It is often assumed that the growth of NGOs
in Latin America reflects a strengthening of civil society. But in
searching for alternative models of development, North
American progressives need to question whether these NGOs
are invariably the best vehicle.
El Astillero is a tiny Nicaraguan community
perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Until
1979, the abundant varieties of fish and seafood
off the coast were harvested only by large privately
owned, off-shore trawlers, and sold abroad. After the
Sandinistas came to power, they encouraged landless
laborers to move to the coast and establish fishing
cooperatives. The inshore fisheries were seen as one
way to increase food self-sufficiency and employment.
After 1985, however, because of the advancing eco-
nomic crisis, government support for the inshore fish-
eries dwindled, and promised assistance to El Astillero
such as a processing center did not materialize.
The Sandinistas turned to international non-govern-
mental organizations (NGOs) to fill the gap.
OXFAM-Canada (a progressive NGO with links to
OXFAMs in the United Kingdom, the United States,
Belgium and elsewhere) decided to link up fishermen
in Nicaragua with their Canadian counterparts from
the Maritime provinces, who, OXFAM thought, had
useful technical and organizational expertise to share
with the Nicaraguans. The El Astillero project was
part of OXFAM’s effort to increase solidarity in
Canada with the Nicaraguan revolution, to identify
common struggles between people in similar posi-
tions in their respective countries, and to find ways in
which groups in the North could assist their Southern
counterparts.
Small delegations of Canadian fishermen began vis-
iting El Astillero in 1986. Not surprisingly, they tend-
ed to focus on the low levels of technology in El
Astillero, particularly the unstable boats carved by
Laura Macdonald teaches political science at Carleton University
in Ottawa, Ontario. She is the author of Supporting Civil
Society: The Political Impact of NGO Assistance to Central
America, forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press.
hand from logs. The Canadians organized shipments
of basic equipment like nets, ropes and knives, and
built a flat-bottom boat.
Canadian fishermen were enthusiastic about the
experience. After a Nicaraguan delegation paid a visit
to Canada, a Canadian participant remarked, “people
in the community are more open and interested in
meeting people from other countries. Before you
would have heard a lot of racist comments. Now peo-
ple see foreigners as interesting people. It is not
unusual now to have a few of the guys talking about
international issues around the wharf.”‘ One of
OXFAM’s representatives called the linkage “a per-
fect example of how concrete the international solidar-
ity between working people can be.”
Yet when I visited El Astillero in 1989, the local
fishermen were sitting in their houses or repairing
their nets, while the equipment which OXFAM had
provided lay idle on the shore. None of the fishermen
were going out to sea because there was no market for
their fish, and because they had no money to pay for
gasoline to fuel their boats. That year, the local fishing
economy had entered into crisis when the state-the
only purchaser at that time of local fish-stopped buy-
ing from El Astillero. The setback revealed that the
real needs of the community were not in production,
but in organization, marketing, and increasing their
political impact on government policies. It was not
clear what the Canadians had to offer Nicaraguans in
any of these areas.
The crisis in El Astillero pushed OXFAM-Canada
to rethink its strategy. It eventually decided to with-
draw from involvement at the community level and to
focus on supporting attempts to organize inshore fish-
ermen at the regional and national levels. In 1992,
with OXFAM’s support, nine regional unions of fish-
30NAflA
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
30REPORT ON SOLIDARITY
A young woman builds a bicycle wheel at ECOBICI, a project of
the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology.
ing cooperatives formed the National Federation of
Inshore Fishermen (FENICPESCA). Although organi-
zationally still weak, the capacity of the fishermen to
represent their interests vis-&t-vis the state has
increased substantially. The fishermen have also orga-
nized to market their fish collectively, rather than rely
on the state or large private buyers. Though much
work remains to be done, the boats of El Astillero are
now returning to the sea, and their owners have more
secure access to markets.
The story of El Astillero illustrates many of the
dilemmas faced by Northern NGOs throughout Latin
America. First, paternalism has not disappeared,
even though many NGOs like OXFAM recognize the
problem and have tried to eliminate it. As a subse-
quent evaluation of the program at El Astillero noted,
OXFAM’s approach reflected the wrong-headed
assumption that modern technology could solve
“Third World” problems. Since Latin American
agencies are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds
them, needed program changes are often slow in
coming.
Similarly, direct people-to-people linkages between
groups of the North and South may not be the best
way to promote development. “Perhaps it was wrong
to think that primary producers know best what other
primary producers needed in terms of development,”
one organizer reflected. “We forgot that it was their
first exposure to Third World issues too, and that they
too needed to learn about development strategies.” 2
Although exchanges are an important way to educate
people in the North about development issues, it can-
not be assumed that people in similar situations in the
North and South have the same interests and needs.
