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The rapacious exploitation of South American resources by foreign companies is not a new phenomenon; it began with Christopher Columbus and continues today. However, the cynicism, greed and inhumanity of a 19th-century British company in exploiting the quebracho forests of the Chaco in northern Argentina has rarely been equalled. This drama shows how the corporation, with the cooperation of authorities, enslaved the local population to harvest every one of the tannin-producing (but slow-growing) quebracho trees, leaving behind a decimated and impoverished population and a wasteland with no quebracho trees. The film also shows how the resistance of the local people was brutally suppressed so that the lucrative trade could continue.