central america 1 pgs 40-50

7/30/2019 Central America 1 Pgs 40-50

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CENTRAL AMERICA

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Central America has proved fertile ground

for the emergence of thousands of NGOs.

During the decades following the armed conflicts,

NGOs have worked in innumerable and commendable ways.

At the same time, their short-term policies, tendency to de-politicize and

submissive dependence on funding from the North must be questioned,

as does their contribution to the decline of wage labor and job security,

another very serious issue given the regions unemployment..

40

envo

Two decades ago Argentine journalist Gino Lofredo

wrote an explosive article titled How to get rich in

the 90s. Its opening volley was: You still dont

have your own EN-GE-OH? You havent got a nonprofit

foundation, complete with legal status? Not even a private

consulting firm? Then, my friend, youre really out of it.

Continuing to rub it in with his biting humor, he added:

Make no mistake, EN-GE-OHs are the business of the 90s.

If you wasted your time studying philosophy, social sciences,

history, international relations, literature, pedagogy, political

economy, anthropology, journalism, ecologyand anything

else that wont earn you a living selling fried chickena

good EN-GE-OH is your best option. He went to say thatin order to succeed in the 90s you have to understand the

subtle charm of projects and the sensuality of their

relationship with NGOs and admonished that we shouldnt

need telling again that development is a business.

The second horseman of neoliberalism:

Nongovernmental organizations

JOS LUIS ROCHA

From Lofredo to the present day, EN-GE-OHs, more

commonly known as NGOs or nongovernmental organi-

zations, have been a target for legions of archers eager to

burst the bubbles of international aid and, with impudent

sarcasm or judgmental homilies, question everything from

the small sordid vices and tricks associated with NGO affairs

to the whole system of development cooperation that has

provided the daily bread for hundreds of obese social

individuals happily bathing in international mendicancy in

these little Central American countriesforgotten by the

Hand of God and maintained by that of the Devil.

A postwar phenomenon in Central America

The literature on the genre is immense. The scathing

creativity gnawing at NGOs by hoth comedic and academic

critics, Trotskyists as well as champions oflaissez faire, NGO


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41

october 2011

The emergence of NGOs ran parallel to

the shrinking of the State in all Central

American countries and was made

possible by a transfer of both human

and infrastructure resources from the

State to NGOs

experts and amateurs is due in part to their novelty, or at

least to the novel forms they adopted in the nineties. Its

easier to see the ridiculous side of new and different things.

NGOs in Central America are mainly a postwar

phenomenon. While we can identify a few in the sixties

and seventiesreligious ones, connected to prosperous

Northern dioceses, and academic ones, plugged into

Scandinavian cooperationthe majority of NGOs in

existence today emerged after the insurrections that

bathed the region in blood.

Lets take a look at the case of Nicaragua. The NGO

directory of 2000 recorded the data of only 322 NGOs, only

6% of which had emerged before 1980. Because revolutionary

Nicaragua was a unique case in Central America, the eighties

saw a veritable explosion of NGOs, with the birth of 22%

more. But just as Gino Lofredo saw happening all over Latin

America, the real demographic explosion in Nicaragua took

place in the nineties: 72% of the NGOs existing in 2000

were born in neoliberal Nicaragua. By a few years ago the

Ministry of Government spoke of 4,360 nonprofit, nongovern-

ment associations in Nicaragua and many more without legal

status.

It is estimated that a large majority of the approxi-

mately 70,000 NGOs operating today in the different

developing countries were formed in the 1980s and 1990s,

following the retreat of the State. This rapid expansion

was thanks to the interest of important international

cooperation agencies.

In 2004, not quite yet at the NGO peak, European NGOs

working around the world placed a significant part of their

total project portfolio in Latin America, particularly Central

America: Misereor allotted 43.5 million of its almost 100

million euros; Cordaid 17.4 of its 150; Hivos 16.2 of its 65;Intermon 11.6 of its 25; Trocaire 9 of its 37; Diakonia 10 of

its 28 and IBIS 7.3 of its 20.6. These agencies alone

respectively worked with 944, 300, 269, 209, 188, 129 and

70 Latin American counterparts. Between 1995 and 2005,

Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras (along with

Peru and Bolivia) were the top six priority countries for

European NGOs in Latin America, with what was then and

may still be both the largest European NGO presence and

the greatest allocation of funds.

The emergence of NGOs ran parallel to the shrinking of

the State in all Central American countries and was made

possible by a transfer of both human and infrastructure

resources from the State to NGOs. Former middle- and low-level officials of Honduras National Agrarian Institute

created NGOs specializing in rural development and a whole

range of agrarian and environmental issues. Guatemalan

prosecutors, weary of state corruption, took refuge in NGOs

specializing in human rights, from whose strongholds they

challenge the abuses of the public sector.

