 Despite a long-standing openness to various strands of socialist thought, it was only after 1960 that Marxism gained notable academic standing throughout Latin America. Indeed, Harold Davis claimed, plausibly enough, that Marxism became the most common ideological conviction among professionals in the decades following the 1960s. Mariátegui continues to loom large in characterizations of a distinctively Latin American form of Marxism. However, other important figures in academic Marxism emerged in the contemporary period, including Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez (1915–2011), of Spanish origin but working in Mexico, and the Brazilian Caio Prado Junior (1907–1990).