrutiny. Many Cinta Larga had first contact with mainstream Brazilian society in the 1960s. Decades earlier, white rubber seekers massacred a dozen Cinta Larga. The Brazilian state and foreign actors alternately treated the people as monsters, children, and business partners, and individual choices over forty years contributed to dispossession.

Read at The Nation