Las dos caras de las ONG/ Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America

Las dos caras de las ONG/ Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America
por James Petras
La Jornada

Comentaristas e intelectuales se mostraron sorprendidos cuando muchos
líderes y activistas de organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) se
unieron a la campaña electoral de Vicente Fox y, tras su victoria,
esperan recibir puestos dentro de su nuevo gobierno. La idea de que
líderes "progresistas" de las ONG se unan a un régimen abiertamente
partidario del "libre mercado" parece anómala. No obstante, un
análisis más profundo de la historia y antecedentes de funcionarios de
ONG en América Latina, así como de su ideología y nexos con donantes
externos, podía haber vaticinado este escenario.

En la transición hacia la política electoral en Chile, Bolivia,
Argentina y América Central, numerosos líderes de ONG se aliaron a
regímenes neoliberales que utilizaron su experiencia organizacional y
retórica progresista para controlar protestas populares y socavar
movimientos de clases sociales.

Desde el principio de la década de los 80, las clases dominantes
neoliberales, junto con el gobierno de Estados Unidos y gobiernos
europeos, se percataron que las políticas del "libre mercado" estaban
polarizando a las sociedades en América Latina. Mediante fundaciones
privadas y fondos estatales empezaron a financiar a las ONG, mismas
que expresaban una ideología contra el Estado y promovían la
"autoayuda".

A finales de este milenio, existen unas 100 mil ONG en todo el mundo
que reciben cerca de 10 mil millones de dólares y compiten con los
movimientos sociopolíticos por la lealtad de las comunidades
militantes.

Aun cuando las ONG han criticado violaciones a los derechos humanos,
rara vez denuncian a sus benefactores en Europa y Estados Unidos. A
medida que aumentó la oposición al neoliberalismo, el Banco Mundial
(BM) incrementó los donativos destinados a las ONG.

El punto fundamental de convergencia que comparten las ONG y el BM era
el rechazo de ambas entidades al "estatismo". Superficialmente, las
ONG criticaban al Estado desde un perspectiva de "izquierda" en la que
defendían a la "sociedad civil", mientras que al BM lo criticaban en
nombre del "mercado".

En realidad, el BM y los regímenes neoliberales aprovecharon las ONG
para minar el sistema de seguridad social estatal, y fueron utilizados
y reducidos a medios para compensar a las víctimas de las políticas
neoliberales. Mientras los regímenes neoliberales disminuían los
niveles de vida y saqueaban la economía, las ONG se fundaron para
promover proyectos de "autoayuda" que absorberían, temporalmente, a
pequeños grupos de desempleados pobres, a la vez que reclutaban
líderes locales.

Las ONG se convirtieron en "el rostro comunitario" del neoliberalismo
y se relacionaron íntimamente con los de arriba y complementaron su
labor destructiva. Cuando los neoliberales transferían lucrativas
propiedades estatales, privatizándolas para los ricos, las ONG no
fueron parte de una resistencia sindical. Por el contrario, se
mostraron activos en la creación de proyectos privados, promoviendo el
discurso de la iniciativa privada ("autoayuda") al dedicarse a
fomentar la microempresa en las comunidades pobres.

Las ONG crearon puentes ideológicos entre pequeños capitalistas y los
monopolios que se beneficiaron de las privatizaciones --todo en nombre
del antiestatismo y la construcción de la sociedad civil. Mientras los
ricos creaban vastos imperios financieros a partir de las
privatizaciones, profesionales de clase media que trabajaban con las
ONG recibían pequeños fondos para financiar sus oficinas, sus gastos
de transporte y sus actividades para promover actividades económicas a
pequeña escala.

Lo importante aquí es que las ONG despolitizaron a sectores de la
población, ignoraron sus compromisos hacia actividades del sector
público y se valieron de líderes sociales potenciales para la
realización de proyectos económicos pequeños. En realidad, las ONG no
son no gubernamentales. Reciben donativos de gobiernos extranjeros o
funcionan como agencias subcontratadas por gobiernos locales.
Igualmente importante es el hecho de que sus programas no son
calificados por las comunidades a las que ayudan, sino por sus
benefactores extranjeros. Es en ese sentido que las ONG sabotean la
democracia al arrancar programas sociales de las manos de las
comunidades y de sus líderes oficiales, para crear dependencias a
cargo de funcionarios no electos, provenientes del extranjero, quienes
eligen y ungen a sus interlocutores locales.
La ideología de las ONG en cuanto a sus actividades privadas y
voluntarias destruye el sentido de lo "público"; la idea de que el
gobierno tiene la obligación de procurar a todos sus ciudadanos.
Contra esta noción de responsabilidad pública, las ONG fomentan la
idea neoliberal de una responsabilidad privada hacia los problemas
sociales y la importancia de los recursos pararesolver estos
problemas.

