FOR ADOLFO SÁNCHEZ VÁZQUEZ AT HIS 110th BIRTHDAY Reflections on the live and intellectual development of the precursor for a Critical theory from the Americas

110 years after his year of birth, we want to remember one of the most important Marxist philosophers in Latin America: Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, who has contributed central elements to the development of an independent and critical Marxism on this continent and in the Spanish language. With this, he is the most important precursor of a Critical Theory from the Americas. Sánchez Vázquez was one of the thousands of Spaniards that spontaneously threw themselves into opposition against Franco's coup d’état, and, before suffering ultimate defeat, prevented the Francoite invasion of significant sections of Spain for almost three years, and from 1937 on he was in charge of editing Ahora, the central publication of the JSU. In the same year he was invited to the Second International Congress of Antifascist Writers in Madrid. After the defeat of the Civil War in February 1939 Sánchez Vázquez crosses the border to France and left the Mediterranean port of Sète in May with the first ship sent by the Mexican government under president Lázaro Cárdenas, the Sinaia, headed toward Mexico. The 1959 Cuban Revolution, which broke with traditional thinking and models, and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact states were two historical events that changed Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez’s theoretical perspective. In January 1959 he obteined the position of full-time professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), that made possible what had become impossible in his country of origin to intensely study Marx toward an open and critical mode of thinking. Sánchez Vázquez’s first scientific text in which this understanding of Marx’s theory features appeared in 1961: the essay ‘Ideas estéticas en los ‘Manuscritos económico-filosóficos’ de Marx’, was received with interest in Cuba, and led to a invitation to the island, during which he had the opportunity to meet Che Guevara. Until he was alive, Sánchez Vázquez taught postgraduate seminars in Philosophy at the UNAM and struggled for a world free of exploitation and oppression, as well as for the theoretical understanding necessary to bring it about, setting the foundations for a Critical theory from the Americas.