What the Cinta Larga can teach us about the Amazon

In 1914, former President Theodore Roosevelt joined Brazilian general and explorer Cândido Rondon on a perilous journey down the River of Doubt (now the Roosevelt River), in the western Amazon. Their expedition symbolized a rare convergence of diplomacy and science, carving both literal and symbolic paths into one of the planet’s most biodiverse — and politically contested — regions.

More than a century later, the Amazon remains a geopolitical fault line. Spanning nine countries and over 5.5 million square kilometers, it is critical not only to global climate stability, but also to transnational criminal networks, energy markets and indigenous sovereignty. Far from a blank canvas, the Amazon is a contested space — one of extraction, resistance and survival.

That tension is the backdrop of journalist Alex Cuadros’s new book, “When We Sold God’s Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon,” which traces the story of the Cinta Larga people, an indigenous community entangled in Brazil’s resource economy and political system. Cuadros achieves what few policy papers or headlines can: he dwells in the messy, human complexity of the Amazon — and of Brazil itself.

A mirror, not a myth

The Amazon is often miscast. To some, it is a mystical Eden; to others, a lawless frontier. Neither vision captures its reality. For global readers, works like Cuadros’s or Candice Millard’s “The River of Doubt,” which chronicles the Roosevelt-Rondon expedition, offer a necessary corrective. They anchor the forest not in fantasy, but in lived experience.

Millard’s account, in particular, offers a rare early glimpse of the Cinta Larga — not through contact, but through traces. As Roosevelt and Rondon descended the river, they moved through lands long inhabited and vigilantly watched. Their journey relied on rubber tappers — some of whose descendants remain in the region — and traversed territories shaped for generations by indigenous presence.

Cândido Rondon, born with indigenous ancestry and raised in poverty, was a rare figure in Brazilian history: a military officer, scientist and humanist. He led Brazil’s first telegraph expeditions through the Amazon and championed peaceful contact with indigenous groups, advocating for constitutional protections at a time when the state largely saw them as obstacles. 

His imperfect but visionary legacy helped lay the groundwork for today’s indigenous land protections — including those covering parts of Cinta Larga territory.

Those protections, however, have been eroded. As Cuadros recounts, Cinta Larga lands have faced waves of invasion — through illegal diamond mining, land grabbing and near-total state neglect. In the 2000s, some 5,000 prospectors flooded their territory. A handful of Cinta Larga leaders tried to manage the chaos. Some profited. Most did not. Internal divisions followed. 

“They got us hooked on Western goods but never gave us a sustainable way to make a living,” one leader told Cuadros.

This is not a story of lost innocence or inevitable decline. It is a narrative of constrained agency — of communities offered a path into the market economy, but no viable way to thrive within it.

Infrastructure as extraction

Governance has often arrived in the Amazon in the form of infrastructure and extraction. Under Brazil’s military dictatorship, the BR-364 highway slashed through the forest, ushering in industry, deforestation and, eventually, organized crime. Today, the Amazon’s most deforested areas are among its most violent.

In cities like Altamira and São Félix do Xingu, notorious criminal groups such as the Comando Vermelho (Red Command, or CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital, PCC) have filled the state’s vacuum, asserting control over entire municipalities.

That governance void has become a strategic liability. Organized crime is now active in more than 260 municipalities across Brazil’s Legal Amazon. Illegal gold mining alone is worth between USD 12 billion and USD 28 billion a year, much of it laundered with little oversight. Until March 2025, buyers could self-certify the origin of their gold under a legal “presumption of good faith.” 

That loophole has since been closed by Brazil’s Supreme Court, but enforcement remains uncertain.

This crisis converges with a legal battle over indigenous rights. A conservative effort to reinterpret Brazil’s Constitution through the so-called marco temporal (or “time frame”) argument would limit land claims to areas occupied in 1988 — undermining protections that currently cover about 25% of the Amazon. The Supreme Court ruled the doctrine unconstitutional in 2023. Congress, however, passed legislation in defiance of that decision.

Rather than impose a resolution, the court has opted to convene conciliation hearings — a move indigenous leaders view as a betrayal. For many, land rights are not simply historical claims or cultural preservation, they are Brazil’s most effective firewall against deforestation. To weaken them is not only a legal or moral failure. It is an ecological one.

Though the Amazon straddles nine countries, more than 60% is within Brazil’s borders. What happens in the forest — especially to the people who protect it — will shape the trajectory of the global climate. It will also define Brazil’s credibility as a defender of democracy and human rights.

The Amazon is not a metaphor. It is a living system of cultures, economies and contradictions. To protect it, we must protect those who call it home — not as symbols, but as agents of their own futures.

Understanding the Amazon means resisting the urge to simplify. As Cuadros reminds us, it means letting go of the stories we like to tell — and listening instead to the ones we need to hear.