De tal suerte, las ONG imponen una doble carga sobre los pobres: el
pagar impuestos para financiar a un Estado neoliberal que sirve a los
ricos; y el autoexplotarse de manera privada para satisfacer sus
propias necesidades.

Muchos de los líderes y militantes de las ONG son ex marxistas o "post
marxistas", quienes toman prestada mucha de la retórica referida a
"dar poder al pueblo", "el poder popular", "la igualdad de género" y
"el liderazgo de las bases como el único que logra legitimidad",
mientras que alejan la lucha social de las condiciones que marcan la
vida de las personas. Las ONG se convierten en un vehículo organizado
que permite la movilidad social ascendente para desempleados o
profesionistas ex izquierdistas mal pagados.

El lenguaje progresista disfraza el núcleo conservador de las
prácticas de las ONG. Ejemplo de esto es el hecho de que la naturaleza
local de las actividades de las ONG tiene siempre que ver con "dar
poder", pero los esfuerzos de estos organismos rara vez van más allá
de una influencia en pequeñas áreas de la vida social, utilizando los
recursos limitados y siempre dentro de las condiciones permitidas por
el Estado neoliberal. En lugar de dar educación política sobre la
naturaleza del imperialismo y sobre las bases clasistas del
neoliberalismo, las ONG discuten sobre "los excluidos", "los
indefensos" y "la extrema pobreza" sin jamás pasar de sus síntomas
superficiales para analizar el sistema social que produce estas
condiciones.

Al incorporar a los pobres a la economía neoliberal a través de
acciones voluntarias que son exclusivamente de la iniciativa privada,
las ONG crean un mundo en el que la apariencia de una solidaridad y
acciones sociales ocultan una conformidad hacia las estructuras
nacionales e internacionales del poder.

No es casual que las ONG se hayan convertido en entes dominantes en
ciertas regiones donde las acciones políticas independientes han
decaído y el neoliberalismo rige sin oposición alguna.

La conversión de líderes de las ONG; de abanderados del "poder
popular", a simpatizantes del presidente electo conservador, Vicente
Fox, es por lo tanto perfectamente comprensible. Los funcionarios de
las ONG proporcionan la retórica "populista" en torno a la sociedad
civil que legitiman las políticas del libre mercado. A cambio, sus
nombramientos como funcionarios gubernamentales satisfacen sus
ambiciones de movilidad y ascenso social.

Para los ex izquierdistas, el antiestatismo es el pasaje que les
concederá tránsito ideológico de la política de clases y el desarrollo
comunitario hacia el neoliberalismo. Para los intelectuales críticos,
el problema no es sólo el neoliberalismo del "libre mercado" que viene
de las cúpulas, sino también el neoliberalismo de la "sociedad civil",
que proviene de abajo.
………………………………………………..
Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America
James Petras, December 1997

By the early 1980s the more perceptive sectors of the neoliberal
ruling classes realized that their policies were polarizing the
society and provoking large-scale social discontent. Neoliberal
politicians began to finance and promote a parallel strategy "from
below," the promotion of "grassroots" organization with an
"anti-statist" ideology to intervene among potentially conflictory
classes, to create a "social cushion." These organizations were
financially dependent on neoliberal sources and were directly involved
in competing with socio-political movements for the allegiance of
local leaders and activist communities. By the 1990s these
organizations, described as "nongovernmental," numbered in the
thousands and were receiving close to four billion dollars world-wide.

Neoliberalism and the NGOs

The confusion concerning the political character of the
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) stems from their earlier history
in the 1970s during the days of the dictatorships. In this period they
were active in providing humanitarian support to the victims of the
military dictatorship and denouncing human rights violations. The NGOs
supported "soup kitchens" which allowed victimized families to survive
the first wave of shock treatments administered by the neoliberal
dictatorships. This period created a favorable image of NGOs even
among the left. They were considered part of the "progressive camp."

Even then, however, the limits of the NGOs were evident. While they
attacked the human rights violations of local dictatorships, they
rarely denounced the U.S. and European patrons who financed and
advised them. Nor was there a serious effort to link the neoliberal
economic policies and human rights violations to the new turn in the
imperialist system. Obviously the external sources of funding limited
the sphere of criticism and human rights action.

