Luz María De La Torre

Continuing Lecturer
Department: Spanish and Portuguese
luzm@humnet.ucla.edu
Website
Keywords: Ecuador

Luz María De la Torre Amaguana is a Kichwa (Quechua) indigenous woman from Ecuador. She joins the Spanish and Portuguese Department at UCLA in 2009. She has been appointed as a Continuing Lecturer at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Latin American Institute, UCLA.

She received her BA in Languages and Applied Linguistics from the Catholic University of Ecuador (1997). Her thesis was focused on Indigenous Bilingual Education. She earned her Master’s degree in Political Sciences at FLACSO (2006). Her research concentrated on the Indigenous Movement and its relation to the Ecuadorian government, specifically since the 1990s when the Indigenous National uprising took place. She has taught at numerous universities in Ecuador and the U.S., including Middlebury College, and Arizona State University-ASU. She worked in the Ministries of Education and Foreign Relations. She has served as a consultant for a wide range of national and international institutions and NGOs. She frequently gave lectures in Ecuador and many other countries. Her research, writing, and teaching focus on topics related to the Andean Indigenous Cosmovision, Kichwa Literature, Gender from the Andean perspective, Andean Alternative Economy and Knowledge, and New Political Relations between the Nation-State and indigenous Peoples. Currently, her latest book proposal deals with “What it means to be an Indigenous woman today.” In addition, she is developing a Manual for teaching the Quechua/Kichwa language, and a book of Ecuadorian Kichwa Poetry.