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.