As opposition to neoliberalism grew in the early 1980s, the U.S. and
European governments and the World Bank increased their funding of
NGOs. There is a direct relation between the growth of social
movements challenging the neoliberal model and the effort to subvert
them by creating alternative forms of social action through the NGOs.
The basic point of convergence between the NGOs and the World Bank was
their common opposition to "statism." On the surface the NGOs
criticized the state from a "left" perspective defending civil
society, while the right did so in the name of the market. In reality,
however, the World Bank, the neoliberal regimes, and western
foundations co-opted and encouraged the NGOs to undermine the national
welfare state by providing social services to compensate the victims
of the multinational corporations (MNCs). In other words, as the
neoliberal regimes at the top devastated communities by inundating the
country with cheap imports, extracting external debt payment,
abolishing labor legislation, and creating a growing mass of low-paid
and unemployed workers, the NGOs were funded to provide "self-help"
projects, "popular education," and job training, to temporarily absorb
small groups of poor, to co-opt local leaders, and to undermine
anti-system struggles.

The NGOs became the "community face" of neoliberalism, intimately
related to those at the top and complementing their destructive work
with local projects. In effect the neoliberals organized a "pincer"
operation or dual strategy. Unfortunately many on the left focused
only on "neoliberalism" from above and the outside (International
Monetary Fund, World Bank) and not on neoliberalism from below (NGOs,
micro-enterprises). A major reason for this oversight was the
conversion of many ex-Marxists to the NGO formula and practice.
Anti-Statism was the ideological transit ticket from class politics to
"community development," from Marxism to the NGOs.

Typically, NGO ideologues counterpose "state" power to "local" power.
State power is, they argue, distant from its citizens, autonomous, and
arbitrary, and it tends to develop interests different from and
opposed to those of its citizens, while local power is necessarily
closer and more responsive to the people. But apart from historical
cases where the reverse has also been true, this leaves out the
essential relation between state and local power—the simple truth that
state power wielded by a dominant, exploiting class will undermine
progressive local initiatives, while that same power in the hands of
progressive forces can reinforce such initiatives.

The counterposition of state and local power has been used to justify
the role of NGOs as brokers between local organizations, neoliberal
foreign donors (World Bank, Europe, or the United States) and the
local free market regimes. But the effect is to strengthen neoliberal
regimes by severing the link between local struggles and organizations
and national/international political movements. The emphasis on "local
activity" serves the neoliberal regimes since it allows its foreign
and domestic backers to dominate macro-socio-economic policy and to
channel most of the state's resources toward subsidies for export
capitalists and financial institutions.

So while the neoliberals were transferring lucrative state properties
to the private rich, the NGOs were not part of the trade union
resistance. On the contrary they were active in local private
projects, promoting the private enterprise discourse (self-help) in
the local communities by focusing on micro-enterprises. The NGOs built
ideological bridges between the small scale capitalists and the
monopolies benefitting from privatization—all in the name of
"anti-statism" and the building of civil societies. While the rich
accumulated vast financial empires from the privatization, the NGO
middle class professionals got small sums to finance offices,
transportation, and small-scale economic activity.

The important political point is that the NGOs depoliticized sectors
of the population, undermined their commitment to public employees,
and co-opted potential leaders in small projects. NGOs abstain from
public school teacher struggles, as the neoliberal regimes attack
public education and public educators. Rarely if ever do NGOs support
the strikes and protests against low wages and budget cuts. Since
their educational funding comes from the neoliberal governments, they
avoid solidarity with public educators in struggle. In practice,
"non-governmental" translates into anti-public-spending activities,
freeing the bulk of funds for neoliberals to subsidize export
capitalists while small sums trickle from the government to NGOs.

In reality non-governmental organizations are not non-governmental.
They receive funds from overseas governments or work as private
subcontractors of local governments. Frequently they openly
collaborate with governmental agencies at home or overseas. This
"subcontracting" undermines professionals with fixed contracts,
replacing them with contingent professionals. The NGOs cannot provide
the long-term comprehensive programs that the welfare state can
furnish. Instead they provide limited services to narrow groups of
communities. More importantly, their programs are not accountable to
the local people but to overseas donors. In that sense NGOs undermine
democracy by taking social programs out of the hands of the local
people and their elected officials to create dependence on
non-elected, overseas officials and their locally anointed officials.