In Nicaragua, even Sandinistacomandantescreated their

own NGOs: Jaime Wheelock with IPADE and Monica

Baltodano with Popol Na are just two examples. Sometimes

state institutions morphed into NGOs: the Agriculture and

Agrarian Reform MinistrysCenter for Research and Studies

on Agrarian Reform (CIERA) was awarded to its director,

sociologist Orlando Nez, in its entirety (land, buildings,

files and staff) and became the Center for Research and

Promotion of Rural and Social Development (CIPRES). The

most outstanding NGOs in key areas were founded and are

run by former Sandinista state officials who established

contacts with future international cooperation leaders in the

1980s and acquired the know-how and expertise in the areas

in which their NGOs have specialized: former officials from

the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies (INETER)

created the Humboldt Center, specializing in natural

disasters, and a former Civil Defense officer created the

Augusto Csar Sandino Foundations disaster prevention

section; we could continue with education, health, agrarian

issues, etc.

NGO becomes a synonym for civil society

Soon the good of many became the consolation of the astute,

and other sectors joined the NGO bandwagon. Universities

saw their staff rosters thin out. Experts on indigenous issues

in Guatemala and on agrarian matters in Nicaragua founded

NGOs specializing in their respective fields. In Nicaragua,

grassroots social sector organizations such as the National

Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), the Luisa Amanda

Espinoza Nicaraguan Womens Association (AMLAE) and the

National Educators Association of Nicaragua (ANDEN)

began to function like NGOs. Instead of relying on duesfrom their members, they gradually and then entirely began

to maintain themselves with donations managed by an almost

hereditary bureaucracy that destroyed the democratic and

deliberative nature of their assemblies.


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42

envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

The transfer was evident in El Salvador, where the

guerrillas had been weaving together a parallel State over

the course of the war. Social movements and sectors of the

guerrillas transformed themselves into NGO-style

foundations, collectives and other bodies (sometimes

changing their legal status as well as their management

strategies). This happened with El Salvadors Archbishop

Romero Committee of Mothers of Political Prisoners and

Missing (COMADRES) and the Federation of Agrarian

Reform Cooperatives of the Central Region of El Salvador

(FECORACEN). Except in a few rare cases, in neither the

Salvadoran nor the Nicaraguan cases did this new dependence

on euro and dollar donations instead of dues in local currencies

result in respective independence from the FMLN and the

FSLN. In fact the social movements dependence grew

because they required the administrative skills and contacts

of the guerrilla organizations-turned-political parties to

manage their NGO-style structures.

With this NGO styling of guilds, unions and social

movements, NGO became synonymous with civil society. In

Central America today, when people talk about civil society,

most equate the term with NGOs. Traditional grassroots

organizations seldom come to mind; hardly anyone thinks of

private enterprise; the media occurs to very few; and no one

mentions universities. The media and university professors

themselves reinforce this perception, surely symptomatic of

the NGOs political influence.

proposals of either an imperfect market or an afflicted State.

He was one of the first avowed enemies of the incipient

welfare State: the Poor Law in England and the hospices and

subsidies derived from it. Tocqueville opposed the

institutionalization of charity: Any measure that establishes

legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an

administrative form creates an idle and lazy class, living at

the expense of the industrial and working class. Such a

law is a bad seed planted in the legal structure.

Tocqueville was not opposed to all forms of aid. Like

todays neoliberals, he was repulsed by the poor getting aid

from the State. And like the NGO development experts, he

was against unplanned, sentimental handouts, which have

very little impact: I think that beneficence must be a manly

and reasoned virtue, not a weak and unreflecting inclination.

It is necessary to do what is most useful to the receiver, not

what pleases the giver, to do what best serves the welfare of

the majority, not what rescues the few.

He offered three manly and reasoned solutions to the

problem of poverty. The first was a better distribution of

land: not by applying a subversive agrarian reform but by

abolishing the principle of primogeniture, in which the

firstborn is the sole heir and younger children are only left to

choose the Church, the military or misery. Tocqueville

thought that landownerseven if they were only small and

medium entrepreneurscould acquire the qualities that

generate wealth and an appreciation for order, activity

and saving.

His second solution was micro-financing (needless to

say, he didnt call it that): a merger of state savings banks

and montes de piedad (a Medieval institution that spread

throughout Europe offering financial loans at a modest rate

of interest to those in need from funds built up fromvoluntary donations by the financially privileged) in a single

institution that would pay more for deposits and require

reasonable rates from borrowers.

And his third remedy was the creation of municipal

associations for the extinction of vagrancy and begging:

These associations shouldnt be political in nature; their

purpose is to address an evil that affects all parties, men

from all parties would be equally invited. They wouldnt be

hostile to the government but would be independent from

it.

A hundred and fifty years later, Central American

revolutionaries were more in favor of Tocquevilles

associations than of Marx class struggle. With what somesee as a vile touch and others as a panacea, Tocqueville got it

right: apolitical, local nongovernmental associations working

against poverty with private, voluntary funding and not

through a hateful, State-imposed tax burden.

With what some see as a vile touch and

others as a panacea, Tocqueville got it

right: apolitical, local nongovernmentalassociations working against poverty

with private, voluntary funding and not

through a hateful, State-imposed tax

burden

NGO and association culture:

Tocqueville wins out over Marx

Karl Marx didnt see this coming, whereas the contempor-aneous 19th-Century French political thinker and historian

Alexis de Tocqueville not only envisioned it but encouraged

its development. In his two essays on pauperism (1835 and

1837), Tocqueville sought a solution to poverty beyond the


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43

october 2011

Up with social movements, down with NGOs?

