It was April 7, 2004, and Nacoça Pio was one of the first to learn of the bloodbath. A leader of the Cinta-Larga — an indigenous tribe who for centuries lived in isolation in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil — Pio knew that tensions were high between his people and the white diamond prospectors who came to make their fortunes in their backyard.
The bodies of 26 miners had been found near their reservation. Some were shot with arrows, some murdered with guns or beaten with clubs. “Two of the bodies were missing their eyeballs, giving rise to rumors that the warriors had covered the victims’ eyes with honey to attract ants and bees,” Alex Cuadros writes in his new book, “When We Sold God’s Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon” (Grand Central, out Dec. 3).
During a trial in November 2023, the prosecution alleged that the “indigenous people who committed these acts wanted to keep anyone else from mining diamonds on their lands.” And Pio was one of the main suspects.
The massacre was shocking, but not a complete surprise. Since 1999, the Stream of the Blackflies, a mining operation in the region rumored to be worth $20 million every month, had become a powder keg. It was only a matter of time before the tensions between the natives and the white fortune seekers would lead to violence.
Pio had been labeled a “diamond baron” by the media, and “rumored to own three mansions and a fleet of imported trucks with white chauffeurs,” Cuadros writes. “Some of this, he conceded, was true.” But while he shared part blame for the unchecked greed, Pio couldn’t help but wonder: “Was it greedy to desire the things he’d been taught to desire by white men?”
Prior to white treasure hunters arriving, his people—numbering barely 2,000—had no experience with the civilized world. They’d never seen calendars or clocks. They knew nothing of money or wealth. As Pio once put it, “When we wanted something, nuts or honey or fruit, we would go look for it in the forest.”
The Cinta-Larga — who, legend has it, once shadowed an Amazon expedition led by Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century — were also cannibals, at least until the 1970s. The warriors “ate everything, even breaking the bones to suck the marrow,” Cuadros writes. When asked by an anthropologist what human flesh tastes like, they compared it to the “dark, delicious meat of the tapir,” Cuadros writes. White men, on the other hand—who the Cinta-Larga first encountered in the 1920s — were “far too salty.”
There was no such thing as ownership in the world of the Cinta-Larga, a tribe barely 2,000 strong. Even the metal tools that white men introduced, like swords or machetes, would be dropped on the ground after each use, left for somebody else to discover. The diamonds that would soon turn the area into a magnet for prospectors were largely ignored. Once, a group of women found a stone so large, “they said it looked like Ngurá inhakíp — ‘God’s eye,’” Cuadros writes. “It would have been worth an almost unimaginable sum. But they had no use for it, so they tossed it back in the water.”
The white visitors didn’t just bring gifts; they also brought disease. In 1971, when Pio was just a child, his father Mankalu contracted measles while visiting an outsiders’ camp, and soon he and most of Pio’s family were dead. It was a turning moment for the young Indian. “Left without anyone to turn to, Pio discovered that he could remain calm in the face of extremity, and take the initiative when others failed to,” writes Cuadros.
Pio found a new village to call home, and soon proved that he had something valuable to offer. He had a knack for leadership, and a charming personality that won over whites and Indians alike. With his grasp of Portuguese, he became a sort of foreign minister for the tribe. “Whenever there’s a problem, I’ll deal with the white people,” Pio would explain to his friends.
As an adult, Pio became a natural leader, though a vastly different type than his warrior father. “Though not afraid of violence, (Pio) wanted to avoid it,” writes Cuadros. “Hoping to keep the government on his side, he tried to go through official channels.”
The trouble started in 1999, when Luca Pintado, an eccentric “albino-white” man in his 80s who spoke with an unplaceable accent, arrived in Cinta Larga country looking for diamonds. There had long been rumors of hidden riches in the Amazon jungle, but Pio never entirely believed the stories.
“You’ll see,” Pintado promised him. “You’re going to be the richest Indian in the world.”
Pintado was right, at least about the diamonds. As they soon discovered, the area contained one of the world’s most abundant diamond deposits. Although Brazilian law forbade mining in indigenous territory, it didn’t stop prospectors from coming anyway. And rather than fight to keep them out, Pio partnered with them, charging a fee to enter the reservation.
At first, it was a financial windfall, with many tribe leaders buying luxuries like new homes, color TVs, and cars. Pio, however, was more interested in redistributing the wealth. He invested in medicine and medical staff for the tribe. He bought dairy cows and hired a farmer to teach how to milk them. “Pio was always thinking of his people,” one tribal member told the author. “He wasn’t, like, ‘This is mine.’ Instead it was: ‘This is ours.’”
But resentment was growing on both sides. The Indians felt that they should get more ownership of the mines, while the miners believed the tribe was getting rich on the backs of their labor. Pio was trapped in the middle, “at once an alleged kingpin, overseeing a multimillion-dollar mining operation, and a legitimate leader of his people, fighting for better education and health care and the integrity of their lands,” Cuadros writes.
By early 2004, the situation had reached a boiling point, and there was little Pio could do to contain it. After the massacre, Pio only made matters worse with his media appearances. “Don’t let your son come here anymore, don’t let your husband come here anymore,” he said in an interview with TV Globo. “Know that this can happen, because I can’t keep everyone under control.”
Federal Police tried to charge Pio with “leading” and “instigating” the killings, but couldn’t find enough evidence to convict him. Two decades later, “almost all the charges have passed the statute of limitations, expiring without a verdict,” Cuadros writes.
Pio continues to insist that “if [he] had been present, [he]… would not have allowed the events to take place.” But his regrets over what became of the Cinta-Larga people go far beyond one bloody day of violence.
“The white man’s things make us lazy,” he allegedly said during a phone call intercepted by the feds. None of their misfortune would’ve come if they’d just “stayed in the forest. At least we didn’t worry there. There were no clothes, no money, nothing . . . There were no guns, no weekdays, no Sunday, no Saturday.”