Even if they are poor and marginalized within their
own countries, groups from the North cannot automat-
ically transfer their experiences and knowledge to the
South.
Finally, as OXFAM learned, long-term success
requires moving beyond the local community to con-
front broader economic and political structures at the
national and international levels. The El Astillero pro-
ject stumbled at first because it did not adequately take
into account the national socioeconomic framework in
which the fishing cooperatives operated.
In the wake of structural adjustment and the wide-
spread decline of faith in state-led development
strategies, both Latin American governments and
Northern donors are increasingly turning to NGOs.
NGOs are seen as a way not only to fill the gap caused
by cutbacks in state services, but also as a way to con-
tribute to democratization through support for civil
society. The 1993 Human Development Report of the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
argues, for example, that governments need to find
new ways to give people greater influence and partici-
pation in decision-making:
Unless this is done, and done in time, the irresistible
tide of people’s rising aspirations will inevitably clash
with inflexible systems, leading to anarchy and chaos.
A rapid democratic transition and a strengthening of the
institutions of civil society are the only appropriate
responses. 3
Reliable statistics on total amounts of NGO assis-
tance to Latin America are difficult to find. According
to the UNDP, total Northern NGO aid increased from
$1.0 billion in 1970 to $7.2 billion in 1990. NGOs are
increasingly on the receiving end as well. In Central
America alone, some 4,000 NGOs currently receive
an estimated $350 million annually from all sources. 4
During the 1980s, the growth rate of official aid to
Southern NGOs was almost five times higher than the
growth in governmental development assistance. 5
Several different types of organizations are involved
in this growing phenomenon:
i) Northern NGOs: These are non-profit organiza-
tions based in North America and Europe. They fund,
and sometimes implement, development projects, usu-
ally in more than one country. They receive money
both from governments and private donations. In the
United States, they are often referred to as Private
Voluntary Organizations (PVOs).
ii) Southern NGOs: These are non-profit organiza-
tions based in Asia, Africa and Latin America, whose
principal function is to implement development pro-
jects favoring the poor. 6 Northern NGOs are the main
source of financial support for Southern NGOs, but
they may also receive assistance from Northern gov-
ernments or international organizations. Both South-
ern and Northern NGOs are typically staffed by mid-
VOL XXVIII, No 5 MARCH /APRIL 199531 VOL XXVIII, No 5 MARCH /APRIL 1995 31REPORT ON SOLIDARITY
Women participate in a community-organized program to distrib-
ute bread and milk to schoolchildren in Perquin, El Salvador.
dle-class professionals who provide technical support,
training and financial support to communities. South-
ern NGOs serve as intermediaries between the grass-
roots and government, Northern NGOs, and interna-
tional financial institutions.
iii) Popular organizations: Popular organizations
are composed of members, to whom they are in some
way accountable. They include neighborhood associa-
tions, agricultural cooperatives, peasant unions, and
women’s groups. They may get support from state
agencies, international NGOs or national NGOs,
though many receive no external funding.
Political scientist Charles Anderson once referred to
Latin American politics as a “living museum,” in
which new political actors appeared on the scene, but
the old ones refused to disappear. 7 Latin American
NGOs are very similar. In general, they have evolved
from providing charity and relief, into community
organizing and local development, and more recently
toward lobbying and advocacy work. The older types
of NGOs, however, continue to coexist with the newer
forms, and probably control more money. 8
The boom in NGO aid has been fueled by the repu-
tation of NGOs as paragons of development action.
This reputation comes from their small size, efficien-
cy, moral commitment to the cause of helping the
poorest, their proximity to the grassroots, and the high
levels of popular participation. NGOs are seen as peo-
ple-to-people organizations capable of creating direct
links between people in the North and South, thus pro-
viding a human face to the problems of development.