NGOs shift people's attention and struggles away from the national
budget and toward self-exploitation to secure local social services.
This allows the neoliberals to cut social budgets and transfer state
funds to subsidize bad debts of private banks, and provide loans to
exporters. Self exploitation (self-help) means that, in addition to
paying taxes to the state and not getting anything in return, working
people have to work extra hours with marginal resources, and expend
scarce energies to obtain services that the bourgeoisie continues to
receive from the state. More fundamentally, the NGO ideology of
"private voluntaristic activity" undermines the sense of the "public":
the idea that the government has an obligation to look after its
citizens and provide them with life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; that the political responsibility of the state is essential
for the well-being of citizens. Against this notion of public
responsibility, the NGOs foster the neoliberal idea of private
responsibility for social problems and the importance of private
resources to solve these problems. In effect they impose a double
burden on the poor who continue to pay taxes to finance the neoliberal
state to serve the rich, but are left with private self-exploitation
to take care of their own needs.

NGOs and Socio-political Movements

NGOs emphasize projects, not movements; they "mobilize" people to
produce at the margins but not to struggle to control the basic means
of production and wealth; they focus on technical financial assistance
of projects, not on structural conditions that shape the everyday
lives of people. The NGOs co-opt the language of the left: "popular
power," "empowerment," "gender equality," "sustainable development,"
"bottom-up leadership." The problem is that this language is linked to
a framework of collaboration with donors and government agencies that
subordinate practical activity to non-confrontational politics. The
local nature of NGO activity means that "empowerment" never goes
beyond influencing small areas of social life, with limited resources,
and within the conditions permitted by the neoliberal state and
macro-economy.

The NGOs and their post-Marxist professional staff directly compete
with the socio-political movements for influence among the poor,
women, and the racially excluded. Their ideology and practice diverts
attention from the sources and solutions of poverty (looking downward
and inward instead of upward and outward). To speak of
micro-enterprises, instead of the elimination of exploitation by the
overseas banks, as the solution, is based on the notion that the
problem is one of individual initiative rather than the transference
of income overseas. The NGO's aid affects small sectors of the
population, setting up competition between communities for scarce
resources, generating insidious distinctions and inter- and
intra-community rivalries, thus undermining class solidarity. The same
is true among the professionals: each sets up its NGO to solicit
overseas funds. They compete by presenting proposals more congenial to
the overseas donors, while claiming to speak for their followers.

The net effect is a proliferation of NGOs that fragment poor
communities into sectoral and sub-sectoral groupings unable to see the
larger social picture that afflicts them and even less able to unite
in struggle against the system. Recent experience also demonstrates
that foreign donors finance projects during "crises"—political and
social challenges to the status quo. Once the movements have ebbed
they shift funding to NGO-style "collaboration," fitting the NGO
projects into the neoliberal agenda. Economic development compatible
with the "free market" rather than social organization for social
change becomes the dominant item on the funding agenda.

The structure and nature of NGOs, with their "apolitical" posture and
their focus on self-help, depoliticizes and demobilizes the poor. They
reinforce the electoral processes encouraged by the neoliberal parties
and mass media. Political education about the nature of imperialism,
and the class basis of neoliberalism, the class struggle between
exporters and temporary workers, are avoided. Instead the NGOs discuss
"the excluded," the "powerless," "extreme poverty," "gender or racial
discrimination," without moving beyond the superficial symptom to the
social system that produces these conditions. Incorporating the poor
into the neoliberal economy through purely "private voluntary action,"
the NGOs create a political world where the appearance of solidarity
and social action cloaks a conservative conformity with the
international and national structure of power.

It is no coincidence that as NGOs have become dominant in certain
regions, independent class political action has declined, and
neoliberalism goes uncontested. The bottom line is that the growth of
NGOs coincides with increased funding under neoliberalism and the
deepening of poverty everywhere. Despite the claims of many local
successes, the overall power of neoliberalism stands unchallenged and
the NGOs increasingly search for niches in the interstices of power.

The problem of formulating alternatives has been hindered in another
way too. Many of the former leaders of guerrilla and social movements,
trade union and popular women's organizations have been co-opted by
the NGOs. Some have undoubtedly been attracted by the hope—or the
illusion—that this might give them access to levers of power which
would allow them to do some good. But in any case, the offer is
tempting: higher pay (occasionally in hard currency), prestige and
recognition by overseas donors, overseas conferences and networks,
office staff, and relative security from repression. In contrast, the
socio-political movements offer few material benefits but greater
respect and independence and, more importantly, the freedom to
challenge the political and economic system. The NGOs and their
overseas banking supporters (Inter-American Development Bank, the
World Bank) publish newsletters featuring success stories of
micro-enterprises and other self-help projects—without mentioning the
high rates of failure as popular consumption declines, low-priced
imports flood the market, and interest rates spiral, as in Mexico
today.