Perhaps its the intuition that NGOs have their theoretical

roots in such a manifestly liberal thinker that sticks in the

throat of more radical leftwing thinkers and has them choking

with emotion.

Among the steeliest-bladed NGOs denigrators are James

Petras and Henry Veltmeyer. Their book Social Movements

and State Powerencapsulates the central criticism of NGOs,

arguing that international development and funding

organizations have turned decisively towards democrati-

zation and civil society, contracting voluntary, nonprofit

associations (NGOs, or what in their most domesticated and

expanded form in the United States are known as private

voluntary organizations, or PVOs), then have converted them

into their agents as strategic partners to deal with the

acute discomfort produced by the implementation of

neoliberal measures. This strategys agenda is to gain the

support of these NGOs in decompressing revolutionary

outbreaks in rural areas and giving poor peasant farmers

and societys grassroots sectors an alternative to the social

movements with their radical anti-establishment policies.

Social unrest and the energies of grassroots movements

would be diverted towards reformist social organizations or

local development. Thats why Petras and Veltmeyer believe

the NGOs development aid channel is more devoted to

political than economic development. It is designed to ensure

transparency (hinder or prevent government corruption and

favoritism), promote democracy in the change process and

instill relevant values and respect for the norms of democratic

behavior, encouraging the adoption of civilized policies

(dialogue, consultation, negotiation) rather than the social

movements habitual confrontational policies.

Post-insurrection Central America has been and still is abreeding ground for this strategy because the erstwhile

revolutionary leaders are themselves now complying with

representative democracy and neoliberal measures. Petras

and Veltmeyer argue that the NGOs have a prominent role in

re-democratization process as front-line agencies in

participatory and democratic development and politics, in

order to convince poor peasants of the virtues of local

community development and the need to reject the social

movements confrontational policies.

From a political to an economic focus

The transformation and transfusion of state resources toNGOs are events that in Petras and Veltmeyers view fit into

a conspiracy where grassroots organizations abandon their

nonconformist nature and, smelling dollars, are co-opted by

organizations opting to avoid conflict and eliminate the

political chip from their plans and strategies. The authors

declare that the flow of foreign funding, combined with the

pressure to fill the spaces vacated by the State, has forced

many NGOs, especially those that were community-based,

to restructure their activities in line with a new focus of

associating with foreign aid organizations. In this context,

slowly but surely, the NGOs became organizations established

to serve the poor in a way the World Bank described as

operational: contractors deprived of their policies operating

in poor districts with a more or less apolitical focus and

direction (macro-project) but not from or part of these

communities. As a result, NGO after NGO was forced to

adopt a more narrowly economic and apolitical focus than

before in order to work with the poor. They limit themselves

to programmatically focusing on individual capabilities,

minimizing interest in the structural (social and political)

causes of poverty.

De-politicized and brazenly flirting with the forces of

evil, we NGOs that work with migrants and their families

cant denounce and work on migrations structural causes;

were limited to filling in the black holes of governmental

red tape or channeling claims between migrants and elusive,

negligent state bodies. Nor do micro-financing NGOs

challenge the banks refusal to make loans to small

producers. Theyre content to move into, and take over, that

niche of the market that has to charge high interest rates.

To summarize: instead of encouraging struggles for a

redistribution of national and local resources, NGOs have all

become providers of services not offered by decrepit or

dwarfed States (if they were merely small they would have

some chance to grow). In so doing, NGOs have fulfilled

Tocquevilles dream of apolitically and non-confrontationally

channeling funds.

Petras and Veltmeyer argue that the

NGOs have a prominent role as front-

line agencies in participatory and

democratic development and politics,

in order to convince poor peasants of

the virtues of local community

development and the need to reject the

social movements confrontationalpolicies


5/11

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44

envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

Orlando Nez, take 1:

NGOs are pioneers of grassroots economy

We can contrast this vision with the one Orlando Nez, the

Nicaraguan director of CIERA-CIPRES, shared at the end of

the 1990s in his foreword to the NGO directory, titled

NGOs, 20 years on: Support for or resistance to neo-

liberalism: Tens of thousands of NGOs specializing in

credit, hundreds of millions of poor people and billions of

dollars are mixed together to celebrate what may be the

launching of a grassroots economy or the reworking of usury

through the democratization of credit. If productive credit

is accompanied by commercial, manufacturing and export

credit, the NGOs could be the pioneers of a grassroots

economy, able to take surplus away from the market that

today the market is taking from the poor. Until recently

there has been only one power bloc, the dominant one

comprising the government, the Catholic Church and private

enterprise organized in COSEP. In recent years, however, a

new social bloc has been forming, composed of municipalities,

NGOs and social movements. The dominant bloc supportsan entrepreneurial economy and a representative or elected

democracy, while the new social bloc supports a grassroots

economic project and participatory or local democracy.

Furthermore, we found NGOs accompanying grassroots

sectors in various nonpartisan, political demonstrations

against governmental corruption, giving them progressive

identity by resisting neoliberalism.

