An extended Reading the Bestsellers review of a 2024 book by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson
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Abrams Press, 2024. 368 Pages. $33 (e-book $35, audio $25)
When five American missionaries in 1956 were killed by Waorani tribesmen in Ecuador, the news received international attention and galvanized missionary work in the U.S. The martyred men became an inspiration to Christians to this day. This memoir by Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani woman born in 1985, portrays a disturbing picture of the impact on her people and the environment.
Elizabeth Elliot, widow of one of the murdered men, and Rachel Saint, sister to another, lived among the Waoranis to continue the work. After two years, Elliott returned to the United States, leaving Saint to carry on alone.
Jaguars reads like a novel. We see the effect Rachel Saint had on the community through the eyes of six-year-old Nemonte Nenquimo who was attracted by the benefits enjoyed by children who attended Saint’s church. Only those who attended were given clothing, medicine, sugar, toys and candy. Saint held an authoritarian grip over the community through a combination of threats and bribes.
When helicopters with people from “Rachel Land” began arriving, Saint explained the visitors were Christians from an oil company, who wanted the oil under the Waorani land. She told them the changes would benefit them. Despite the reservations of many elders, she persuaded many of the people to agree, and to cooperate with the work of clearing forests for roads and building pipelines.
The changes brought division in the community and within Nenquimo’s family. Some enjoyed the material benefits of working for the oil company while others predicted the destruction of the environment and the tribe’s way of life. Her mother had initially been resistant to everything that Saint represented, but when her son became ill, she was forced to agree to attend church to obtain medicine from Saint.
When Saint died, the villagers found a box inside her hut filled with money, which they termed “worthless paper.” One of the men said, “The oil companies gave it to Rachel so that she would let them into our lands.”
Saint was replaced by her nephew and his family, who proved to be more loving people. They befriended Nenquimo’s family for a time, and then returned to the United States. Nenquimo, wanting to become like the white people, left home at 14 and went to a village where there was a mission.
At the mission she was sexually abused by the leader while his wife looked the other way. Eventually they brought her to a mission in Quito to train her for evangelistic work.
The internal conflict of trying to please a God she didn’t know while keeping her attachment to her own people and their culture, of trying to make sense of the lies and hypocrisy she witnessed among the missionaries, became unendurable. She left without any idea of a path forward.
Over the ensuing years she moved between Quito and home, depressed and worried about how the oil companies were creating enmity between the Indigenous tribes, contaminating the water and corrupting her people. She felt powerless against such an adversary.
When she met Mitch Anderson, a white journalist and activist, her journey as a leader began. As she and Anderson visited elders from other tribes whose lands had been destroyed by the oil companies, an elder told them, “The white people’s world seeks to destroy community. Once they destroy the community, then it is easy to destroy the individual.”
Nenquimo began the work of uniting the Indigenous people to protect their lands under the name of the Ceibo Alliance. Anderson, who became her husband, kept the world informed of the Alliance’s struggle to regain control of their lands, and gained international support, including that of celebrities like Leonardo Di Caprio.
Their work culminated in a lawsuit against the Ecuadorian government, leading to a 2019 ruling protecting half a million acres of Waorani ancestral land in the rainforest from oil drilling.
While applauding Nenquimo’s success, courage and indomitable spirit, it is impossible to read her account without sorrow for the ways in which too many missionaries have colluded with governments and business in defrauding and attempting to destroy Indigenous cultures.
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