Nemonte Nenquimo’s early life was deeply shaped by the legacy of American evangelical missions in the Amazon. In 1956, an incident known as “Operation Auca” occurred, in which five missionaries, Jim Elliot, Nate Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, Roger Youderian, and Nate Saint, were killed by Waorani warriors on a sandbar beside the Curaray River. After months of dropping gifts from an airplane, the men had landed there in an attempt to establish direct contact and evangelize a people they understood to be “unreached.” Their project was named “Operation Auca,” but Auca was not the Waorani people’s name for themselves. In We Will Be Jaguars, Nenquimo highlights its derogatory associations, stating “‘Auca’ is actually the word the Kichwa use for the Waorani. But somehow it spread and the cowori use it too. Rachel used it a lot. It means savages” (17). The name therefore reveals the colonial assumptions already embedded within the mission: the Waorani were perceived as dangerous “savages” who needed to be converted and “civilized” rather than sovereign people with their own beliefs and social structures. 

The missionaries’ deaths were widely publicized in the United States and became a powerful story of martyrdom in evangelical communities. Time magazine captured the flavor of this narrative, describing the mission as a “campaign of airborne friendliness” against “A pure Stone Age people [who] hate all strangers, [and] live only to hunt, fight and kill” (TIME, “Ecuador: Mission to the Auca.” TIME, Jan. 23, 1956). The missionaries' deaths were framed as heroic Christian sacrifice rather than an intrusion into Waorani territory. Elisabeth Elliot reinforced this interpretation in her bestselling 1957 book Through Gates of Splendor, which portrayed the men, particularly her husband Jim, as models of faith, courage, and self-sacrifice. 

The missionaries’ deaths ultimately enabled a more sustained missionary presence in Waorani life. In 1958, Elisabeth Elliot and Nate Saint’s sister, Rachel, returned to the region under the auspices of the Wycliffe Bible Translators. They established a permanent presence, working for decades to convert the Waorani people. This effort involved relocating previously nomadic groups into settled communities centered around a church, school, and airstrip, introducing Western clothing, and discouraging traditional spiritual practices. 

We Will Be Jaguars shifts authority from the famous missionaries to the people who experienced the mission’s long-term consequences. Nenquimo’s memoir offers a critical, firsthand account of this period, portraying Rachel Saint as a colonial figure who negatively impacted the Waorani way of life. The author details how the missionaries’ introduction of foreign goods, language, and religion systematically eroded Waorani culture. Mission settlements created dependence on imported food and manufactured goods, weakening established patterns of subsistence. Missionaries also inadvertently exposed inhabitants to disease and made their territory more accessible to commercial interests such as oil companies. Her personal narrative acts as a counterpoint to the hagiographic missionary accounts popular in the West, revealing the cultural dislocation and trauma that resulted from these evangelizing efforts and framing the backdrop for her later fight to reclaim Indigenous sovereignty.