Karl Marx
Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto among other influential works, is an essential character due to the author’s reliance on a dialectical approach to the formation of this theories. The author is heavily inspired by and gives credit to Marx for inspiring this approach in which the development of a thesis and oppositional anti-thesis are reconciled to arrive at a synthesis.
Che Guevara
The revolutionary icon whose face ironically looks out from millions of consumer products is for the author the face of the liberation of the oppressed. Che’s writings inform the author’s theoretical proposition that the power of liberation rests only among the oppressed rather than in the hands of the oppressors.
Gabriel Bode
Bode is a civil servant conducting research for Chile’s Dept. of Agriculture whose findings are related to an essential aspect of the development of a pedagogical structure for education. This aspect is central to the author’s theory and, though complicated to explain, is known simply as “codification.” Bode’s particular findings are significant because it revealed that response to codifications among peasants engaged their attention only when the subject directly impacted their personal needs.
Alvaro Vieira Pinto
The author borrows from the theories of Prof. Pinto to lend credible support for his own contention that dehumanization of the oppressed is a fundamental foundation for control among all oppressive regimes. Pinto’s writings forward the proposition human consciousness is defined by the struggle toward something greater while oppression is the art of creating the perception of hopelessness.
