A Guatemalan native, he arrived in the United States in the late eighties on a Fulbright Scholarship to do graduate studies in comparative literature at the University of Illinois in Champaign Urbana. Initially, he planned on staying two years, but now after three decades, he's still in Illinois.
After finishing his degrees, he returned briefly to Guatemala, but then he came back to the United States. He has been teaching Spanish language, literature and culture at NIU since August 2000, and his main research interests are 19th-century Spanish American literature. In addition, he also reads and teaches Spanish American crime novels and historical fiction.
Besides his academic work as an associate professor, he enjoys life with his family and bossy cat, biking, traveling, cooking and photography. Every other year, all these interests come together when he is director of the NIU summer study abroad program in Toledo, Spain.