In his works, Zea demonstrates that historical facts aren't independent from ideas, and that they do not arise from what is considered unusual, but from simple reactions to certain situations of human life.

Zea explained that the discovery of 1492 was nothing more than a concealment in cultural and known terms, a product of the ideological cross-breeding of the configuration of the Latin American identity, a matter which he revealed on the 5th centenary in 1992.

Being of poor origin, Zea worked in 1933 in the office of Telégrafos Nacionales to help afford the costs of his secondary and university education.

Zea was compared to many diverse political, revolutionary, and intellectual personalities, such as Germán Arciniegas (who was his friend), Che Guevara, José Gaos (his mentor), Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Andrés Bello, Simón Bolívar, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and others.

His philosophy embodied his concept of a united Latin America, not in the terms of a utopia, but based in reality, and the renewal of the fight for a people in demand for said change.