Gustavo Esteva

Mexican activist (1936–2022)

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.

Esteva was born in Mexico City on 20 August 20 1936, as the third child of Elodia Figueroa and Guillermo A. Esteva, a politician, writer and professor. Esteva's father died early. At 15, I was forced to support an extended family of siblings, aunts and cousins, becoming first an office boy in a bank; and, then, thanks to Truman's Development, the youngest executive ever for IBM. Thanks to the Development experts and their Education projects for underdeveloped Mexicans, I had arrived!!! With my newly minted education credit hours, I could be at the very center of the Development Epic: providing good services to the community, good conditions for the workers and good profits to the stakeholders; while of course, gaining a solid income, prestige and a sports car. Part of my function, as personnel manager, was to contribute to a process of indoctrination that forged loyalty of the workers to the company. The workers had to submit to that ideological straitjacket, according to which to struggle for the good of the company meant to struggle for one's own interests. 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." When I accepted an important position in government, I did not do it with the idea of making the revolution from within government, or to promote relevant social change. I needed a salary and I sought refuge in my work, while I was still trying to achieve some clarity within me and about what to do. In the following years, while I worked in the office of the President in charge of planning the public budget, I dedicated a good part of my free time, many hours and days of work, to the writing of my first book: Economy and Alienation. I would close myself in my room, separating the intellectual activity from the rest of the things I was doing. It is perhaps the only one of my texts to which I seriously dedicated a prolonged effort of research and reflection. It is a book which I still value and which contains arguments and reflective analysis which I still support. It allowed me to formulate a conception of the world and an attitude towards change that does not require violence. 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. Even the best development programs, like those I was conceiving and implementing, were totally counterproductive: damaging to their supposed beneficiaries. blockquote|A long session with [the next president][ ]López Portillo and his top advisors two weeks before he took office removed any doubts for me as to the path I should take. In that session the President announced unequivocally that his policies would be adverse to the peasants. Five days after this session I initiated the first of two non profit organizations, entering thus the world of civil society in which I have been working since then. 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.