Even the "successes" affect only a small fraction of the total poor
and succeed only to the degree that others cannot enter the same
market. The propaganda value of individual micro-enterprise success,
however, is important in fostering the illusion that neoliberalism is
a popular phenomenon. The frequent violent mass outbursts that take
place in regions of micro-enterprise promotion suggests that the
ideology is not hegemonic and the NGOs have not yet displaced
independent class movements.
Finally NGOs foster a new type of cultural and economic colonialism
and dependency. Projects are designed, or at least approved, based on
the "guidelines" and priorities of the imperial centers and their
institutions. They are administered and "sold" to communities.
Evaluations are done by and for the imperial institutions. Shifts of
funding priorities or bad evaluations result in the dumping of groups,
communities, farms, and co-operatives. Everything and everybody is
increasingly disciplined to comply with the donors and project
evaluators' demands. The new viceroys supervise and ensure conformity
with the goals, values, and ideologies of the donor as well as the
proper use of funds. Where "successes" occur they are heavily
dependent on continued outside support, without which they could
collapse.

In many ways the hierarchical structures and the forms of transmission
of "aid" and "training" resemble nineteenth-century charity, and the
promoters are not very different from Christian missionaries. The NGOs
emphasize "self-help" in attacking "paternalism and dependence" on the
state. In this competition among NGOs to capture the victims of
neoliberals, they receive important subsidies from their counterparts
in Europe and the United States. The self-help ideology emphasizes the
replacement of public employees by volunteers, and upwardly mobile
professionals contracted on a temporary basis. The basic philosophy of
the NGO intellectuals is to transform "solidarity" into collaboration
and subordination to the macro-economy of neoliberalism, by focusing
attention away from state resources of the wealthy classes toward
self-exploitation of the poor.

But, while the mass of NGOs are increasingly instruments of
neoliberalism, there is a small minority which attempt to develop an
alternative strategy that is supportive of anti-imperialist and class
politics. None of them receive funds from the World Bank, European, or
U.S. governmental agencies. They support efforts to link local power
to struggles for state power. They link local projects to national
socio-political movements: occupying large landed estates, defending
public property and national ownership against multinationals. They
provide political solidarity to social movements involved in struggles
to expropriate land. They support women's struggles linked to class
perspectives. They recognize the importance of politics in defining
local and immediate struggles. They believe that local organizations
should fight at the national level and that national leaders must be
accountable to local activists.

Some Examples

Let us examine some examples of the role of NGOs and their relation to
neoliberalism and imperialism in specific countries:

Bolivia

In 1985 the Bolivian government launched its New Economic Policy (NEP)
by decree: freezing wages for four months while inflation raged at a
15,000 percent annual rate. The NEP annulled all price controls and
reduced or ended food and fuel subsidies. It also laid the basis for
the privatization of most state enterprises and the firing of
public-sector employees. Massive cutbacks in health and education
programs eliminated most public services. These structural adjustment
policies (SAP) were designed and dictated by the World Bank and the
IMF and approved by the U.S. and European governments and banks. The
number of poverty stricken Bolivians grew geometrically. Prolonged
general strikes and violent confrontations followed. In response the
World Bank, European, and U.S. governments provided massive aid to
fund a "poverty alleviation program." Most of the money was directed
to a Bolivian government agency, the Emergency Social Fund (ESF),
which channeled funds to the NGOs to implement its program. The funds
were not insignificant: in 1990 foreign aid totalled $738 million.
The number of NGOs in Bolivia grew rapidly in response to
international funding: prior to 1980 there were 100 NGOs; by 1992
there were 530 and growing. Almost all the NGOs are directed toward
addressing social problems created by the World Bank and the Bolivian
government's free market policies, which the dismantled state
institutions no longer can deal with. Of the tens of millions
allocated to the NGOs, only 15 to 20 percent reached the poor. The
rest was siphoned off to pay administrative costs and professional
salaries. The Bolivian NGOs functioned as appendages of the state and
served to consolidate its power. The absolute levels of poverty stayed
the same and the long-term structural causes—the neoliberal
policies—were cushioned by the NGOs. While not solving the poverty
problem, the NGO-administered poverty programs strengthened the regime
and weakened opposition to the SAP. The NGOs, with their big budgets,
exploited vulnerable groups and were able to convince some leaders of
the opposition that they could benefit from working with the
government. According to one observer, commenting on the NGO role in
the "poverty program": "If this (NGO programs) did not create direct
support, it at least reduced potential opposition to the government
and its program."

