Bolívar Echeverría: Critical Discourse and Capitalist Modernity

Born in Ecuador, formed intellectually and politically in West Germany, resident of Mexico until his death, Bolívar Echeverría (1941–2010) is a singular figure within the landscape of twentieth-century critical theory. Following his early engagement with leftist politics and the existential philosophies of Unamuno, Heidegger and Sartre in his home country, Echeverría moved to Germany in 1961, initially with the intention of studying under Heidegger in Freiburg. Later that year Echeverría relocated to Berlin, where he would eventually become involved both politically in the German student movement that saw the SDS (Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund) rise to prominence, and theoretically with the associated revival of critical Marxist thought. In the midst of intense cultural and social upheaval, Echeverría established himself as a revolutionary intellectual and expert in Latin American politics, forming friendships with Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl (Gandler, 2015: 61ff.). In 1968 Echeverría returned to Latin America, settling in Mexico, where he began university teaching alongside Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and concentrated his research on Marx and Marxism, specifically focusing on the critique of political economy. He began to publish the results of this work from the 1970s onwards, initially in a series of journal and magazine articles and eventually in a number of book-length essay collections. Echeverría’s essayistic predilection (only three full-length monographs appeared under his name during his lifetime) was heavily indebted to Walter Benjamin, in style as well as form. He continued to teach at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City up until his death in 2010.