The discovery of rich pearl beds in 1498 during the arrival of Columbus’ third voyage triggered greed and genocide, intertwining the lives of the Conquistadores, Natives and African slaves.

SYNOPSIS:

BLOOD for PEARLS

“Blood for Pearls”; the genocide of the sixteenth century…triggered by the third voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1498, and the discovery of the world’s richest pearl oyster beds aka “The Pearl Coast”.

The feature action and adventure film Blood for Pearls deals with the lives of the people immediately affected by the arrival of the Europeans, the Spaniards, the local natives, and the slaves from Africa and their intertwined relationships.

More than eleven tons of pearls were extracted in less than 15 years, bringing a huge economic uprising for Europe and in the process over one million natives and blacks were killed. “The life of those divers was no life at all, disfigured by their labor, looked like a different race of men or monsters. There is no hellish and hopeless life on this earth that may be compared with it.”

Charaima, the son of the Cacique (Chief) who loses his childish innocence and watches in horror how his parents are enslaved and killed, Dembe who arrives on an African slave ship and tries desperately to help with the survival of his people and Pedro, who was part of Columbus’ crew and stayed on the island as a cruel and drunk boat supervisor.

The central plot is the collecting and hiding of pearls in a buried clay jar by Charaima in survival mode and later Dembe. After the film ends, in a documentary Postscript Reel, the actual buried clay jar filled with pearls is unearthed in the 1950is.