Gustavo Esteva (born August 20, 1936 in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

- died March 17, 2022 in Oaxaca was a

Mexican Mexican may refer to: Mexico and its culture *Being related to, from, or connected to the country of Mexico, in North America ** People *** Mexicans, inhabitants of the country Mexico and their descendants *** Mexica, ancient indigenous people ...

activist, "deprofessionalized intellectual" and founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in the

city of

Oaxaca Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the Federative Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 570 municipaliti ...

. He was one of the best known advocates of post-development.

Life

Esteva's life—as he tells it himself—has been marked by many ruptures; there are also many facts to confirm this view. Esteva has worked in very different environments. Esteva's father died early. Esteva worked for different companies. "Despite the personal discomfort brought about by an increasing awareness of the fraud of the original promise of my profession, I advanced rapidly in my career." Finally he turned to the public sector. He worked for the Bank of foreign trade and joined a marxist group with revolutionary aspirations which he quit in 1965. From 1970 to 1976 he was a high-ranking official in the government of President Echeverría. When he gave up this job, he was totally disillusioned about statist development practices. In 1983 he met

Ivan Illich Ivan Dominic Illich ( , ; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book ''Deschooling Society'' criticises modern society's institutional approach to edu ...

. " .. I was invited to a Seminar in Mexico City on the social construction of energy with

Wolfgang Sachs Wolfgang Sachs (; born 25 November 1946) is a researcher, writer and university teacher in the field of environment, development, and globalization. Biography Sachs studied sociology and Catholic theology in Munich, Tübingen and Berkeley. He ho ...

. Ivan was there. I was mesmerized. That very night, I embarked on my Illich studium. A little later, I started to collaborate with him. Still later, slowly, we became friends." He was an advisor with the Zapatista Army for National Liberation in

Chiapas Chiapas (; Tzotzil and Tzeltal: ''Chyapas'' ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas), is one of the states that make up the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises 124 municipalities ...

for the negotiations with the government. He worked at the Centre for Intercultural Dialogues and Exchanges (CEDI) in the city of Oaxaca, publishes regularly in different journals, and works with Indian groups and NGOs.

Thinking

Esteva had a Catholic upbringing. When he lost his

faith Faith, derived from Latin ''fides'' and Old French ''feid'', is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or In the context of religion, one can define faith as "belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion". Religious people ofte ...

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

he replaced it with a faith in

reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, lang ...

. Through his studies he became familiar with

instrumental rationality "Instrumental" and "value rationality" are terms scholars use to identify two ways individuals act in order to optimize their behavior . Instrumental rationality recognizes means that "work" efficiently to achieve ends. Value rationality recogni ...

; dissatisfied he turned, after some soul searching,2004b - no paging to

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

. During the 70s Esteva With Marxism, Esteva has given up all ideas about a

vanguard The vanguard (also called the advance guard) is the leading part of an advancing military formation. It has a number of functions, including seeking out the enemy and securing ground in advance of the main force. History The vanguard derives f ...

. He is an advocate of radical pluralism.On this notion see Esteva 1996, passim Discussing the national

identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), an ...

Esteva refers to Guillermo Bonfil' distinction between a profound (México profundo) and an imaginary Mexico (México imaginario). He questions the modern obsession with planning the

future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that current ...

and "projects" of all kinds: The contrasting attitude of the

indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

, according to Esteva, is not to reject

change Change or Changing may refer to: Alteration * Impermanence, a difference in a state of affairs at different points in time * Menopause, also referred to as "the change", the permanent cessation of the menstrual period * Metamorphosis, or change, ...

, but Traditionally the indigenous people did not oppose their own project to the dominant project -- but times have changed:

Selected works

;Books *David Barkin, Gustavo Esteva: ''Inflación y Democracia : El Caso de México'', México : Siglo XXI, 1979 *Gustavo Esteva: ''Economía y enajenación'' conomy and alienation México, D.F. : Biblioteca Universidad Veracruzana, 1980 *Gustavo Esteva: ''La batalla en el México rural'', México : Siglo XXI, 1982. *James E. Austin and Gustavo Esteva (ed.):''Food policy en Mexico : the search for selfsufficiency'', Ithaca ; London : Cornell Univ. Pr., 1987 *Gustavo Esteva: ''Fiesta - jenseits von Entwicklung, Hilfe und Politik'', Frankfurt a. M. : Brandes & Apsel, 1992 -German translation of a selection of essays, enlarged second edition in 1995 *Gustavo Esteva: ''Crónica del fin de una era : el secreto del

EZLN The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (, EZLN), often referred to as the Zapatistas (Mexican ), is a far-left political and militant group that controls a substantial amount of territory in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. Sinc ...

