Gustavo Esteva (20 August 1936 – 17 March 2022) was a Mexican activist, "deprofessionalized intellectual" and founder of the Centro de Encuentros y Diálogos Interculturales and the Universidad de la Tierra in the Mexican city of Oaxaca. He was one of the best-known advocates of post-development.
Life and career
Esteva was born in Mexico City on 20 August 1936, as the third child of Elodia Figueroa and Guillermo A. Esteva, a politician, writer and professor. 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."An incident in which the leader who had recruited me into the group killed another leader because of jealousy, hid in my house and put us all in jeopardy by protecting him (in order to protect ourselves), finally made me see the light. These were the conditions of violence which we were imposing on ourselves and wanted to impose on all of society. I could not continue on that path. Again, I experienced a rupture in my life." Esteva 2004b - The date is mentioned in an interview with in motion magazines, see external links
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.Ziai 2005: 48
In 1983 he met Ivan Illich. "[...] I was invited to a Seminar in Mexico City on the social construction of energy with Wolfgang Sachs. 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."Esteva 2004a:4
Esteva was an advisor with the Zapatista Army for National Liberation in Chiapas for the negotiations with the government. He worked at the Centre for Intercultural Dialogues and Exchanges (CEDI) in the city of Oaxaca, published regularly in different journals, and worked with Indian groups and NGOs. In 2019 he co-created the Global Tapestry of Alternatives process.
Esteva died in Oaxaca on 17 March 2022 aged 85."Muere el investigador Gustavo Esteva", 17/3/22, La Jornada
Thinking Esteva had a Catholic upbringing. During his studies at the Universidad IberoAmericana, Gustavo approached a jesuit philosopher and asked him if it was possible to rationally prove the existence of god. After many readings and meetings with the philosopher, he arrived at the conclusion that it was not possible. When he lost his faith in God he replaced it with a faith in reason.Those who believe in reason don't believe they believe."Reason became a substitute for God, without my knowing it; it became the ultimate referent, valid in and of itself. This new consciousness, typically Western for both believers and non believers, presupposed a trust in reason that assumed it to be the objective and solid foundation of all human thought and behavior. One had the impression that you don't have a belief in something (in reason), but rather that reason has succeeded in establishing itself as the ultimate horizon of intelligibility: it is not something in which you believe, but something you "know." Its condition as faith is thus hidden. As the Spanish poet Machado said, 'faith is not a matter of seeing something, or believing in something, but rather in believing that one sees.' What I saw, then, without believing I believed in it, was that reason (and ultimately science) gave me a true way to see the world. From that perspective, the fantasies, tricks, errors or illusions of reason, could only be attributed to my own limitations and not to reason itself." 2004b - no paging Through his studies he became familiar with instrumental rationality; dissatisfied he turned, after some soul searching,2004b - no paging to Marxism. During the 70s Esteva
With Marxism, Esteva has given up all ideas about a vanguard. He is an advocate of radical pluralism.On this notion see Esteva 1996, passim
Discussing the national identity 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 and "projects" of all kinds:
The contrasting attitude of the indigenous peoples, according to Esteva, is not to reject 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 [Economy 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, 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 [etc.]: 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, 2022Book Chapters'''
