This is us..
Born and raised in California, Dr. Jim Fogelquist has a Ph.D in Romance Languages from Yale University. After teaching Spanish at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, he dropped out of academia in 1980 to join his older brother Mark as part of Mariachi Uclatlán, a top-tier mariachi group founded in UCLA's Institute of Ethnomusicology in 1961. In 1993, he returned to the academy, where he continued to teach until he retired in 2024. Jim served five years as the chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures, at Idaho State University and nine years as chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures at Appalachian State University, where he also chaired the Department of English for two years. He has taught courses on Cervantes, medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature, colonial Latin American literature, Mexican literature, and U.S. Latino literature.
Yndiana Montes Fogelquist is a Venezuelan journalist who made her living as a travel writer in the Caribbean for thirty years. She has a background in both traditional and social media. She was the official representative of Latin America to TIDCO, (Tourism and Industrial Development of Trinidad and Tobago), and she held editorial and public and media relations positions in the Dutch Caribbean Islands (Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire), and most recently in Jamaica. After emigrating to the United States, she earned a B.A. in Sustainable Development and an M.A. in Appalachian Studies from Appalachian State University, where she and Jim met.
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The couple has embarked on a new journey in documentary film-making. Yndiana has documented her travels on social media for many years. At the height of her career as a travel writer, she took production crews to many destinations in the Caribbean. Yndiana and Jim enjoy filming while they travel and are working now on a version of this documentary in Spanish titled "Tras las huellas de Joe Troop."