Abstract: Despite the impressive influence that Martin Heidegger has over 20th-century thought, there has been little scholarship on how Sein und Zeit has influenced Latin American philosophy. I correct for this critical oversight by investigating how Rodolfo Kusch, Álvaro Vieira Pinto, and Paulo Freire, respectively, use the words ser and estar to critique and creatively reappropriate Heidegger's Sein lexicon in Sein und Zeit .