Marco Fonseca

Marco Fonseca was born and raised in Guatemala City during the decades of military authoritarianism that followed the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz's democratic government in 1954. The experience of living under a regime characterized by political repression, inequality, and violence profoundly shaped his intellectual development and fostered a lifelong interest in the problems of democracy, power, emancipation, and social justice.

In the early 1980s, he studied History at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala. In 1985, he emigrated to Canada as a political refugee amidst the Central American civil wars. This displacement transformed his personal experience into a long-term intellectual project dedicated to understanding the relationships between the state, civil society, hegemony, colonialism, and capitalism in Latin America and beyond.

In Canada, he completed his undergraduate, master's, and doctoral studies at York University, where he earned his PhD in Social and Political Thought in 2000. His intellectual development was influenced by political philosophy, critical theory, Western Marxism, the Latin American tradition of dependency theory, liberation theology, and the thought of Hegel, Marx, Gramsci, and Habermas, whose contributions continue to be central to his work.

Throughout his career, he has taught political theory, international studies, Latin American politics, international relations, and civil society theory at various universities in Ontario, including York University. His research has explored hegemony theory, the critique of civil society, democratization processes, the transformations of contemporary capitalism, and the political challenges of Latin America. In recent years, his work has focused on the ecological crisis, digital capitalism, and the conditions for a renewal of critical reason in the 21st century.

In addition to his academic work, Fonseca regularly writes about politics, history, and contemporary ideas on his blog #RefundaciónYa on Substack. His books and essays aim to bridge the gap between philosophical reflection, historical memory, and the public debates of our time.