Because of their small scale, NGOs can be more flexi-
ble and innovative than bilateral or multilateral aid
agencies, and therefore are often a source of alterna-
tive development strategies.9
In recent years, however, doubts have emerged
about the real impact of assistance from Northern
NGOs to their Southern counterparts. The apparent
virtues of NGOs tend to obscure the real problems
even the most well-meaning and effective NGOs
encounter in attempting to promote development. The
virtuous image creates unrealistic expectations about
the possibility of quick fixes if only aid is directed to
people at the grassroots. In most of Latin America,
the cards are stacked against the poor, and NGO
activity can do little in the short term to reshuffle the
deck. Shifting responsibility for the welfare of the
poor away from the state (which at least has the
capacity to do something about it) onto civil society
is problematic. Moreover, NGOs are a varied lot,
with diverse motivations and ideological perspec-
tives. Needless to say, not all do useful work.
n Central America, political polarization has led to
the emergence of two distinct kinds of NGOs:
neoliberal and progressive. A group of progressive
Central American NGOs, the Concertaci6n Regional
de Organismos de Desarrollo, describes the difference
between the two accordingly:
The difference lies in how they view the problem of
power. In the first case, the activity of the NGO is
directed at provoking changes in order to avoid modifi-
cations in the structure of power. In the second case, the
NGOs try to promote changes in order to achieve trans-
formations in the relation of social forces, in a manner
which favors the majority.’ 0
Both types of NGO are responding to the needs of
large marginalized populations who lack economic
alternatives. Their objectives and political agendas,
however, are very different. Neoliberal NGOs advocate
the merits of market-led strategies for economic recov-
ery. They see their role as assuaging the worst suffering
caused by economic structural adjustment, in order to
ensure social stability. These NGOs may claim to sup-
port community development, but they tend to favor
individualistic solutions to the economic crisis.
Neoliberal NGOs are flourishing throughout Central
America under the auspices of multilateral financial
institutions. According to a World Bank official, the
financial institutions “are beginning to see NGOs as
important vehicles for dissemination and constituency-
building for a variety of macroeconomic efforts includ-
ing structural-adjustment programs.”” Moeen Qureshi,
senior vice-president of the World Bank, says the Bank
considers NGOs “important coworkers in a common
cause.”‘2 In a typical case from El Salvador, U.S.AID,
together with the World Bank, UNDP, and the Inter-
American Development Bank (IDB), has helped estab-
lish a Salvadoran Social Investment Fund (Fondo de
Inversidn Social Salvadoreiia or FISS). As in other
countries of the region, the fund pays for projects
meant to alleviate the worst effects of structural-adjust-
SNACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON SOLIDARITY
ment programs on the poorest. The FISS is notably
selective in choosing its NGO collaborators. “The lim-
ited effort to create a framework to incorporate NGOs
into the FISS,” says one observer, “reflects government
policy to work only with NGOs with proven links to
business groups, and the IDB’s relative inexperience
with welfare-orientated NGOs.” 3 Not surprising, the
NGOs allied with the popular sectors during the 1980s
have found themselves largely shut out of government
plans for postwar reconstruction.
Even if they claim to support popular participation,
neoliberal NGOs are usually interventionist and pater-
nalistic. Local participation is often limited to provid-
ing voluntary labor so that development projects can
be implemented more cheaply. In one particularly
egregious example, after the 1990 election in
In the wake of structural adjustment,
the”alternative” strategies advocated by
progressive NGOs often end up looking
not too different from those of
neoliberal groups.
Nicaragua, one large Northern NGO funded a food-
for-work program run by the right-wing municipal
government of Managua. Workers were hired, among
other things, to paint over the large, colorful murals on
city buildings which had become a symbol of support
for the revolution.
By contrast, progressive NGOs in both the North
and the South define their main objective as altering
the political and economic balance of forces within
their societies, often through empowerment of people
at the grassroots. In Guatemala City, for example,
numerous women’s organizations are engaged in such
diverse activities as establishing a Pap-smear clinic,
sexual-education talks, legal advocacy for abused
women, and a drop-in center for prostitutes. Although
these groups do not call themselves feminist, they aim
through popular education to increase women’s self-
confidence and their capacity to participate in commu-
nity organizations.14
In general, progressive Northern NGOs (many of
which are based in Western Europe or Canada) do not
directly implement their own projects but provide sup-
port for local NGOs or popular organizations with
which they have developed a long-term relationship.
As much as possible, local partners establish priorities
for work, and are given control over day-to-day deci-
sion-making.
n the face of the broader constraints of the interna-
tional market, structural adjustment, state policy,
and the general political bias against the interests
of small producers, the “alternative” strategies advo-
cated by progressive NGOs often end up looking not
too different from those of neoliberal groups. This
neoliberal-progressive convergence can be seen in the
examples of two NGOs from Costa Rica. The first is
Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a mainstream U.S.
NGO which receives much of its funding from
U.S.AID. CRS, the foreign-relief and development
agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops,
focused on charity and welfare work in the 1950s.
During the 1960s, CRS, like many other Northern
NGOs, became frustrated with its failure to reduce
levels of poverty, and began to fund local small-scale
development projects instead.
