Alan West, British government official in Brazil, is kidnapped by the M.R.B. (Movimento Revolucionario Brasileiro) in order to be exchanged for political prisoners. His guard, Carlos Esquerdo, is a would-be philosopher, reciting quotes by Fanon and Camus, and interested in poetry and chess. He tries to make his hostage understand the ideas behind the revolutionary movement, reads their manifesto to him, and says that the corrupt government must be punished for "selling our country to the interests of US capitalism, which it has allowed to exploit our resources and steal our land, while our people starve and suffer all the miseries of poverty and unemployment".
While Esquerdo focuses on the plight of the 90 million Brazilian workers and landless farmers, West is preoccupied with the extinction of the indigenous Indians. In flashbacks, the audience learns that West has long been interested in Indian culture, rituals, and legends, and that he is aware of the genocide under way in the country. He knows that if no measures are taken, there will be few Indians left to tell their tales and perform their cultural rites of the Quarup. They were being murdered by gifts of poisoned sugar, introduced infectious disease, and outright slaughter financed by greedy land owners and speculators, both foreign and domestic. Henchman Ataide Pereira tells an American investigator of the history of murder and mercilessness. The play also criticises missionaries; Reverend Elmer Penn is portrayed as treating "his flock" of converted Indians like domesticated animals not fit to think for themselves. An anthropologist sees the situation as clearly as West but has no power or means to change it for the better.
Finally, Esquerdo shoots and kills West. The play ends with the historic bombing during the Quarup celebrations, which extinguished the Cintas Tribe.