When the public school teachers of La Paz went on strike to protest
$50-a-month wages and crowded classrooms, the NGOs ignored it; when
cholera and yellow fever epidemics raged in the countryside, the NGO
self-help programs were helpless where a comprehensive public health
program would have been successful in preventing them. The NGOs did
absorb many of Bolivia's former leftist intellectuals and turned them
into apologists for the neoliberal system. Their seminars about "civil
society" and "globalization" obscured the fact that the worst
exploiters (the private mine owners, new rich agro-exporters, and high
paid consultants) were members of "civil society" and that the SAP was
an imperial design to open the country's mineral resources to
unregulated pillage.

Chile

In Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship in 1973-1989, the NGOs played
an important role denouncing human rights violations, preparing
studies critical of the neoliberal model and sustaining soup kitchens
and other poverty programs. Their numbers multiplied with the advent
of the massive popular struggles between 1982 and 1986 that threatened
to overthrow the dictatorship. To the extent that they expressed an
ideology, it was oriented toward "democracy" and "development with
equity." Of the close to two hundred NGOs, fewer than five provided a
clear critical analysis and exposition of the links between U.S.
imperialism and the dictatorship, the ties between World Bank funded
free market policies and the 47 percent level of poverty.

In July of 1986 there was a successful general strike—a guerrilla
group almost succeeded in killing Pinochet—and the United States sent
a representative (Gelbard) to broker an electoral transition between
the more conservative sectors of the opposition and Pinochet. An
electoral calendar was established, a plebiscite was organized, and
the electoral parties re-emerged. An alliance between Christian
Democrats and Socialists was forged and eventually won the plebiscite,
ending Pinochet's rule (but not his command of the armed forces and
secret police); this alliance subsequently won the presidency.

The social movements which played a vital role in ending the
dictatorships were marginalized. The NGOs turned from supporting the
movements to collaborating with the government. The Socialist and
Christian Democratic NGO professionals became government ministers.
From critics of Pinochet's free market policies they became its
celebrants. Former President of CIEPLAN (a major research institute)
Alejandro Foxley publicly promised to continue managing the
macro-economic indicators in the same fashion as Pinochet's minister.
The NGOs were instructed by their foreign donors to end their support
for independent grassroots movements and to collaborate with the new
civilian neoliberal regime. Sur Profesionales, one of the best known
research NGOs, carried out research on the "propensity for violence"
in the shantytowns—information that was useful to the police and the
new regime in repressing independent social movements. Two of its
chief researchers (specialty: social movements) became government
ministers administering economic policies that created the most
lopsided income inequalities in recent Chilean history.

The NGOs' external links and the professional ambitions of its leaders
played a major role in undermining the burgeoning popular movement.
Most of its leaders became government functionaries who co-opted local
leaders, while undermining rank-and-file style community assemblies.
Interviews with women active in the shantytown Lo Hermida revealed the
shift in the post-electoral period. "The NGOs told us that because
democracy has arrived there is no need to continue the (soup-kitchen)
programs. You don't need us." Increasingly the NGOs conditioned their
activities on supporting the "democratic" free market regime. The NGO
functionaries continued to use their participatory rhetoric to hustle
votes for their parties in the government and to secure government
contracts.

One striking impact of the NGOs in Chile was its relationship to the
"women's movement." What started as a promising activist group in the
mid-1980s was gradually taken over by NGOs who published expensive
newsletters from well-furnished offices. The "leaders" who lived in
fashionable neighborhoods represented a shrinking number of women.
During the Latin American Feminist Conference in Chile in 1997, a
militant group of rank-and-file Chilean feminist ("the autonomists")
provided a radical critique of the NGO feminists as sellouts to
government subsidies.

Brazil

The most dynamic social movement in Brazil is the Landless Rural
Workers Movement (MST). With over five thousand organizers and several
hundred thousand sympathizers and activists, it has been directly
involved in hundreds of land occupations over the past few years. At a
conference organized in May 1996, by the MST, at which I spoke, the
role of NGOs was one of the subjects of debate. A representative from
a Dutch NGO appeared on the scene and insisted on participating. When
he was told the meeting was closed, he told them that he had a
"proposal" for funding ($300 thousand) community development, and
insisted on entering. In no uncertain terms the MST leaders told him
that they were not for sale and that anyway, they, the MST, design
their own "projects" according to their own needs and don't need NGO
tutors.