What would Petras say about this speech? These are

Nezs words in 1999, written at his apolitical NGO desk

and from his no-way confrontational enthusiasm for the self-

managed, associative, peasant economic projects funded by

the imperial agents of cooperation.

Orlando Nez, take 2:

NGOs are dismantling the public sector

In July 2007, the second Nez appearednow the creator

of Zero Hunger, the new Ortega governments flagship

program. Six months after the FSLNs return to office, Nez

2, now from his Christian, socialist and solidary state desk,

wrote a text titled Assault on the nation State, in which he

came close to Petras position: In recent decades the original

role of the NGOs has been dissipating and has been directed

and/or reorganized in the light of new mandates.

a) The first mandate that international cooperation

gave civil societys new subjects was to act as a buffer against

the ravages created by privatizing public services. Education

NGOs were formed dedicated to literacy; a noble action

individually but with little social impact as the capitalist

system generated a thousand more illiterates during the

same period that a hundred were taught to read, simul-

taneously reducing the education budget by 50%.

b) The second mandate was to collect the surpluses of

the grassroots economy through what has been called the

micro-credit system. At a certain point, once privatization

was advancing on its own, the NGOs were told they had to be

self-sustaining and the best way for them to do this was to

increase the capital advanced by international cooperation

through short-term loans. Few could resist and many didnt

survive. The rightwing media opened its pages, screens and

microphones to intellectuals selected as outstanding

representative members of civil society. The offensive against

the public sector overrode criticism of the governments

work. The more the government was weakened, the more

brutally they dismantled the nation State. The NGOs

foremost professionals were co-opted by the new neoliberal

rightwing parties; they abandoned their original indepen-

dence and some began to militate in new neoliberal civil-

political organizations.

Sleeping with the enemy?

The statements of Petras and Nez 2 insist that the NGOs

are sleeping with the enemy or, at least, are asleep from the

effects of the enemys drugs. But you have to keep a careful

eye on those who merrily throw stones at the NGOs fragile

tiled roofs from the industrialized countries comfortable

academic mansions, or from state offices. Although only blind

interest could deny that Petras has good reason to question

the NGOs political orientation (apolitical and apoliticizing),

his unreserved condemnation should be balanced by a solid

mass of evidence and a divergent historical focus. The

emergence of NGOs in Central America has also had manybeneficial effects. If the work of certain NGOs had not existed

or were to disappear in one fell swoop, we would be dancing

to a very different tune. Petras condemnation deliberately

ignores this evidence because hes slanted towards a

You have to keep a careful eye on those

who merrily throw stones at the NGOs

fragile tiled roofs from the industrialized

countries comfortable academicmansions, or from state offices


6/11

CENTRAL AMERICA

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45

october 2011

Manichean historical accounting focus: a Dickensian story of

good and bad, a history where conflicts result in zero-sum

game successes or failures and its possible to distinguish

between debits and credits as if a cut-and-dried

accounting of historical processes were possible.

On the other side of the epistemological street, the

historical vision of German political theorist Hannah Arendt

posits that all human actions have a definite start but an

unpredictable end. All actions fall into an already existing

network of relationships and references, so they always extend

further and put in relation and motion more than the agent

could have foreseen. Because these actions trigger a chain of

events that cant be controlled by the causative agents, they

have unpredictable consequences and unlimited results. It

is the interactions that determine the course of effects,

bringing about the birth of the unknown. Success and failure

categories of have no place in this vision because the processes

are always inconclusive and not determinable by the actors.

NGOs are only one among many actors. The effect of their

actions is the result of the interaction with the efforts and

interests of other characters in a very complex drama that

could never be called Down with NGOs, up with social

movements.

Perverse confluence?

The warning by Brazilian political scientist, Evelina Dagnino

is a preferable NGO critique. She talks about the existence

of a perverse confluenceunderstood as a coincidence of

antagonistic projects at the discourse level, hidden beneath

apparently harmless and rarely elucidated common

references. Both leftwing NGOs and the World Bank talk of

corruption, of preserving the institutional framework, ofaccess to resources, of training for development, etc. but are

they talking about the same things?

Recalling Pablo Freire, Dagnino discusses how organi-

zations political projects internalize neoliberal elements

and present them as alternatives. This process occurs by

dislocating the sense of allegedly common references when

individual and organizational political projects arent made

explicit.

The commonest perverse confluence reduces the

promotion of citizenship and democratization to the level of

the marketplace. NGOs are permanently exposed to this

confluence by moving in the same market of donations tied

to ideological packets. I see two differences between Dagninoand Petras proposals: According to Petras, NGOs already co-

opted by the neoliberal project can onlyalthough its no

small thinginternalize neoliberal elements. The NGOs

that he sees as subsumed in neoliberal strategy appear to

Dagnino to be in the midst of a cloud of programs with diffuse

borders and few or badly defined concepts. Theres an

enormous difference between being a sulfurous agent of Satan

and being someone who could be tempted.

