In Latin America, NGOs have historical roots in the
Catholic Church’s fear of social unrest. In the
1950s, the Church established Clritas, a social-assis-
tance organization composed mainly of Catholic
laypeople, in various countries of the region. Grad-
ually, European and North American NGOs tied to
the Church began channelling funds to Latin Amer-
ican groups.’ The Catholic Church, the most power-
ful organization in Latin American civil society,
thus played a crucial role in the formation and link-
ing together of international and national NGOs.
In the 1960s, traditional developmental theory
came under heavy criticism from Latin American
academics and activists. Particularly
important was the emergence of lib-
eration theology with its advocacy of Un critical reflection and political action
by the poor organized in grassroots Norther
communities. Rodrigo Egaia, a
Chilean former NGO activist, argues Latin A
that during the 1960s Latin American
NGOs began to embrace new “para- NGOs s
digms,” based in such concepts as work a “popular education,” “support for
organizational processes,” and “con- polio scientization. According to Egahfa,
these new NGOs combined “Freireian
ideas about cultural action, Marxist
ideas about society and the state, and the visions of
the dependency theorists about the relations
between developed and underdeveloped coun-
tries.” ,
Latin American NGO strategies were also shaped
by the wave of military coups in the Southern Cone
in the 1960s and 1970s. Since military dictatorships
banned traditional forms of political representa-
tion like political parties, the NGO became one of
the few available forms of organization in civil
society. According to Chilean social scientist Sergio
Spoerer, the NGOs which emerged substituted for
the “democratic actors and struggles which were
weakened or prohibited.” “This same climate,” he
says, “created a perception of NGOs that they rep-
resented a sphere of action defined not as non-
governmental, but by their potential to be anti-
governmental.” 3 Unlike most Northern NGOs, Latin
lii
r n
at
ti
American NGOs thus saw their work as highly polit-
ical, oriented toward the needs of the popular
movement and to supporting the capacity of the
poor to survive, organize, and resist state power.
The Reagan Administration’s policy of low-inten-
sity warfare in Central America in the 1980s politi-
cized NGO activities in a different way. The U.S.
government channelled money to friendly NGOs
for food distribution, health care, and projects for
rural development and displaced persons, all of
which were integrated with military counterinsur-
gency campaigns. 4 At the same time, solidarity
organizations and progressive Northern NGOs sup-
ported Central American NGOs linked
with the popular movements-and in
ke the case of the solidarity organiza-
“tions-with the revolutionary fronts.
NGOs, With the emergence of democratic
regimes in Latin America over the
nerican course of the 1980s, older patterns of
contestation between NGOs and gov-
w their ernments have been superseded by
possibilities for cooperation. For
hig y example, after the Aylwin Administra-
cal. tion took power in Chile i’ 1990,
NGOs were confronted with a new
– situation in which the government
sought their participation in its
socioeconomic development plans. As elsewhere in
Latin America, a social-investment fund was created
in Chile-called FOSIS-to channel money through
NGOs to promote local development. Former NGO
leaders like Rodrigo Egaha were recruited into the
public sector. Some NGO activists now fear that this
type of cooptation may lead to the end of the pro-
gressive NGO as a distinctive organization. -LM
1. FAO-FFHC, “NGOs in Latin America: Their Contribution to
Participatory Democracy,” Development: Seeds of Change,
Vol. 4(1987), pp. 100-5.
2. Quoted in Leilah Landim, “CONGs y estado en America Lati-
na,” unpublished document, February, 1988, p. 9.
3. Sergio Spoerer, “Las organizations no-gubernamentales
en la democratizaci6n de America Latina,” Documento de
Trabajo (Santiago, Chile: ILET, n.d.), p. 11.
4. Tom Barry and Deb Preusch, The Central America Fact
Book (Albuquerque: Inter-Hemispheric Education
Resource Center, 1986), p. 48.
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