
Congratulations!
Multimedia artist and book designer Victoria Rocío Esquivel Roca is beginning her final year toward a degree in Anthropology at Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco. She states: “My book design and community promotion projects seek to create spaces where this language can flourish and be valued in contemporary contexts. Through books, I want to explore ways of articulating Quechua with visual and textual narratives that invite its preservation and revitalization. In community projects, my intention is to co-create via respect and listening, promoting Quechua as a means of expression, reflection and empowerment.”
Congratulations!
Carlos Flores Quispe entered his third year of graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Fall 2024, where he is working toward a doctorate degree in second language acquisition and applied linguistics. Carlos previously completed a bachelor’s degree in Quechua and English languages at the Universidad Mayor Real y Pontificia San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca, second oldest university in the Americas and has also won undergraduate fellowships to University of Arizona and a pre-degree in Sociology, granted by the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic where he also taught a Quechua workshop. He loves singing, dancing, graphic and audiovisual design.

Congratulations!
María del Carmen Bolívar Gonzáles Prada is starting a Master’s degree program in Applied Linguistics/Language Education at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia in Fall of 2024. She hopes to meet the urgent need for teaching in and of indigenous languages with an intercultural approach. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics Applied to Language Teaching from the Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Cochabamba, with diplomas from the same university, one in Intra and Intercultural Educational Management and the other in Research for Intercultural Higher Education, and both of her final papers have been published. She has also worked as a trainer and monitor of teacher preparation programs in the area of Teaching Spanish as a Second Language and English as a Foreign Language for the Ministries of Education of both Bolivia and Peru, and has worked as a language teacher and independent language researcher and translator.
Congratulations!
We are extremely proud of our associate, Gaby Vargas Melgarejo, who completed the prestigious Native American Master’s Program in Linguistics (NAMA) at the University of Arizona in Tuscon and has gone on to doctoral studies in linguistics there. Gaby previously completed a Master’s degree in Sociolinguistics at the Universidad Mayor de San Simón in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2019. She is one of a very small number of native Quechua speakers pursuing graduate degrees in the US! As of May, 2024, Gaby has achieved ABD status (All But Dissertation).
On the hot seat
The Universidad Mayor de San Francisco Xavier, founded in 1624, is the nearest public university to residents of the small communities surrounding Tarabuco municipality. It is also Carlos Flores Quispe’s alma mater; he grew up in a farming and weaving community a few hours away. Carlos, María del Carmen Bolívar and I gave an invited…
Gratifying surprise
Once we got to the Tarabuco municipality in Bolivia, we tried to scheduled a single big meeting with leaders and school council members from three different communities. It was scheduled for Sunday – market day – on which most people bring their wares to a small town. We were advised that at the end of…
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