The danger Dagnino points to was expressed in the words

that US political scientist Susan George put into the mouths

of an apocryphal panel of experts in TheLugano Report: On

preserving capitalism in the 21st century: Nongovernmental

organizations should, however, continue to be allowed

consultative status within a formal body sitting at regular

intervals. Representatives in this permanent NGO forum

could be elected or not, according to the policies of each

member state. Successfully tested in the long string of UN

conferences during the 1990s, this model has proven its

capacity to make NGOs more constructive and respons-

ible, that is, far less radical, challenging and unruly. The

NGOs have the floor. Its up to them if they fall into the

trap, remain faithful or resume their anti-establishment role.

The story isnt over and we can expect the emergence of

many new developments.

In Hannah Arendts vision of human

actions, NGOs are only one among

many actors. The effect of their actions

is the result of the interaction with the

efforts and interests of other

characters in a very complex drama

NGOs in Central America:

A minimal compendium of their contributions

Tocqueville argued that institutionalized charity emerged

from Protestantism. Karen Armstrong, a British former nun

who has published many books on comparative religion, says

that many North Americans began to work for their country

and their communities in the profusion of Protestant

associations that arose in the Northern countries during the

1820s, after the Second Great Awakening. Christians began

to work for a better world, organizing campaigns against

slavery, alcoholism and the oppression of marginalized

groups. Many were committed to abolitionist and feminist

organizations.Like those predecessors, current associationsmany

religious, some secularhave played a prominent role in

promoting the rights of different groups. The list is immense,

enough to give the lie to Petras and Nez 2. It was NGOs


7/11

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46

envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

that dedicated themselves to the search for the missing

during and after the armed conflicts in Central America and

their work has led to them to challenging and confronting

the established criminal powers. Thousands of dollars were

channeled from NGOs to grease the legal processes and even

rescue guerrillas who would have perished in the dungeons

or under torture by the Guatemalan kaibiles , tenebrous

Honduran police or implacable Salvadoran army.

The Pro-Search Association in El Salvador specialized

in reuniting families separated by the war. Betania and

COAR, also in El Salvador (one in Libertad and the other in

Zaragoza), rescued and raised children of parents killed or

lost in the war. And, when the smoke from the guns began to

dissipate in Nicaragua, the Central American Historical

Institutes war-wounded project provided work training and

hundreds of resources to Sandinista army veterans withdisabilities who had been left stranded in misery by their

wealthy general. War would be nothing but an indescribable

grief without the mercy and solidarity of so many NGOs.

NGOs dedicated to elucidating also mitigated this grief

through the truth. The Inter-diocesan Project for the

Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI), which culminated

in the report Guatemala: Never again, cost its leader, Bishop

Juan Gerardi, his life. He was barbarically murdered by

remnants of repressive structures sheltering in the

Presidential General Staff. The reports four volumes

confronted both neoliberal Guatemala, anxious to forget and

immerse itself in the sweet charms of the market, and

authoritarian Guatemala, which doesnt tolerate complaintsand isnt willing to compensate victims.

Over time, NGOs have been a source of employment

and information and a stronghold from which to confront

authoritarian governments. They are the ones that have

backed the struggle for the decriminalization of therapeutic

abortion in Nicaragua, facing down representatives

insensitive to womens life and health. This is an eminently

political struggle that deals with regulating public values

and questioning specific political parties. It is also from the

NGOs that voices have been raised in defense of Childrens

Codes and against the assaults of the Honduran and

Salvadoran anti-gang laws, against theMano Dura (Hard

Hand) operations in El Salvador, against GuatemalasPlan

Escoba (Clean Sweep Plan) and against recent initiatives to

implement an extremely punitive juvenile justice system in

Nicaragua. In their embryonic as well adolescent, mature

and currently senile phases, not all but certainly more than

a few NGOs have shown a controversial, confrontational,

political and politicizing spirit that has enough backstitches

to invalidate Petras ironclad law against NGOs.

NGOs have been a counterweight to the abuses of Central

American governments: Michelettis coup, Funes authori-

tarianism and Daniel Ortegas despotismthe latter a Nica

version of Rip Van Winkle with his return to the presidency

after a 20-year sleep during which, for him, nothing happened

in Nicaragua, Central America and the world. However

superficially we scratch the surface of recent history, we find

NGO directors and staff who have invested their energy and

risked their savings and lives to denounce the corruption of

Portillo in Guatemala, Alemn in Nicaragua, Cristiani in El

Salvador, Callejas in Honduras and Rodrguez in Costa Rica.

This is a far from complete list and only a faint reflection of

the innumerable marches, analyses, signature collections,

talks, workshops, pamphlets and advocacy that NGOs have

designed, led and implemented.

NGOs are acting as a bridge to internationally accepted

rights in such areas as feminism, indigenous peoples and theenvironment, among others. National laws (such as those on

domestic employment in Costa Rica, citizen participation

in Nicaragua and the integral development of youth in almost

all the regions countries) echo globalized initiatives. The

hand of the NGOs has been, and continues to be, behind,

below and to one side or the other of the adoption of these

laws. Thanks to their efforts, many communal leaders,

peasants, adolescents and young adults and indigenous

peoples are able to make their voices heard: radio programs,

newsletters and participatory research reports embody and

project the voices of those have always had a voice but only a

muted microphone and few auditoriums.

Consumerism or righteous consumption?

