Xiomara

It is the year 1917, in the small coastal town of Atlantida, Uruguay, South America. Xiomara is a beautiful, dark haired indigenous woman who left her tribe in southern Brazil to live with the blancos or whites who are wealthy landowners and learn their ways to better herself and improve her station in life. But her superstitious fears and the folklore of her people cannot escape her mind. She has a supernatural encounter with Pombero, an evil and dark humanoid male nocturnal creature who has sex with her and breeds her. Xiomara's baby is deformed and ugly boy she calls Triste, meaning Sad in Spanish. Xiomara and her boy is ostracized in the small town and forced to live on her own in a small hut. The people see her as cursed and unworthy of being among civilization and hate her for being indigenous and a single woman with no husband, a strange child, and because she is pagan and not Christian. Some believe she is a witch. Some do not believe her story of Pombero breeding her and instead believe she is a temptress and lured a priest into having sex and their punishment was the deformed boy. As the nearby city of Montevideo increases in wealth as a resort town for the wealthy elite, a sea captain, Don Francisco de la Riba, begins to woo and seduce Xiomara, curious to get to know the real woman behind the 'witch ' that the town talks so ill of. They have sexual relations. He promises to marry her but eventually he deserts her for being a womanizer and having many casual affairs with the women in the port city. Xiomara vows revenge. She learns about witchcraft and tries to cast a spell on him. During one of her rituals, a beautiful singing mermaid comes out of the sea and washes ashore by Xiomara's hut. She is called Sirena. Without her knowledge, the mermaid is a product of the revenge spell. Xiomara takes her in as a kind of adopted daughter and allows her to live with her in her hut. The mermaid, when wet, either in a bath, shower, swimming in the ocean or a pool, reverts to her mermaid body; usually at night. In the day time, when dry, she can appear as a human female with legs. The people have forbidden Xiomara to come to the town so she usually pays a brave local boy to run errands and go to market for her. But she no longer needs him now that she has Sirena. She tells Sirena never to reveal her identity as a mermaid nor the fact she lives with the 'witch' Xiomara. Sirena goes out to run errands for Xiomara in the local town of Atlantida. She attracts the attention of all the men because she is so sexy and beautiful. Sirena and Captain Don Francisco meet and he falls madly in lust and in love with her; but only knowing her in her human form. She is curious about the world of mankind and would like to be human but does not tell Don Francisco the sea captain of her mermaid background. They make love repeatedly but this time Don Francisco is uninterested in pursuing other women, and lives only to make Sirena happy. He cannot marry her because he is already married and lives in the fanciest house in town with his wife and children. He offers Sirena a house and a position as his kept mistress. Indecisive, Sirena tells Xiomara about this. Xiomara discovers that Sirena loves Don Francisco, the man she used to call her lover and whom she loved before he betrayed her and abandoned her. She also learns that Don Francisco is truly in love with Sirena. Xiomara uses this situation to extract her revenge. Sirena, now having decided to become Don Francisco's mistress, asks Xiomara, whom she knows to be a witch, to give her a potion or cast a spell on her which would make her a human woman permanently and completely eliminate her 'curse' of being a mermaid by night and human by day. Xiomara offers her the solution: the only way for her to become human is to bring the man she loves deep in the jungle. Under the groves of the tallest canopy trees and among the orchids, by the waterfall, she must lure him into the water of the lake for a swim in the dark early morning hours right before the dawn. She must then have him share a witches' drink with him. After Don Francisco drinks the drink, he is intoxicated and in that condition, notices that Siren has a mermaid body with fish tail swimming in the water. He is happy to follow her in the water pursuing her. As the sun rises, Sirena emerges from the water fully human, but when she turns to see what has happened to Don Francisco; he is dead in the water, having drowned mysteriously. Full of despair and grief, Sirena runs to Xiomara's hut. She tells her what has happened and asks her why Don Francisco died in the waters of the lake after having drunk the potion. Xiomara tells her that the only way for her to live the rest of her life as a human woman, the man who loved her had to give up his life and spirit for her. The sea captain did not know about her being a mermaid and would not have loved her as a mermaid nor given up his life for her, so the deception of his believing she was a human woman, and drinking the potion thinking it was only a lover's drink, was the only way in which Sirena could become human. Sirena gets over her grief over losing the sea captain and being so sexy and beautiful, she does not find it hard to find herself a new lover who would keep her. Xiomara tells her not to settle for a poor fisherman or rural man on the coast but instead to find a wealthy lover or husband in Montevideo, the big city where the wealthy live. Sirena goes off to the big city and start her new life as a human. Xiomara is content with having had her revenge.