Eduardo Chávez

Peruvian anthropologist preserving endangered indigenous languages through digital archives and community-led education programs.

Eduardo Chávez (b. 1972), a Quechua-speaking scholar from Cusco, founded the Andean Language Initiative (ALI) in 2005 to combat the extinction of native languages like Jaqaru and Yanesha. His team developed interactive mobile apps teaching indigenous vocabulary through augmented reality, merging tradition with technology.

Chávez’s research documented oral histories of Amazonian tribes, resulting in the ‘Voices of the Andes’ database, now used by UNESCO. He lobbied for Peru’s 2011 Law of Linguistic Rights, mandating bilingual education in 48 native languages. His TEDx talk ‘How Technology Can Save Ancient Languages’ went viral, inspiring similar projects in Mexico and Bolivia.

In 2020, ALI partnered with MIT to create AI-driven speech recognition tools for rare dialects. Chávez’s work proves that linguistic diversity is key to cultural survival in a globalized world.