Magda Zonnia Von Der Heydt-Coca

Magda Zonnia von der Heydt-Coca (80) succumbed to Covid-induced lung damage on October 27, 2023. She was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the younger of two children. After graduating from high school, she went to study in Cordoba, Argentina, where she acquired a bachelor’s degree in social sciences. In 1968, she came to Germany on a stipend for post-graduate studies and received a Ph.D. in Sociology and Economy from University of Marburg. From 1984 to 1993 she taught at the Department of Social Anthropology at University of Zurich, Switzerland. In 1993, halfheartedly, following her husband, she moved to the United States where she taught at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University, before she was appointed Senior Lecturer and Assistant Research Scholar at the Department of Sociology and Program of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Magda was a passionate teacher and loved by her students. She taught about colonialism and political economy of Latin America, weaving together social structures, power relations and economic analysis. She published articles in international journals and two books, “The Bolivian Revolution of 1952 with Special Reference to the Agrarian Reform,” Pahl Rugenstein, 1982 (in German), and “Latin American Development from Populism to Neopopulism,” Lexington Books, 2021.

In 1970 Magda met Rüdiger von der Heydt in Germany and they married and had a daughter, Viviane Naira, born 1983, and a son, Robert Joachim, born 1986.

Magda was cheerful, she loved the music of Bossa Nova, and her favorite author was Gabriel García Márquez. Her soul was with the people of Latin America and their struggles. Her interest was not just academic but genuinely political. Following a happy youth in Bolivia, her student years were overshadowed by the emerging dictatorships all over Latin America. During a protest rally by students in Cordoba she witnessed a student being shot by the police, the notorious first victim of the ‘dirty war’ that would later cost tens of thousands their lives. During her years in Zurich, that she considered the happiest of her life, she taught students, raised her children, and tended to refugees from Latin America that flooded Europe to thousands.