'', México : Ed. Posada, 1994 *Gustavo Esteva Figueroa and Madhu Suri Prakash: ''Hope at the margins : beyond human rights and development'', New York : St. Martin’s Press, 1997 *Madhu Suri Prakash and Gustavo Esteva: ''Escaping education : living as learning within grassroots cultures'', New York tc. Peter Lang, 1998 * Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash: ''Grassroots post-modernism : remaking the soil of cultures'', London & New Jersey: Zed Books, 1998 *Gustavo Esteva, and Catherine Marielle (eds.):''Sin maíz no hay país: páginas de una exposición'', México : Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Dirección General de Culturas Populares e Indígenas, 2003 * Gustavo Esteva, Salvatore Babones, and Philipp Babcicky: ''The future of development : a radical manifesto'', Bristol: Policy Press, 2013 * Gustavo Esteva, a cura di, ''Ripensare il mondo con Ivan Illich'', Riola (Bo), Mutus Liber, 2014 * Gustavo Esteva, ''Nuovi ambiti di comunità Per una riflessione sui ‘beni comuni’'', Collana Voci da Abya Yala, Documenti dall'America latina, a cura del gruppo Camminardomandando, Edizioni Mutus Liber, 2016 * Gustavo Esteva, ''Gustavo Esteva: A Critique of Development and Other Essays'', Routledge, 2022 ;Articles * Esteva, Gustavo: "Regenerating People's space" in: Saul H. Mendlovitz and R.B.J. Walker, Towards a Just World Peace. London: Butterworths, 1987; pp. 271–298. * Esteva, Gustavo: "Tepito: No Thanks, First World", in: In Context, num. 30, Fall/Winter 1991 * Esteva, Gustavo: "Development" in The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London & New Jersey: Zed Books, 1992, pp. 6–25 * Esteva, Gustavo: "Re-embedding Food in Agriculture", in: Culture and Agriculture irginia, USA 48, Winter 1994 * Esteva, Gustavo: "From 'Global Thinking' to 'Local Thinking': Reasons to Go beyond Globalization towards Localization", with M.S.Prakash, in: Osterreichische Zeitschirift für Politikwissenschatft, 2, 1995 * Esteva, Gustavo:"Hosting the Otherness of the Green Revolution" in: Frédérique Apffel-Marglin and Stephen A. Marglin, eds.: ''Decolonizing Knowledge: From Development to Dialogue''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 249–278 * Esteva, Gustavo: "Beyond Development, What?", with M.S. Prakash, in: ''Development in Practice'', Vol. 8, No.3, August 1998. * Esteva, Gustavo: "The Zapatistas and People's Power", in Capital & Class, 68, Summer 1999. * Esteva, Gustavo: "The meaning and scope of the struggle for autonomy" in: Lat. Am. Perspect., 28:2, March 2001, pp. 120–148 * Esteva, Gustavo(2004a): "Back from the future" -Notes for the presentation in “Schooling and Education: A Symposium with Friends of Ivan Illich” organized by TALC New Vision, Milwaukee, October 9, 2004
online
* Esteva, Gustavo(2004b):“Rupturas:” Turning Point

*Esteva, Gustavo: ''The Oaxaca commune and Mexico's autonomous movement's'', Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca, México : Ed. ¡Basta!, 2008, 22 p.

Notes

Secondary literature

*Terán, Gustavo: ''Conversations with Mexican nomadic storyteller, Gustavo Esteva : learning from lives on the margins'', Dissertation, University of Vermont, 2002

* Aram Ziai: "Gustavo Esteva (born 1936). Selbstbestimmte Gemeinwesen statt Entwicklung" in: ''eins. Entwicklungspolitik. Information Nord Süd'', No. 23/24, 2005, 48-50

External links