Ricardo is from Bogotá, Colombia. He earned a BA in sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and an MA in Contemporary Latin American Aesthetics from the Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda. In Colombia, he worked as a human rights defender and social researcher. He is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies at UChicago, working on extractivism, colonial violence, and the intersection of visual arts and literature.