U.S.AID viewed NGOs in Costa Rica as a private-
sector alternative to state paternalism and as a “shock
absorber” for social tensions in the context of the
volatile Contra war raging to the country’s north. In
1986, CRS began to provide organizational, technical
and financial support to small farmers, primarily for
the production of “nontraditional exports” such as
ornamental plants, broccoli, macadamia nuts and
cocoa. As part of this program, CRS established a pro-
ject in Uvita to promote cocoa production among a
group which was forming a cooperative.
From the start, the cooperative members had little
input into the project. The project was designed and
implemented according to the priorities of the Costa
Rican government and international donors. Since the
cooperative would forfeit CRS’ aid if it decided to
produce food for domestic consumption, the coopera-
tive’s role in the project’s design was limited to mak-
ing suggestions about which nontraditional export
crop it should grow. General meetings of the coooper-
ative were held only twice a year. In addition, since
almost all cooperative members were men, women
were automatically excluded from participating.
The problems of paternalism are not, however, lim-
ited to neoliberal NGOs. A similar cocoa-growing
project in Costa Rica was funded by Agro Action, a
German NGO, and implemented by CECADE, a pro-
gressive Costa Rican NGO. CECADE, formed by
intellectuals associated with the Costa Rican left, was
critical of existing models of cooperation between
North and South. It preferred to work with agencies
like Agro Action which took a hands-off approach and
supported long-term development programs.
CECADE was also closely aligned with one of the
country’s peasant unions, UPANACIONAL, and pro-
moted political participation by peasants at both the
local and national levels.
Unlike CRS, CECADE was critical of the country’s
structural-adjustment program, but, ironically, it also
chose to promote cocoa production. Since the state
had stopped subsidizing basic grains such as beans
and corn, the peasants were looking for alternative
crops. As the CECADE project revealed, the options
open to NGOs are constrained by the broader political
and economic context. If food crops aimed at the local
market are no longer economically viable because of
competition from cheap grains imported from the
United States, small farmers may have little choice but
to produce nontraditional exports. Peasants found it
difficult to compete in this sector, however, because
they lacked access to credit, markets, and processing
facilities, and were vulnerable to the vagaries of the
world market.
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34REPORT ON SOLIDARITY
Bearing out these obstacles, both the CRS and the
CECADE projects ran into problems when the world
price of cocoa plummeted. The CECADE farmers
eventually decided to replace the cocoa plants with
other crops, while CRS decided to continue support
for cocoa production, awaiting better prices.
As the examples of both CECADE and
OXFAM-Canada show, even progressive
NGOs strongly committed to grassroots partic-
ipation face real problems in developing strategies
which respond to local demands. Of key importance is
the question of who makes the critical decisions about
development-the community itself or the NGOs. “If
development organizations-official or voluntary,
Northern or Southern-are to make meaningful contri-
butions toward alleviating poverty,” says John Clark,
formerly of OXFAM-UK, “then they must learn to
follow the people, not expect the people to follow
them. The poor themselves know the capabilities of
their communities, and know what needs to be done.
Development is done by people, not to people.”’15
This is easier said than done. After several years of
working in the community, one CECADE promoter
acknowledged how difficult it was to encourage gen-
uine community participation. “It has been difficult to
break with the paternalistic mentality,” he said. “The
people expect us to arrange everything. They still
don’t feel like the project is theirs.” This problem is
exacerbated by the fact that NGOs-regardless of
where they are based-tend to be made up of middle-
class, usually urban, professionals. More often than
not, the groups are hierarchical, and led by one domi-
nant individual.
But like OXFAM-Canada, CECADE and Agro
Action have learned from their mistakes and are
responding to peasant demands. To its credit,
CECADE has also consistently emphasized the impor-
tance of lobbying and advocacy work. In addition, the
group has carried out extensive research on the impact
of structural adjustment on peasants, which led to the
development of policy recommendations by Costa
Rican peasant organizations for a roundtable discus-
sion with the government.
In order to bypass national NGOs, some Costa
Rican peasant unions got together in 1991 to form a
new organization, Nuestra Tierra. While acknowl-
edging that progressive NGOs played an important
role when the peasant movement was beginning to
organize, Carlos HernAndez, Nuestra Tierra’s director,
argues that they have outlived their usefulness. “These
national NGOs have gradually became an end in
themselves,” he says, “and lost their original purpose,
which was to help the popular organizations by chan-
nelling funds from the international NGOs. Their orig-
A Canadian fisherman holds up a fish at OXFAM-Canada’s pro- ject in El Astillero, Nicaragua.
inal sin was that they were born outside of the popular
movement-from small groups of the left-not as a
result of the suggestions of the popular movement.”
