While doing fieldwork in Peguche, Ecuador, Linda D'Amico found herself working with and befriending Rosa Lema, a woman who had previously worked with anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons. One of the founding mothers of anthropology, Parsons's 1940 fieldwork in Peguche laid foundations for the development of feminist anthropology and ethnic studies. Lema, while unknown to most Americans, is an indigenous woman whose efforts to bring changes to her village and her country--most notably as ambassador for Galo Plaza's government's Cultural Mission to promote economic integration--afford a unique view of the rise of interculturalism as an indigenous ideology.

Gender is at the center of D'Amico's analysis as she looks beyond the overlapping lives of these two women, both innovators and adept at crossing cultural boundaries, to explore the interrelationship between gender, ethnicity, and globalization.