We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

by Nemonte Nenquimo

We walked along a foot-worn trail by the side of the runway. I felt wonderful. My body was tired. My heels had blisters from the rubber boots. But my spirit was tranquil. The forest was the best medicine.

“Sunday is a wonderful day for hunting!” I exclaimed, my eyes tearing up with some mix of relief, joy, and wild love for my people.

Soon the breeze died and the sun burned heavy. I wet my hair with river water.

Life in town had stripped me, slowly, imperceptibly, of . . . what was it? A connection? A skill? An instinct?

I didn’t feel good about this plane. The cowori showed up whenever they wanted. To save us. To trick us. To take from us.

“Or the government looking to drill for oil in our lands,” Opi said. I stared at him. “What do you mean?” “The government wants to sell our lands to the oil companies.” He nodded upriver.

after we had covered up the turtle tracks on the beach to protect the remaining nests.

“It’s like burning the head of a pit viper,” Opi remarked. “It makes the same color flame.”

“The oil companies will destroy everything,” Opi said. “Our stories, our families, our forest, our waterfalls . . .” “What are we going to do?” I asked. There was a long silence. We didn’t know what to do.

But then I would dream awful dreams. Horrible, unspeakable fights with my mother. Black-smoke fires burning our villages. Tapirs licking salt off rusty oil wells. Shabby-looking jaguars crossing dusty roads. Vultures picking at the bodies of my elders.

They wanted to save our souls and change our stories and steal our lands.

They were all beautiful, brilliant women. They were from the village of Sarayaku and were famous for their battles against the oil companies. They wore white blouses with blue embroidery. They spoke perfect Spanish. Their necks and hands were freshly stained in the bluish-black hue of wito ink.

“The government is putting the entire south-central Amazon up for auction,” another woman said. “All the oil companies will be in Quito next week.”

“All men are drunks,” another said. “We women are going to stop the oil companies!”

“We women are the voices of the forest,” she continued. “If we don’t speak for our mother, no one will.”

“But what about the economy?” the baggy-eyed man asked. “How is Ecuador supposed to develop if we don’t drill for oil?” “How are the Waorani people supposed to survive if we don’t have our forest?” Alicia retorted. “How are our relatives, the Taromenane and the Tagëiri supposed to survive if there are no animals to hunt?” I gritted my teeth. I wanted to say these things. I wanted them to rise up in my chest and throat and mouth, these truthful words. “Isn’t it true that many Waorani people want jobs? Don’t they want roads, electricity, schools? Or do they want to keep living in poverty?”

Her Spanish accent was terrible. I liked the way she insulted my brother. It felt real and loving.

“You know your brother said something very striking to me the other day. He said that your people’s stories are what keep the rainforest alive. And that if the Waorani people lose their stories, then the forest will fall to the oil companies.”

“I want to learn,” I said.

“Because . . .” I said cautiously, “because of the things . . .”

I put the headphones on and closed my eyes. I listened first, before transcribing anything, all the way until the end of the recording. I let my elders’ voices carry me.

“The company will give Ömpure and Bogenëi’s children weapons to seek revenge against the Taromenane,” he said darkly. “It’s going to be a massacre.”

I had never met the Taromenane people, but I loved them.

“They found them, the Taromenane. Their longhouse. They killed them all.”

The women were collecting water from the oil company. And I could guess why. Contamination. Once I had not known that word, but now I did. The fresh water of the creeks the women would normally depend on had been poisoned.

The company was taking the oil from our forests and contaminating our water sources. The oil was taken to the cities so that the white people could drive cars and fly planes while Waorani women were degraded in the dusty shadows of the barbed wire, left to beg for water.

I had been just a little girl in the village of Toñampare when the helicopter had landed that day. Distracted by the shiny earrings some important woman had worn! Shiny earrings! I had no idea that inside the longhouse Rachel Saint was orchestrating her final act: facilitating the delivery of these forests to the blue-eyed, Bible-carrying boss of the oil company, Maxus Energy.

a war between what we were and what we had become.

