Professor Narváez received a B.A. degree in political science and a Ph.D. degree in Hispanic literature and linguistics from the University of Minnesota. He finished his secondary training at Colegio Nueva Granada (Bogota, Colombia), completed part of his college work at the Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona, Spain) and has lived in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and Costa Rica. His research interests include cultural and migration studies as well as literary and linguistic analysis. He has worked as an administrator, consultant, editor, interpreter, recording artist, and translator. In addition to numerous articles, and some language games and reviews, his published work includes nine books and two workbooks edited or written by him or in collaboration with others. Narváez is the former president of the state association for teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, former coordinator of the Minnesota State Spanish Contest, and site coordinator for the Festival Quijote. He has served twice as the president of the North Central Council of Latin Americanists, one of eight regional associations for specialists in Latin America, as well as three separate times as the Director of the programs of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) in Costa Rica. Of over fifty awards/honors, some examples are: in 1987 he received the Ricardo A. Narváez Award for excellence in the teaching of Spanish from the Minnesota chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) and in 1988 he was recognized by the AATSP through a national teaching award as the outstanding college/university teacher of Spanish in the United States. In 1989 he was awarded the Emma Birkmaier Award by the MN Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages as the outstanding foreign language teacher in MN. In 2001 Narváez was given the Award of Merit by the North Central Council of Latin Americanists (NCCLA) for promoting understanding and cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. In 2007 he received awards from the NCCLA and the MN Council on the Teaching of Languages and Cultures for excellence in the preparation of teaching materials. In 2012 his decades of working with students at St. Olaf to encourage their out-of-class learning through the Spanish Conversation Table, the Spanish Club and other activities was recognized through the Gertrude Hilleboe Award. Narváez was one of two St. Olaf faculty members selected to give a Mellby Lecture (about his professional work) to the campus community during the 2013-2014 academic year.

In the years since he continued to take Oles to Costa Rica for a total of 12 January term courses, he served twice on the Faculty Governance Committee of St. Olaf, he assisted with research projects in Peru and Costa Rica, he continued to do reviews of the work of candidates for promotion at St. Olaf and elsewhere, he served as a reviewer of applications for Fulbright Awards to assist in the teaching of English in Colombia, he organized the anniversary celebration of the 50 years of Latin American Studies at St. Olaf, he served as the onsite coordinator for the 2025 annual teaching/learning workshop and later the annual meeting of the North Central Council of Latin Americanists (NCCLA), and he continues as a member of the executive committee of the NCCLA. He edited and contributed to the development of seventeen Spanish language games that were published in 2020 or 2021 on Amazon Ignite.