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| The story
is located in the area of the Pantanal Matogrossense, in the region of
the middle-Paraguay, in 1778, when a group of soldiers is escorting Diogo,
an astronomer, naturalist and cartographer, recently graduated from the
University of Coimbra, in Portugal, who has come to help delimiting the
frontiers of the country, claimed by both Portugal and Spain. They are
going to the Fort Coimbra. Built three years earlier to defend the area,
it is permanently harassed by knight indians, the Guaicurus. The Portuguese
Crown is trying to make a peace treat with the Indians. On their way to the fort, a guide finds a group of Guaicuru women swimming on a river. Eventually the soldiers rape them. Three characters stand out: Pedro, who leads the group and is particularly ferocious; Diogo, who will have to confront his "enlightened" education to the harsh reality of the colony; and Antônio, who carries a secret map with the localization of suppositional silver mines. They end up involved in a slaughter, even Diogo.
Later they go to the fort, including the Guaicuru woman, that Diogo prevented Pedro from killing, and a little white boy who was kidnapped by the Indians, In the Fort Coimbra, where the commander lives with an indian woman from another tribe - Guaná, already indoctrinated - the conflicts grow. The film will work on these relationships, which represent ultimately the conflict between two worlds and actually the creation of a third one, where the concepts of both sides begin to disintegrate. This is shown by Diogo's conflict between the remembrance of his virgin Portuguese bride and the guilty attraction for the Guaicuru indian; by the efforts of the commander towards conciliating both worlds; by the ferocity with which Pedro wanders maddened in a growing will for violence, as if he searched for a limit that the New World will not give him; and also by Antônio's fantasy about the silver mines, which possesses his body and soul, leaving him incapable of dealing with reality. At the same time they have to fight against the Guaicurus, who are still powerful and renew their attacks after the massacre. The rain and high tide period will mean a pause in the fighting. When the waters start to lower, the possibility of peace seems to reinvigorate. The Guaicurus go back to the fort and say they have accepted the peace treat. As a proof of their good will they propose that the Portuguese keep their indian women. They agree. The women demonstrate to be apprehensive and ask the guards to put away their guns. Moments later groups of indians that were hiding in the area invade the fort and kill the soldiers.
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