The Bolivian Marxist René Zavaleta (1937-1984) is considered Bolivia's most notable political thinker of the 20th century, an eminent figure in Latin American Marxism, since he produced critical thought anchored in the concrete history of our societies, and developed a set of theoretical and conceptual approaches relevant to understanding the specificity of Bolivia and Latin America. Within his theoretical and conceptual construction, Zavaleta coined three categories that contain enormous potential for the field of critical pedagogy: "crisis as a method of knowledge", "accumulation within the class" and "democracy as self-etermination of the masses". This article will present in a general way the work and the legacy of the Bolivian Marxist, carrying out a detailed analysis of the above three categories, to then project a range of informed challenges for critical pedagogies today. It is argued that the category of "crisis as a method of knowledge" opens up a set of relevant and current epistemological problems for the development of the critical consciousness for the new generations. The "accumulation within the class" emphasizes the processes of self-constitution and self-organization of the working class, which ultimately refers to cumulative processes of learning (and unlearning), organization and struggle, all of which is relevant to educational processes linked to popular movements. And the category of "democracy as self-determination of the masses" is important because it makes it possible to articulate socialism and democracy without restricting their understanding relegated to the margins of liberal or social democratic discourses, claiming their radical and revolutionary dimension.