THE KING OF THE CATTLE
FIRST PHASE
The story commences at the dawn of the Second World War.
Immigrants from several countries had been settling in Brazil since the 19th century
and had rapidly integrated themselves to the local culture.
São Paulo, 1943. On one side, the Mezenga family. On the other, the Berdinazzi. In the
middle, an almost insignificant strip of land is the motive for a relentless squabble
between these two old and stubborn Italian immigrants, living symbols of the
countryman’s obstinacy.
This hatred was no hindrance for Berdinazzi’s youngest daughter - beautiful Giovanna
- and Mezenga’s only son - Enrico - to fall in love.
Against everyone and everything, after threatening to enlist and leave for war, Enrico
finally gets his father’s approval. Mezenga humbles himself and asks his enemy for his
daughter’s hand in marriage, promising to settle their feud over the strip of land.
Once the youngsters are wed, Mezenga refuses to sign the land over to Berdinazzi, who
goes back on his word and takes his daughter back home with him, even though she is
officially wed.
Enrico obeys his father’s orders and agrees to wait for the right moment to rescue his
wife, Giovanna.
In the meantime, the country has joined the war on the Allies’ side and Bruno Giovanna’s favorite brother - is drafted and leaves to fight in Italy.
Geremias and Guilherme remain at home to help their father and to watch over
Giovanna.
The hatred between the families grows day by day.
Only the mothers maintain their common sense and try to understand their children’s
drama.
Finally, with the support of their anguished mothers, Enrico flees with his wife
Giovanna.
Bruno - Berdinazzi’s beloved son - dies in combat.
Old Berdinazzi, consumed by his losses, slowly goes insane.
Giovanna and Enrico’s son is born and is named after his uncle.
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The optimistic couple prospers through Enrico’s hard work.
Upon hearing about the birth of his grandson, Berdinazzi has a heart attack and dies in
the arms of Mezenga, who had come to tell him the news.
His other sons - Guilherme and Geremias - sell their father’s lands and embezzle their
sister and their mother.
Marieta, who has moved in with her daughter and the Mezengas after being betrayed
by her sons, receives remarkable news. A letter sent from Italy by a local girl named
Gema tells of the birth of a child, the fruit of her romance with Bruno during the war.
Mezenga dies in the middle of his beloved coffee plantation, resisting his son’s new
ideas, who wanted to substitute the coffee fields for cattle grazing land.
SECOND PHASE
Bruno Berdinazzi Mezenga has inherited his stubbornness and untiring drive for work
from his grandparents. The fruit of a forbidden love between Enrico and Giovanna, he
grows up with the same passion for the land. However, following in his father’s
footsteps, he uses it differently. His love and care for his cattle is so great that, after a
few years, he becomes one of the country’s most powerful ranchers, known to all as
the “King of Cattle”.
Bruno marries Léia, with whom he has two children - Marcos and Lia. But Bruno is not
a happy man. A marriage of convenience has not become a marriage of love and he
soon discovers that his wife seeks to compensate her loneliness in the arms of a lover.
He only finds distraction and joy in farms, which he continuously purchases, and in the
100 thousand cattle head he owns. He is proud of the vastness of his empire which he
has built with such hard work.
Geremias Berdinazzi - the brother of Bruno’s mother Giovanna - who had embezzled
the family and fled in the distant past, also builds up his own kingdom with coffee, and
later expands his business into milk cattle with enormous success. A rich and powerful
man, Geremias is also very lonely. He had two wives, but no children and carries on his
back the guilt of having built his empire through deceit, for even his brother Geremias
had died, abandoned by him and poor.
Luana is a woman of singular beauty who has been through all kinds of grievances.
She loses her family in a tragic truck accident where she also loses her memory and
her history. Gifted with great willpower and a rare intelligence, she is a relentlessly
brave fighter. By chance, Luana joins a group of landless wanderers who invade one of
Bruno Mezenga’s farms. He is attracted to her from the moment he sets eyes on her.
He adopts her and they end up falling in love.
From here on, she will have to struggle to rescue the respect and admiration of those
who imagine her to be but a devious advantage-seeker. Luana’s story, however, isn’t
all that far away from the world in which she lives in.