“There is no peace!” the woman shouted. “You will find no peace here!” I walked towards her. She threw a rock at me. I didn’t blink. “No one is allowed here,” she screamed again. “My husband will kill you! Get out!” “I’ve come to see the girls,” I said softly. “I’ve come to bring peace.” A man’s voice yelled from inside: “Take another step and I will kill you.” “I am not afraid of you,” I said, trying to train my eyes on everything all at once. “Who sent you here?” the man’s voice shouted. I said: “I have come alone. I had a vision. I saw the girls.”

“Who sent you?” he asked again. His voice was tired, wounded, sick. “The government? The missionaries? The NGOs?”

I heard a voice in my head. The old woman’s voice from a long time ago, the sleepwalking jaguar that hunted me in her dreams. “Manamaino, manamaino,” the voice said. “That’s it. That’s it. Just like that.”

But deep down, I didn’t know how to help them beyond just being with them – just showing them, for as long as I could, kindness, love.

“What a strange existence that would be . . .” “What do you mean?” He sipped beer. “To just exist in the world as a tourist . . . kind of pitiful, right?”

“Keep the trees standing and the Indians in poverty!” “Clean water,” the gringo said softly. “The oil companies have poisoned the rivers—”

“I’ve been living out in Lago Agrio,” he said, “where all the creeks and rivers have been poisoned by the oil industry. For the last few years, I’ve been working with the Kofan, Siona, and Siekopai peoples, building rain-water catchment systems.”

I gazed emptily into the courtyard. I felt like I was being raped by a story.

I liked the way he laughed, the way one of his eyes went slightly astray. It made him look wild. He said that he wanted to learn more about what I had seen on the oil roads. He wanted to know if he could help.

“That’s why I’m here.” “Why?” I asked, pretending I didn’t understand. “Because the world where I was born is destroying all of this,” he said, casting his gaze everywhere and then settling his eyes on me.

I stepped out of my tent and knelt next to the snake. I felt a wild power coursing through my blood. My mother always burned snakes’ heads: a message to the spirits, to the sorcerers that wanted to do harm. “You must burn the snake’s head in the fire now,” I told him. He looked at me with accepting eyes. No judgment, no questions. He just did it. “The snake is burning violet,” he whispered. “A cold violet.” “I want to know about you,” I said. My body was trembling. I cupped my hands before the fire. I didn’t know what I meant by that. It had something to do with the chicha and the snake’s head. “Me too,” he said quietly. “Me too, Many Stars.”

“Is that what the company has given the Kofan people as compensation for poisoning the river?” Michi asked Emergildo gravely. Emergildo’s sigh was painful. “Yes.”

And suddenly I understood how the companies had taken everything and given nothing back. No running water, no medical clinics, no schools.

“I’m sorry. I’m so angry.” “It’s okay to be angry.” “I didn’t know . . .” “What didn’t you know?” “That the water would kill them.” She covered her eyes again with her forearm. “I gave them chocula,” she said, sobbing. “They played in the river . . .” I exhaled deeply. “How long ago was this?” “A long time ago,” she said. “My children died a long time ago and it still hurts.”

“When the company treats us like dogs,” she continued, “when they spill oil in the river and give us little cans of tuna, I remember my children . . . I remember what the company took from us . . . and I get so mad, so mad.”

Doubt about what must be done.

“Why do white people read so much?” “To learn about . . .” He paused, staring out the window. “To see little parts of ourselves in other people’s stories.”

“The labs are in the pockets of the oil industry. They are lying to us.” “They laugh at us,” Flor shouted. “They treat us like animals!”

“We will keep building the rainwater systems,”

“No!” Flor said. “We must do more than that!”

“What can we do?” Emergildo asked softly. I glanced at Michi, then at Flor. Her cheeks were twitching in rage. “I don’t know!” she yelled, standing up from the table. “Something! Something!”

“I wish that the people of my country could see this, could feel this, could understand this. Most of the oil from these forests gets shipped up to California, where our entire society, all of our comfort, is built on the destruction of the rivers and the forests and the lives . . .”