Many associations are committed to different aspects of the

market and consumption. Some have opted for fair trade

In their embryonic as well adolescent,

mature and now senile phases, not all

but certainly more than a few NGOs

have shown a controversial,confrontational, political and

politicizing spirit with enough

backstitches to invalidate Petras

ironclad law against NGOs


8/11

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47

october 2011

while others have limited themselves to more conventional

areas but supporting better access to resources or at least

places where resources are in play. Perhaps it is these that

Petras is challenging with his charge of retreating into the

economy and giving up on politics. But the following text,

from the Argentine anthropologist Nstor Garca Canclini,

presents us with a different perspective by re-politicizing

consumption: For many men and women, especially the

young, both the private consumption of goods and the media

better answer our questions about how to be informed and

who represents our interests than do abstract rules of

democracy or participation in discredited political

organizations. In terms of liberal or enlightened democracy,

this process could be understood as loss and de-politicization,

but it could also be thought that the political notion of

citizenship is expanding to include rights to housing, health,

education and the appropriation of other goods through

consumer processes. Its in this sense that I propose

reconceptualizing consumption, not just as a simple scenario

of pointless spending and irrational impulses but as a place

for thinking, where much of societys economic, socio-political

and psychological rationale is organized.

The NGOs also spread knowledge

By being embroiled or stranded in the morass of consumption,

the most sinful of NGOs may be playing politics: outstanding,

good, bad or atrocious politics. They are influencing aspects

of public life that express, in the social self-image or in

everyday living, the dilemmas and agonies of real men and

women: individuals who may seem alienated, bewildered

and diminished when we compare them to the idealizations

created by the most ideological writers of the big isms(communism, Catholicism, evangelism, nationalism, etc.) but

in all their smallness and fallibility, they are the ones who

define the course of history.

NGOs have been, are andI would like to believewill

continue being a privileged platform for the production

and dissemination of knowledge. The Antonio Valdivieso

Center,envo magazine and the Center for Communication

Research (CINCO) in Nicaragua; the Guaymuras publishing

house and the Reflection, Research and Communication

Team (ERIC) in Honduras; the Ecumenical Department

for Research (DEI) in Costa Rica and AVANCSO in

Guatemala are just a few good examples of organizations

with two or more decades of analyzing Central Americanreality and putting out anti-hegemonic thinking through

thick and thin. NGOs help globalize knowledge, introject

non-aggressive ways to understand and exercise masculinity

and dissolve the common sense disseminated by the

dominant class. Those who change minds change the

direction of feet and the work done by hands. And this is

one taskunfortunately, not the only onewhere NGOs

are today treading on shifting sands.

Rightwing benefactors are more generous

Susan George, the US political scientist and standard bearer

for the alter-globalization movement, explained the contrast

between the strategies of rightwing and progressive

foundations in order to explain the overwhelming onslaught

of rightwing thinking in her lucid 2008 book Hijacking

America, How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What

Americans Think. She asks how these foundations use their

money strategically to build a movement. The short

answer is that they do everything the progressive donors

almost always refuse to do. The neoconservatives (neocons)

understand that it can take time to produce intelligent and

well-presented ideas. They set aside substantial, guaranteed

grants for several years; some of their protges have literally

been receiving funding for decades. Recipients know they

can do long-term work; that their donors are willing to wait

for their ideological benefits.

And the progressive donors? They like the short term;

they usually begin with a grant of one year, sometimes

renewable. In extreme cases they can be extended for up to

three years, but then, even if the work was successfully

concluded, they could abandon the recipient because its time

to pass on to something, or someone, new. Neocons identify

their future stars and nourish them with grants, helping

them pass from youth to maturity. Progressive donors usually

feel uncomfortable awarding grants to individual experts.

Like many, they can finance a project they will allow theexperts to define, but they also require them to manage and

coordinate it instead of devoting themselves to full-time

research, thinking and writing.

Those who change minds change the

direction of feet and the work done by

hands. And this is one task

unfortunately, not the only onewhere

NGOs are today treading on shifting

sands


9/11

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48

envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

and have a long-term vision

George describes how rightwing foundations not only

magnificently fund individual experts, but also award a

generous basic operational aid to neocon institutions,

because nothing works without decent infrastructure.

Progressive donors hate to give money to basic budgets, to

boring things like secretaries and computers. They will only

finance projects that include few structural expenses,

generally no more than 10%.

George argues that the most notable difference between

the two types of donors is the tragic contrast in their

objectives. Progressive donors arent prepared to contribute

in any way to the production and dissemination of ideas.

The heart of their strategy is the projecta well-described

goal that involves something, somewhere that needs

correctingwith clearly measurable results. Progressive

donors will never give out money saying, Here, get to work,

with no further ado, not even to people and organizations

that have already shown their ability to use it effectively.

They wont do it because this method would only take about

five minutes. Consequently, institutions and individuals

hoping to obtain or renew their position with their financing

sources must devote exorbitant amounts of time writing

proposals, filling out forms, answering questionnaires and

convincing their benefactors, when they should be

attending to their own basic business: producing and

disseminating ideas. The Right, on the other hand, trusts

its people, keeps bureaucracy to a minimum and does indeed

say: Here, get to work.

demolish in the North is being reproduced in the South, in

our Central America, by governmental and nongovernmental

solidarity from the North.