Marieta, a very ambitious young woman, suddenly appears at Geremias Berdinazzi’s
lush residence. She assures him that she is one of his brother’s children, and therefore,
his sole heiress. The insinuating Marieta takes advantage of the old man’s loneliness,
and slowly convinces him of the truth of her origins. Geremias, on the other hand,
knows that Bruno is also one of his heirs, by law.
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Bruno and his children find out about Léia’s affair and reject her. Together with her
lover, she tries to obtain part of her husband’s fortune in their divorce settlement.
Within omitted, forgotten or inherited memories lie plots that fate will twist, bringing
back old feelings of revenge.
“LOVE FOR THE LAND IS THE ONLY THING THAT RULES THEIR HEARTS”
LIST OF CHARACTERS
FIRST PHASE
Mezenga (Antonio Fagundes) - A descendent of Italian immigrants who came to
Brazil at the end of the last century. He is a strong, determined but anguished man.
His coffee plantation, conquered with much sacrifice, is his life. He is married to Nena
and the father of an only son, Henrique, whom he calls Enrico.
Nena (Vera Fischer) - Mezenga’s wife. Brazilian by birth, like her husband, she was
born and raised in the coffee-plantation colonies. A strong, hard-working woman.
Enrico (Leonardo Brício) - Mezenga and Nena’s only son. Despite having inherited
his father’s hatred for the Berdinazzi family, he is madly in love with beautiful
Giovanna, their youngest daughter. He is capable of anything for his loved one.
Berdinazzi (Tarcisio Meira) - Italian immigrant and coffee-plantation owner. A
stubborn and passionate man who lives a full-fledged war against his neighbor because
of a strip of land. Berdinazzi has four children: Bruno, Giacomo Guilherme, Geremias
and Giovanna. He takes it as an unforgivable offense that his daughter loves Henrique.
Marieta (Eva Wilma) - Berdinazzi’s wife. A faithful point of balance between him and
his sons. Marieta is very close to Giovanna.
Geremias (Caco Ciocler) - Berdinazzi’s third child. Much like Giacomo, does
everything his father orders but is a leader by nature, a characteristic which will prevail
in his trajectory. His ambition will lead him to take cruel attitudes, at first, against his
mother and sister, and then against his own brother.
Giovanna (Leticia Spiller) - Berdinazzi’s youngest child, lives under tight surveillance
by her father and brothers, but this doesn’t prevent her from discovering passion in the
arms of Henrique Mezenga.
Bruno ( Marcelo Anthony) - Berdinazzi’s eldest son and the most sensible and
sensitive of them all. Inherited his mother’s conciliatory spirit. Dies as a war hero
during the Allied campaign in Italy.
Giacomo Guilherme ( Manoel Boucinhas) - Berdinazzi’s second son, always willing
to obey his father and his brother Geremias.
SECOND PHASE
Bruno Berdinazzi Mezenga (Antonio Fagundes) - Has always known, since he was
a child, that his name is Bruno because of an uncle who died in the war. In this phase
of the story, he is the King of Cattle, an extremely wealthy man who owns several
farms.
Luana (Patricia Pillar) - Simple, singularly beautiful young woman who survived a
tragic accident which killed the rest of her family. As an orphan, Luana faced terrible
hardships. Her story is one of struggle and love.
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Léia (Silvia Pfeifer) - Bruno B. Mezenga’s wife. Their marriage, however, was a big
mistake. Their intention was to join pastures to cattle. Léia will reach out to a lover and
will become both a victim and a villain in this story.
Lia (Lavina Vlasak) - Bruno and Léia’s eldest child. Was born and raised in the midst
of constant, vicious arguments between her father and mother.
Marcos (Fábio Assunção) - The synthesis of a spoilt child. Pleasant, fun-loving and
bent on living life without greater objectives.
Geremias Berdinazzi (Raul Cortez) - The third of the four children old Berdinazzi
brought into the world. He is the only character who appears in the first part of the
story and remains all the way through, apart from Bruno Mezenga. A rough but very
astute and intelligent man. However, he is a lonely soul who has nobody to inherit his
empire.
Marieta (Glória Pires) - A sly young woman - apparently mistreated by life, who
introduces herself to Geremias as his brother’s daughter, who died in a truck accident.
At first, the plot presents the character as an impostor, but there is a mystery that
shrouds Marieta.
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