Diego Bustos is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Spanish and English at Rockford University. He studied economics and history at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, completed an MFA in creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso, and earned a PhD in Latin American literature from the University of New Mexico. In 2003, he won the Ciudad de Bogotá National Short Story Award.

His teaching and research explores the literary and cultural representation of ideas of economic development, social mobility and citizenship in Brazil, Colombia and the Mexico–US borderlands. He has recently become interested in the role of reading practices and policies in Latin America and their impact on access to culture and education. He is also involved in a project to unveil the archive of Chilean professor Eduardo Neale-Silva, the main biographer of Colombian author José Eustasio Rivera.

Teaching lies at the heart of his work. The questions that guide his research and writing also shape the classes he designs, and the classroom informs his scholarship and creative projects in turn. He views this cycle as an exchange in which reading, writing, and critical reflection create opportunities for dialogue and transformation.

Outside of the classroom, he has participated in collaborative projects such as Revista Coroto in El Paso, the Interdisciplinary Colombian Studies Group in Albuquerque and the Linguistic Justice Collective in Tucson. He often incorporates creative writing into his courses, a teaching approach that invites students to use writing to understand the world, engage with communities, and imagine change.