Characters – “A Storm Hits Valparaiso”
José de San Martín, Argentine but raised in Spain, deserts from the Spanish army and is smuggled into his homeland by the British Secret Service to raise the flag of rebellion against his former masters.
Zé, an African slave in the sugar plantations in northern Brazil, escapes and stows away aboard a ship bound for Buenos Aires.
Catalina Flores de la Peńa flees the death of her parents and the failed Chilean revolution in Santiago and decides to help the war effort in Argentina in her own unique way.
Lord Thomas Cochrane, a brilliant Royal Navy officer, is disgraced in the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814 and leaves Europe to build the rebel forces' navy for the fight against Spain.
Diego and Jorge, two young boys from a hamlet in the foothills of the Andes, run away from home after a tragic accident and get caught up in the independence struggle.
And Pacha, a Quechua Indian working in the death mines of Potosí, is freed by the advancing Argentine forces and joins their army so that his sons will never have to die, like so many of his brothers, filling the colonial coffers.
Their individual quests for personal freedom become tied to the liberation of a continent as revolutionary fervour sweeps across South America. As the fight against the Spanish reaches its denouement, San Martín and Bolívar meet in Guayaquil. To the consternation of his supporters, San Martín, the liberator of half a continent, steps aside and leaving the final glory to Bolívar. For two hundred years, his motives have remained a mystery. Until now.