We Will Be Jaguars presents resource extraction as a form of cultural warfare that systematically dismantles Indigenous societies. The memoir frames the oil industry’s presence in the Amazon as an invasion that goes far beyond ecological damage. By poisoning the land, fomenting internal conflict, and replacing self-sufficiency with a degrading dependency, extractivism wages a direct assault on the spiritual, social, and practical foundations of Waorani life. The book demonstrates that the destruction of the forest is inseparable from the destruction of the people who call it home.

The initial and most direct impact of oil operations is the disruption of the ecological balance that underpins Waorani culture. Nenquimo’s father, Tiri, recounts how working for the Texaco oil company in his youth revealed the industry’s inherent incompatibility with the forest. The noise from chainsaws and other machinery scared away game animals, making hunting—a cornerstone of their subsistence and cultural identity—far more difficult. Tiri’s experience illustrates how the very process of exploration severs the practical and spiritual ties between the people and the land they rely on. This desecration is made explicit when Tiri tells Nenquimo that the oil being extracted is “the blood of our ancestors” (110). The metaphor directly links the industry to murder and sacrilege, as it drains the land of its sacred history and the Indigenous people of their means of survival.

Beyond direct environmental harm, the memoir exposes how oil companies strategically exploit and create internal divisions to weaken Indigenous resistance. The oil company’s intrusion provokes conflict with the uncontacted Tagëiri clan, who perceive the Waorani as responsible for this invasion of their land. This conflict culminates in the massacre of the uncontacted Taromenane people by a rival Waorani clan. Opi speculates that the oil company operating in the area likely provided weapons to the Waorani, encouraging them to serve the company’s interest by eliminating the uncontacted group who fiercely opposed their presence. The civil war between the Waorani and Tagëiri reveals extractivism’s insidious tactic of turning Indigenous people against each other to clear the way for exploitation. This strategy of co-option is also seen in figures like Boya, a Waorani man who becomes a community relations officer for an oil company, working against his own people’s interests for personal gain.

Ultimately, the long-term contamination of the Amazon from oil extraction creates a state of dependency that erodes cultural autonomy and dignity. When Nenquimo visits the Maxus oil road, she is horrified to see Waorani women begging for water from a company hose because their traditional creeks and rivers have been poisoned. The Kofan leader Emergildo’s story reinforces this cycle on a multi-generational scale. After oil contamination led to the death of his children, his community is offered meager handouts like canned tuna as “compensation.” In the memoir, the town of Shell, “named after the first oil company that tried to drill in our lands” (179), becomes an emblem of the displacement and cultural erasure forced on the Waorani. At one of her lowest ebbs, Nenquimo is depicted “drinking beer on a dirt road on the outskirts of Shell, [and] planning to build a little shack in the mud on the outskirts of their town” (179). This image of forced dependency stands in stark contrast to the self-sufficient life described in her childhood. This cycle of poison and patronage traps communities in a state of humiliation, forcing them to rely on the very corporations that destroyed their way of life.