In the coming weeks, roughly two dozen students will become the inaugural graduates from Ecuador’s first public Indigenous ...

Elsa Caín-Yuquilema, a member of the Kichwa Puruhá ethnic group from Ecuador and a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at MSU from 2024 to 2025. | Photo by Erick Diaz Veliz For Elsa ...

Spanish, Spanglish, Quechua, Kichwa: Jeff Herlihy-Mera encounters all of them on the trip from Guayaquil to Cuenca.

Penn State students who already speak Spanish didn’t get off easy either. Donely said they took Kichwa classed, which is the most common indigenous language in Ecuador.

NAPO, Ecuador — Gloria Ushigua, president of the Sápara women’s association, stops by a large, thin, spindly tree that looks almost dead, and breaks off a thin branch. Running her fingers ...