Later the women's caucus of the MST discussed a recent meeting with
rural-based feminist NGOs. The MST women pushed for a class struggle
perspective, combining direct action (land occupations) and the
struggle for agrarian reform with gender equality. The NGO
professionals insisted that the MST women break with their
organizations and support a minimalist program of strictly feminist
reforms. The end result was a tactical agreement opposing domestic
violence, registering women as heads of families, and encouraging
gender equality. The MST women, mostly daughters of landless peasants,
perceived the NGO professionals as divisive careerists, not willing to
challenge the political and economic elite that oppressed all
peasants. Despite their criticisms of their male comrades, they
clearly felt greater affinity with the movement than with the
class-collaborationist "feminist" NGOs.

In our discussion, the MST distinguished between NGOs that contribute
to the movement (money, resources, etc.) to finance class struggle,
and NGOs that are essentially missionary outfits that fragment and
isolate peasants, as is the case with many pentecostal and USAID and
World Bank sponsored NGO projects.

El Salvador

Throughout Latin America peasant militants have voiced serious
criticisms of the role and politics of the vast majority of NGOs,
particularly about the patronizing and domineering attitude that they
display behind their ingratiating rhetoric of "popular empowerment"
and participation. I encountered this directly during a recent visit
to El Salvador, where I was giving a seminar for the Alianza
Democratica Campesino (the ADC, or Democratic Peasant Alliance) which
represents 26 peasant and landless workers' organizations.

Part of our collaboration involved the joint development of a project
to fund a peasant-directed research and training center. Together with
the leaders of the ADC we visited a private Canadian agency, CRC
SOGEMA, which was subcontracted by CIDA, the Canadian government's
foreign assistance agency. They administered a $25 million (Canadian)
aid packet for El Salvador. Before our visit, one of the ADC leaders
had held an informal discussion with one of the Salvadoran associates
of CRC SOGEMA. He explained the proposal and its importance for
stimulating peasant-based participatory research. The CRC SOGEMA
representative proceeded to draw a figure of a person on a piece of
paper. He pointed to the head. "That," he said, "is the NGOs: they
think, write, and prepare programs." He then pointed to the hands and
feet, "that's the peasants: they provide data and implement the
projects."

This revealing episode was the background to our formal meeting with
the head of CRC SOGEMA. The director told us that the money was
already earmarked for a Salvadoran NGO: FUNDE (Fundacion Nacional para
el Desarrollo, the National Foundation for Development), a consulting
firm of upwardly mobile professionals. She encouraged the peasant
leaders to co-operate and to become involved because, she said, it
would be "empowering." In the course of our conversation, it emerged
that the Salvadoran associate of CRC SOGEMA who had expressed that
outrageous view of the relation between NGOs (the head) and peasants
(the hands and feet) was a "link" between FUNDE and SOGEMA. The ADC
leaders responded that, while FUNDE was technically competent, their
"courses" and research did not meet the needs of the peasants and that
they had a very paternalistic attitude toward the peasants. When the
Canadian director asked for an example, the ADC leaders related the
incident of the "political drawing" and the role to which it relegated
peasants.

This was, said the director of SOGEMA, a "very unfortunate incident,"
but they were nonetheless committed to working with the FUNDE. If the
ADC wished to have an impact they would best attend FUNDE meetings.
The ADC leaders pointed out that the project's design and goals were
elaborated by middle class professionals, while peasants were invited
to collaborate by providing data and attending their "seminars." In a
fit of annoyance, the director called the meeting to an end. The
peasant leaders were furious. "Why were we led to believe that they
(the Canadian agency) were interested in peasant participation,
democracy, and all the other crap, when they are already plugged into
the NGOs, who don't represent a single peasant? That study will never
be read by any peasant, nor will it be at all relevant to our struggle
for land. It will be about "modernization" and how to swindle the
peasants out of their land and turn them into commercial farms or
tourist areas."

The managers of NGOs have become skilled in designing projects. They
transmit the new rhetoric of "identity" and "globalism" into the
popular movements. Their activities and texts promote international
cooperation, self-help, micro-enterprises, and forge ideological bonds
with the neoliberals while forcing people into economic dependency on
external donors. After a decade of NGO activity these professionals
have "depoliticized" and de-radicalized whole areas of social life:
women, neighborhoods, and youth organizations. In Peru and Chile,
where the NGO's have become firmly established, the radical social
movements have declined.