Democracy: Where art thou?

He who pays the piper calls the tune. And this means that

he has the first and last word and most of those in the middle.

Most of the time funders not only define the issues but also

the percentages of funds allocated to salaries, equipment

and staff training. The terms of reference define everything

from the gender balance in a workshop to the politically

correct concepts that can be applied in an investigation. From

Europe comes concern for the environment, citizen

participation and institutional structure. But the same

donation packet brings an authoritarian, anti-democratic

leadership style: a neocolonial attitude.

Most NGO directors seem like faithful overseers who

dont question the dictates from the North and cant be

questioned by their local crew. They stay in management

forever. This is why we so often see the director-founders of

an NGOoften people with a commendable track record,

who now do little more than repeat, without catching their

breath, the last ideas they read during adolescence

spending 30 grueling years at the head of one of the

widespread genus that Sally ONeill from Trocaire (an Irish

Catholic NGO whose name is the Irish Gaelic word for mercy)

dubbed a MONGO: My Own NGO.

Based on this finding, Gino Lofredo sarcastically advised

in his article that the only important character in the creation

of an NGO is you: Avoid future problems. Dont even think

about including college friends or professional colleagues

with needs and aspirations similar to your own. If you do,you wont sleep easy. Its preferable that the others be

illiterate, eunuchs, senile old people or deceased voters.

This professional, intellectual and social capital gap

means that the new generations find access into and

advancement in the NGOs plugged by old corks that always

float to the top. And, if they do manage to get hired they

must keep their mouths shut if they want to hang on to their

precarious job.

Hands up: This is a contract

Most agencies establish that local NGOs can only invest a

certain amount of their funding in hiring staff. The directorof one agency was recently scandalized because the payroll

budget of one of her counterparts was almost 70% of the

amount requested. Were financing almost the whole

payroll! she exclaimed with unmistakable signs of irritation.

The heart of the progressive donor

strategy is the projecta well-

described goal that involves

something, somewhere that needs

correctingwith clearly measurable

results. Progressive donors will never

give out money saying, Here, get to

work, with no further ado

Ill try to outline some of the consequences of this financingsystem in the NGOs contribution to the worldwide decline

in waged labor. And Ill take advantage of some of the slogan-

denouncements from the Movement of the Indignant to

highlight how the system that the progressives want to


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49

october 2011

But, what was this tiny NGO expected to do in a country

where alleviating unemployment is imperative? Use the

funds for transportation and photocopies so the money from

the North returns to where it came from through the dollar-

ducts of Esso, Toyota and Xerox? The fact that the agency

directors probably exceeded the NGOs entire payroll wasnt

a cause for scandal.

One of the ubiquitous benefits of NGO projects is their

direct impact on employment. But NGOs have objectives

they deem primordial. Theoretically, the goals and mandates

of many NGOs arent at odds with the simultaneous offer of

work, but in practice the funding agencys regulations put a

stop to this benefit, which they seem to consider spurious.

Due to the restrictions on the application of fundsno more

than 15, 20, 30% on overheadand because of the frequent

need to apply again every year to certain donor agencies,

local NGOs must operate with very limited payrolls or can

only offer temporary work.

Assigned funding and annual or semiannual tenders are

the poorly conceived spawn of the new model. The old

agreement was based on long-term stable relationships. The

agencies new deal involves turning the page and starting

over annually. Foreign cooperations new institutional

economy undoubtedly has many benefits, some real and

others still only theoretical: preventing the cronyism of long-

term relationships, offering opportunities to new organiza-

tions, evaluating impacts, rewarding certain issues and

approaches and thus funding the best (which is likely to

mean the best at the things that resonate with the agencies,

such designing AOPs [annual operating plans], SWOT

[strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats] analyses

and Logframes [logical frameworks, the project presentation

and analysis matrices the funders now usually insist on].Given that the principle that every law has its loophole

applies in spades in Latin America, we can guess, and in

certain cases confirm, that the new model wont strain out

the evils thatit is said that they sayriddled the old model:

cronyism, chronic mediocrity, the inability to measure

impacts, among others. But we can also confirm that the

new model has legitimated a karate blow to wage labor,

adding another cohort of evils: precarious and unstable work

situations, low salaries, outsourced costs, work flexibility

and others commonly attributed to the implacable demons

of the entrepreneurial Right now also applied by us, the

progressive NGO cherubimperhaps even with more

expertise and fewer scruples.Following in the transnationals footsteps, NGOs are

helping solidify the victory of capital over labor. It doesnt

matter if theyre seeking Development (when used with a

capital D, the in crowd understands it as the effect of a

project on a social deficiency or dysfunction); the NGOs have

been subordinated to the dynamics of development (with a

small d, the same crowd understands it as the reproduction

of the inequalities in the capitalist system).

The forced contraction of the NGO payroll and the

volatility of relationships between agencies and counterparts

has introduced NGOs into an ephemeral, abusive labor

market: survey takers who jump from agency to agency;

research assistants who only last a day; developers and

evaluators with no passion or conviction for their work,

contracted for a month or a week; workshops by piecework,

etc. With three-month contracts for project coordinators,

NGOs are on a par with the United Nations, one of the bodies

that most globalizes and exploits the legitimization of

precarious labor situations.

