 High in the mountains of an unnamed Latin American country, an Indian woman tells her daughter the story of a doctor. We meet him and follow his quest for his legacy. He nears retirement, idealistic, believing his finest accomplishment to be the training of seven young physicians who work with Indians in remote pueblos. He decides to visit them to confirm their good work but finds a world of guerrillas and soldiers very different from the one he imagined for his students. Soon accompanied on his quest by an orphan boy and a deserter, he finds that men with guns have reached his students first. Slowly he moves closer to the Indian woman, her daughter, and his real legacy.