Local struggles over immediate issues are the food and substance that
nurture emerging movements. NGOs certainly emphasize the "local," but
the crucial question is what direction local actions will take:
whether they will raise the larger issues of the social system and
link up with other local forces to confront the state and its imperial
backers, or whether they will turn inward, while looking to foreign
donors and fragmenting into a series of competing supplicants for
external subsidies. The ideology of NGOs encourages the latter.

NGO intellectuals frequently write about "co-operation" but without
dwelling on the price and conditions for securing the co-operation of
neoliberal regimes and overseas funding agencies. In their role as
mediators and brokers, hustling funds overseas and matching the funds
to projects acceptable to donors and local recipients, the "foundation
entrepreneurs" are engaged in a new type of politics similar to the
"labor contractors" (enganchadores) of the not too distant past:
herding together women to be "trained"; setting up micro-firms
subcontracted to larger producers or exporters employing cheap labor.
The new politics of the NGOs is essentially the politics of
compradores: they produce no national products; instead, they link
foreign funders with local labor (self-help micro-enterprises) to
facilitate the continuation of the neoliberal regime. The managers of
NGOs are fundamentally political actors whose projects and training
workshops do not make any significant economic impact in raising
workers' and peasants' incomes. But their activities do make an impact
in diverting people from the class struggle into forms of
collaboration with their oppressors.

To justify this approach, NGO ideologies will often invoke
"pragmatism" or "realism," citing the decline of the revolutionary
left, the triumph of capitalism in the East, the "crisis of Marxism,"
the loss of alternatives, the strength of the United States, the coups
and repression by the military. This "possibilism" is used to convince
the left to work within the niches of the free market imposed by the
World Bank and structural adjustment, and to confine politics to the
electoral parameters imposed by the military.
The pessimistic "possibilism" of the NGO ideologues is necessarily
one-sided. They focus on neoliberal electoral victories and not on the
post-electoral mass protests and general strikes that mobilize large
numbers of people in extra-parliamentary activity. They look at the
demise of communism in the late eighties and not to the revival of
radical social movements in the mid-nineties. They describe the
constraints of the military on electoral politicians without looking
at the challenges to the military by the Zapatista guerrillas, the
urban rebellions in Caracas, the general strikes in Bolivia. In a
word, the possibilists overlook the dynamics of struggles that begin
at the sectoral or local level within the electoral parameters of the
military, and then are propelled upward and beyond those limits by the
failures of the possibilists to satisfy the elementary demands and
needs of the people.

The pragmatism of the NGOs is matched by the extremism of the
neoliberals. The 1990's has witnessed a radicalization of neoliberal
policies, designed to forestall crisis by handing over even more
lucrative investment and speculative opportunities to overseas banks
and multinationals: petroleum in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela;
lower wages and less social security payments; greater tax exemption;
and the elimination of all protective labor legislation. Contemporary
Latin American class structure is more rigid and the state more
directly tied to the ruling classes than ever. The irony is that the
neoliberals are creating a polarized class structure much closer to
the Marxist paradigm of society than to the NGO vision.

This is why Marxism offers a real alternative to NGOism. And in Latin
America, there do exist Marxist intellectuals who write and speak for
the social movements in struggle, committed to sharing the same
political consequences. They are "organic" intellectuals who are
basically part of the movement—the resource people providing analysis
and education for class struggle, in contrast to the "post-Marxist"
NGO intellectuals, who are embedded in the world of institutions,
academic seminars, foreign foundations, international conferences and
bureaucratic reports. These Marxist intellectuals recognize the
centrality of local struggles, but they also acknowledge that the
success of those struggles depends to a large extent on the outcome of
the conflict between classes over state power at the national level.

What they offer is not the hierarchical "solidarity" of foreign aid
and collaboration with neoliberalism, but class solidarity, and within
the class, the solidarity of oppressed groups (women and people of
color) against their foreign and domestic exploiters. The major focus
is not on the donations that divide classes and pacify small groups
for a limited time, but on the common action by members of the same
class, sharing their common economic, predicament struggling for
collective improvement.

The strength of the critical Marxist intellectuals resides in the fact
that their ideas are in tune with changing social realities. The
growing polarization of classes and the increasingly violent
confrontations are apparent. So while the Marxists are numerically
weak in the institutional sense, they are strategically strong as they
begin to connect with a new generation of revolutionary militants,
from the Zapatistas in Mexico to the MST in Brazil.