In the 1950s and early 1960s, Existentialism gained a foothold among philosophers in Latin American. Among the most important Latin American existentialists/Marxists are Carlos Astrada (Argentina) and Vicente Ferreira da Silva (Brazil), who were particularly influenced by Heidegger. Both were concerned with whether there is such a thing as a human essence. Astrada argues that there is not: Humans do not have a determinate essence, and that constitutes their fundamental problem. In Mexico, a variety of prominent philosophers--members of the Hyperion Group--briefly took up existentialist themes, abandoning them with a few short years (Sánchez 2016).