The forced contraction of the NGO

payroll and the volatility of

relationships between agencies andcounterparts has introduced NGOs into

an ephemeral, abusive labor market:

survey takers who jump from agency to

agency; research assistants who only

last a day; developers and evaluators

with no passion or conviction for their

work, contracted for a month or a

week; workshops by piecework, etc.

Economic slave for hire

An indispensable prerequisite for the system to work is the

existence of an inexhaustible reserve army of employees with

different skill levels: accountants, sociologists, journalists,

philosophers, nuns, priests and former priests, peasant-

promoters and all the other feathered bipeds the NGO labor

market can swallow. They are economic slaves willing to do

the most diverse tasks. Each one can encompass a variegated

range of positions and occupations: a sociologist can, at the

same time, be an accountant, financier, workshop facilitator

on an unimaginable variety of issues, writer of articles andnewsletters, basic grains marketer, youth group promoter,

magazine editorial board member, NGO representative in

national forums and international networks, teacher,

diploma coordinator and more...


11/11

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50

envo

CENTRAL AMERICA

None of these tasks, however indispensable or common-

place they may be to an NGOs daily work, guarantees

employees a lasting position. Not even the writing of funding

proposals. A full 20 years ago Lofredo already recognized

that people were increasingly being contracted as short-term

consultants. He explained that a couple of unemployed

specialists are hired to write the proposals, devise the action

plans, timetable and of course the most important thing

the budgetand paid the lowest salary the NGO can

negotiate from its position of strength . They work hard day

and night for weeks, formulating the proposal, setting

deadlines, arguing the coherence of the project, in short, doing

everything. They are told, he says, that if the project is

accepted theyll be hired full-time and with international

salaries. In the tongue-in-cheek style he employed in his

article, Lofredo advised that if they believe youand in their

desperation they will believe youthey may even work for

nothing.

With all their proposal-writing and other skills, these

economic slaves will work for nothing or for a modest sum,

then pick up and go on to another NGO urgently needing to

present a project in record time. Flight capital (direct

private investment with a short-term mentality, prepared

to flit off to another country if the going gets a little rough) is

offensive. But flight labor (workers forced to flit from one

temporary job to the next) are always welcomed and more

easily dismissed. These free-lance workersthey can be

found everywhere in Central Americajump from place to

place and from NGO to NGO within their own countries,

from agency to travelling salesman, from a subsidized

newsletter to a fast food stand, with extensive periods out of

work. They pay into social security then are cut off, so after

a life of haphazard work, they are unlikely to have madeenough contributions to enjoy an old age pension. They will

never hold a union card. If theyre young, itll never occur to

them that things could and should be different. In fact,

years ago, they were different.

NGOs provide employment but they survive and reach

their goals on the back of waged labor. Funding agencies

push them in that direction: in countries where unemploy-

ment is a problem, they reduce the percentages allocated to

salaries and put funds into activities such as follow-up

visits, workshops, surveys and forumsan option that itself

leads to contracting for specific tasks. At this juncture the

perverse confluence comes into play: NGOs reinforce

insecure, irregular jobs and violate rights they should defend.The Common Fund in Nicaraguaa conglomerate of

European cooperation fundingand other similar exper-

iences in the region should rethink the model and explore

ways to avoid the old vices without adding new defects.

Your spoils is my crisis

Wage labors obituaries began to proliferate once what Susan

George called the Gramscian Rightan avalanche of

investments and well-coordinated lobbying by the neo-

conservative sectors to generate hegemonyturned the old

capitalist catechism, dressed for a first communion, into

common sense; worshipping the market like a supreme judge

of inscrutable but effective intentions; rewarding strategies

to avoid employer obligations; granting hero status to

managers who cut back on social benefits and super- and

infra-numerary workers; raising managerial techniques to

the level of social doctrine and labeling entrepreneurship as

the most enviable of virtues.

Pastors and priests, teachers and university professors,

managers and administrators, entrepreneurs and NGO

officials are all officiating at the theory and practice of wage

labor funerals that produce the dominant sectors spoils and

the employees crisis. Asking no questions, NGOs generate

work insecurity. And we cant excuse ourselves by saying

that all evils come from the donors. As NGOs we are

cooperating in this system. What we tear down with our

hands and feet were raising back with a finger.

Whats the use of being an NGO that promotes migrants

rights if our hiring policies continue producing more

undocumented workers? Are we promoting micro-

enterprises so our unemployed can look for the steady income

we deny them? Does the struggle for womens rights not

include their right to a steady job even in our ownassociations? Along with focusing on gender, defending

womens right to decide about what affects their own bodies,

the fight for institutional structure and transparency and

many other causes worthy of rebels, NGO fairy godmothers

cave in to the system, applying managerial and staff

management practices that are replacing stainless steel

workers with disposal tin employees.

Jose Luis Rocha is a Jesuit researcher for Central American

Migrants (SJM) and a member of the envoeditorial board.

We will continue next year with his analysis of the ThirdHorseman: Gangs

central america 1 pgs 40-50

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