Dr. López is originally from Uruguay, where he earned a degree of Professor of Literature. From 1980 to 1992 he taught at the (undergraduate) college level in several educational institutions in Montevideo, Uruguay. Furthermore, from 1990 to 1992 he worked at the graduate level. In 1992 he came to the USA to develop his research and professional career, earning a Ph.D. degree from the Ohio State University in 1995. Since August 1995 Dr. López has been teaching in the Department of Modern Languages of Marshall University, where he is a Professor of Spanish.
His research is focused on the Popol Wuj (or Vuh), the only Mayan "narrative" to survive the 500 years of colonization. In 1999 he published a book about this text, which is entitled Los Popol Wujs y sus Epistemologías (Quito: Editorial Abya-Yala, 1999) now available online. In December of 2007 he published the first online edition of the facsimile of the Popol Wuj manuscript (http://library.osu.edu/sites/popolwuj/) and in this edition he also published his entire paleographic transcription of the manuscript, including both K'iche' and Spanish texts, with notes comparing some of the most significant previous transcriptions. In October 2009 the website The Popol Wuj and the Mayan Cultures Archives / Archivos del Popol Wuj y de las culturas mayas (http://mayanarchives-popolwuj.osu.edu/) was made available to the public. Dr. López is the academic Director of this new site which encompasses an online journal (The Mayan Studies Journal) and a virtual library about the Popol Wuj —including rare editions, bibliographies, and more. Recentely he put online the first stage of a 3-D digital reconstruction of Q’umarkaaj, the capital-citadel of the former K’iche’ Kingdom (MSJ, issue #5, june 2010 http://mayanarchives-popolwuj.osu.edu/journal/issues/MSJ-5-Lopez-&-patterson-June-2010.pdf).
Dr. López participates actively in national and international conferences on Colonial Latin American literatures and the impact of global culture on regional Latin American cultures.