Without doubt, the problems of representation are
even more acute for Northern NGOs, who are yet
another step removed from the grassroots.
In searching for alternative models of development
for the hemisphere, North American progressives
need to question the assumption that NGOs are neces-
sarily allies in a common cause. When it comes to
aid, small is not necessarily beautiful. In fact, assis-
tance from Northern NGOs to small development
projects can be even more dangerous than aid from
state agencies because it penetrates into the very
fibres of a community, creating new forms of clien-
telism and cooptation.
Yet NGOs do have an important role to play in pro-
moting more participatory, egalitarian, and sustainable
forms of development. In order to achieve these goals,
however, Northern organizations must be flexible
enough to learn from their mistakes, and to respond to
the demands of the grassroots. Given the growth in
numbers and competence of Latin American NGOs,
Northern NGOs are rethinking their mandate and role.
Creating direct people-to-people linkages is an impor-
tant vehicle for stimulating political support in the
North for social change. Lobbying, development edu-
cation and advocacy work around issues like trade,
structural adjustment and human rights, however,
often better address the root causes of underdevelop-
ment and poverty. While such work is usually less
appealing to private donors in the North, it is more
sharply aimed at the structural constraints which
impede sustainable development and the alleviation of
misery in Latin America.
A Mixed Blessing
1. Diane Fournier and Bernard Martin, “Report of the Evaluation of
the Atlantic Fisheries Linkage Project and the L’Acadie Project,”
prepared for OXFAM-Canada’s Atlantic Regional Board and the
Central America Work Team, May, 1991.
2 Diane Fournier and Bernard Martin, “Report of the Evaluation.
3. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development
Report 1993 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 5.
4. Tim Draimin, “Potential for Partnership: International Coopera-
tion Institutions and Canadian and Latin American NGOs,”
discussion paper prepared for the International Development
Research Center, Ottawa, Ontario, July, 1994, p. 12.
5. Alan Fowler, “Distant Obligations: Speculations on NGO Fund-
ing and the Global Market,” Review of African Political
Economy, No. 55, p. 15.
6. Mario Padr6n, quoted in Leilah Landim, “Non-governmental
Organizations in Latin America,” World Development, Vol. 15,
Supplement (Autumn, 1987), p. 31.
7. Charles W. Anderson, “Toward a Theory of Latin American Poli-
tics,” in Howard J. Wiarda, ed., Politics and Social Change in
Latin America: The Distinct Tradition, 2nd ed. (Amherst: Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Press, 1982).
8. See David C. Korten, “Third-generation NGO strategies: A Key
to People-centred Development,” World Development, Vol. 15,
Supplement (Autumn, 1987), pp. 145-59; and David C. Korten,
Getting to the 21st Century Voluntary Action and the Global
Agenda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1990). See also
Brian H. Smith, More Than Altruism: The Politics of Private For-
eign Aid (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), chapters
2-4 for a more complete description of the evolution of U.S.,
European and Canadian NGOs.
9. Tim Draimin, “Potential for Partnership,” p. 12.
10. Concertaci6n Centroamericana de Organismos de Desarrollo,
“Memoria: Reunion de organismos no-gubernamentaies para la
constituci0n de la Concertacibn Centroamericana de Organis-
mos de Desarrollo,” unpublished document, San Jose, Novem-
ber, 1988, pp. 24-5.
11. Quoted in Esquel Group Foundation, “Civil Society, State and
Market: An Emerging Partnership for Equitable Development,”
presented to the Social Forum convened by the Inter-American
Development Bank and the United Nations Development Pro-
gramme, Washington, D.C., February 10-13, 1993, p. 8.
12. Moeen Qureshi, “The World Bank and NGOs: New Approach-
es,” remarks before the Washington chapter of the Society for
International Development conference on “Learning from the
Grassroots,” unpublished document, Atlanta, April, 1992.
13. Peter Sollis, quoted in Francisco Alvarez Solis and Pauline Martin, “The Role of Salvadoran NGOs in Post-war Reconstruction,”
Development in Practice Vol. 2, No. 2 (June, 1992), p. 108.
14. Cathy Blacklock, “Reading Political Practices: Women’s Contes-
tation of Human Rights in Guatemala,” prepared for the annual
meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Calgary,
Alberta, June 12-14, 1994.
15. John Clark, Democratizing Development: The Role of Voluntary
Organizations (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1990), p. xi.
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