Luis Reyes Escate

Postdoctoral fellow in Afro-Latin American studies, Harvard University

PhD in Social Anthropology, National Museum of Brazil.

Luis Reyes comes from a small Peruvian town called Subtanjalla, located four hours south of Lima, the capital city of Peru. Of Afro-Peruvian heritage, since his childhood, Luis has been interested in knowing more about the lands that exist beyond what his elders were able to see with their own eyes.

This desire motivated him to embark on a long journey that would make him leave his town at the age of thirteen. He first went to study in Lima and then, at age seventeen, continued his studies in Costa Rica. Two years later, Luis moved to Idaho to study his undergrad in Anthropology.

A year later, he continued with his journey and went to live for two years in the south of Brazil and about six months in the Bolivian Yungas with the Afrobolivian community of Tocaña. His travels later took him to the Netherlands and Brazil and, after six years abroad, he finally returned home as an anthropology professor at a university in Lima.

This year he began his role as a visiting scholar at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Besides traveling, Luis loves soccer, cycling and writing. Luis joined Dragons as the Latin American Program Director in 2021 and has as his main goal to contribute to maintaining the flame of the Dragons’ spirit of letting the wisdom of the people and the lands “where there be dragons” to speak for themselves, and by doing so, to make the world and each of the people that take part of the Dragons’ journeys become the better version of themselves.