Esteva, Gustavo. (1971). "El Mito de La Planeación Económica Mexicana." [The Myth of Mexican Economic Planning] In Cuestiones Económicas Nacionales, ed. Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior. México: Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior. Esteva, Gustavo. (1974). "Autosuficiencia y Reorganización de La Producción, Claves de La Estrategia Agropecuaria Tomo I." [Self-sufficiency and Reorganization of Production, Keys to Agropecuary Strategy Tome I] In Memoria Del Primer Congreso Nacional de Economistas, ed. Colegio Nacional de Economistas. México: Colegio Nacional de Economistas. Esteva, Gustavo. (1980). "La economía campesina actual como opción de desarrollo, una noción, un proyecto de investigación y un programa de acción de desarrollo" [Current Peasant Economy as a Development Option, A Notion, a Research Project and a Development Action Plan], México: Ensayos COPIDER. Esteva, Gustavo. (1984). "Capacitación para el desarrollo vernáculo y ciudadanía" [Training for Vernacular Development and Citizens], In Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo Rural Integral (Ed.), La capacitación en el medio rural, México: CIDERI. Esteva, Gustavo. (1986). "En la hora del encuentro" [The Hour of the Encounter], en: Adolfo Aguilar Zinzer, Cesáreo Morales y Rodolfo Peña (Eds.), Aún tiembla. Sociedad política y cambio social: el terremoto del 19 septiembre de 1985. México, Grijalbo. Esteva, Gustavo. (1987). "Development as a threat: the struggle for rural Mexico,"In Teodor Shanin (Ed.), Peasants and peasant societies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Esteva, Gustavo. (1987). "Regenerating people´s space", In Saúl H. Mendlovitz (Ed.), Towards a just world peace. Londres: Butterworths. Esteva, Gustavo. (1989)."Alternatives to Economics", In Macroeconomics 89´90. Connecticut: The Dushkin Publishing Group. Esteva, Gustavo: "Development" in The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London & New Jersey: Zed Books, 1992, pp. 6–25 Esteva, Gustavo. (1993). "On Behalf of People's Dignity: An Argument for Resisting the Idea of Being Developed", In Camilla Nielsen, Oliver Rathcolb (Eds.), From Cancún to Vienna. International Development in a New World. Viena: The Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue. Esteva, Gustavo. (1996). "Hosting the otherness of the other", S. Marglin and Frederique Apfel-Marglin, (Eds.), Decolonizing Knowledge: From Development to Dialogue. Clarendon: Oxford University Press. Esteva, Gustavo. (1997). "From Global Thinking to Local Thinking" (with Madhu S. Prakash) and "Basta! Mexican Indians Say 'Enough'", Majid Rahnema, with Victoria Bawtree, The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books. Esteva, Gustavo. (2009). "Volver a la mesa" [Returning to the Table], In Pratec, Soberanía alimentaria y cultura de la comida en la América profunda, Lima: Pratec Esteva, Gustavo. (1998). "The Revolution of the New Commons" C. Cook and J.D.Lindau (Eds.), Aboriginal Rights and Self.Government. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Esteva, Gustavo. (2001). "Mexico: Creating Your Own Path at the Grassroots", In V. Benntholdt-Thomsen, N. Faraclas and C. Von Werlhof (Eds.), There Is an Alternative: Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization. Victoria: Spinifiex Press/Londres y Nueva York: Zed Books. Esteva, Gustavo; Stuchul, D.; Prakash, M.K; Shiksha; V. (2002). "From a Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation from Pedagogy." In Unfolding Learning Societies: Experiencing the Possibilities. Udaipur, Rajasthan, India: Shikshantar, The Peoples' Institute for Rethinking Education and Development. Esteva, Gustavo.(2004). "Un mundo de muchos mundos" [A World of Many Worlds], with Martina Kaller. "Eine dialogische Perspektive auf die mexikanische Agrargeschichte." In Wolfgang Dietrich/Stefanie Reinberg (Hrs.), Lateinamerika und Europa: Auf dem Weg zu einem gemeinsamen Bildungs . und Kulturraum? Frankfurt: Brandes and Apsel/Sudwind. Esteva, Gustavo. (2005). "Universidad de la Tierra: The freedom to learn", "Development – Walking Beyond: From promotion to Co-motion", "Learning from Literacy Campaigns: An Intercultural approach to Orality", "Cultural regeneration, instead of Education" and "Time for celebration." In S. Pimparé and C. Salzano (Eds.), Emerging and re-emerging leaning communities: Old wisdoms and new initiatives from around the world. Paris: UNESCO. Esteva, Gustavo. (2008). "The Other Campaign, APPO and the Left." In Diana Denham & C.A.S.A. Collective, Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca. Oakland: PM Press. Esteva, Gustavo. (2010). "Beyond education", Lois Meyer & Benjamín Maldonado Alvarado (Eds.), New World of Indigenous Resistance: Noam Chomsky and Voices from North, South and Central America. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Esteva, Gustavo. (2018). "Friendship, Hope and Surprise." In V. Brunetta and K. O'Shea (Eds.), Durty Words, Limmerick, Ireland: Durty Words Publishing House. Esteva, Gustavo. (2019). "El camino hacia el diálogo de vivires." [The Path Towards the Dialogue of Vivires] In Stefano Sartorello (Coord.), Diálogo y conflict interepistèmicos en la construcción de una casa común, Mexico: Universidad Iberoamericana.