The jaguar, or tigre, represents Victor’s inner strength. Victor associates the jaguar with his family and home. He has a vivid memory of a childhood encounter with a jaguar, and his father told him that their ancestors “built some of their greatest temples to the tigre. The powers of other animals didn’t even come close” (26).

Victor calls upon these powers at two pivotal moments in the book. First, when a puma stalks Victor on the mountain, he pretends to be a jaguar, for strength:“The puma wasn’t so sure it wanted a piece of me after all. I reached for a big stick, a piece of a shattered tree limb that the wind had brought down, and started waving it around and around like a crazy man” (114). Second, when Victor and Rico are running from Jarra, a jaguar reveals to Victor a path to escape: “I slapped myself awake, fully awake. I doubted the jaguar, but not the message, whoever had sent it—maybe my father? One of the jaguar’s powers, my father once told me, was invisibility, the ability to move unseen. Maybe Rico and I could cross the peak unseen and escape before Jarra knew we were gone” (188).