Focus: The IAF’s Investment in Young People

First-Class Citizens: 

Father de Nicoló and the 

Street Kids of Colombia

Patrick Breslin

Soccer and Change in the Conurbano

Jeremy Coon and Paula Durbin

Hope amid Danger in Honduras: 

Education, Employment and New Entreprises 

John Reed

How the Salvadoran Diaspora Funds 

Options for the Future

Megan Fletcher

Bridging Brazil’s Academic Gap

 David Fleischer and Alexis Toussaint

Forum for Fellows’ Findings

Landless Workers and Schools: 

An Alternative Approach to Rural Education

Rebecca Tarlau

Bonding or Bridging Ties? 

Social Relations and Indigenous Activism 

in Peruvian Amazonia

Danny Pinedo

Brazil’s Virtuous Alliance: 

How the Grassroots and the Government 

Joined Forces against AIDS 

John Garrison and Jessica Rich

At the IAF

Examining Assumptions: 

Aid, Development and What Counts as Success

Marion Ritchey Vance

Development Notes

A Book Conversation: 

The Long Lingering Shadow

Paula Durbin

Resources

Contents
Grassroots Development

Journal of the Inter-American Foundation

Volume 34 

2013

Focus: Investing in Young People
6 Grassroots Development 2013 34

6 Grassroots Development 2002 23/1

The Inter-American Foundation

Robert N. Kaplan, President

Board of Directors

John Salazar, Acting Chair

Thomas Dodd, Acting Vice Chair

Eduardo Arriola

J. Kelly Ryan

Jack Vaughn 

Roger Wallace

Grassroots Development

Journal of the Inter-American Foundation

Managing Editor: Paula Durbin

Contributing Editors: Eduardo Rodríguez-Frías, 

Maria Jovanovic

Photo Editor: Mark Caicedo

Editorial Assistant: Hailey Fox

Foreign Language Editions: João Bezzera, Darío Elías, 

Anna Maria Greenston, Aura Triana-Pacheco

Design and Printing: Jamie Harvey, 

U.S. Government Printing Office

The Inter-American Foundation (IAF), an independent foreign assistance 

agency of the United States government, was created in 1969 to promote 

self-help development by awarding grants directly to grassroots organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its operating budget consists of 

congressional appropriations and funds derived through the Social Progress 

Trust Fund. 

The IAF prints Grassroots Development in English and Spanish and posts on 

www.iaf.gov English, Spanish and Portuguese versions accessible in pdf 

or html format. Original material produced by the IAF and published in 

Grassroots Development is in the public domain and may be freely reproduced. Certain material in this journal, however, has been provided by 

other sources and might be copyrighted. Reproduction of such material may 

require prior permission from the copyright holder. IAF requests notification of any reproduction and acknowledgement of the source. Grassroots 

Development is indexed in the Standard Periodical Directory, the Public 

Affairs Service Bulletin, the Hispanic American Periodical Index (HAPI) and the 

Agricultural Online Access (WORLD) database. Back issues are available on 

microfilm from University Microfilms International, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann 

Arbor, MI 48106. To receive the journal, e-mail publications@iaf.gov or write 

to the following address:

Grassroots Development

Inter-American Foundation

1331 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 1200

Washington, D.C. 20004

Cover: Christian Humberto López Pozo, 18, student-electrician, Grupo 

Juvenil DION, Tegucigalpa. Mark Caicedo

Opposite page: Mario, preschooler, Defensores del Chaco, Moreno, Buenos 

Aires. 

Printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink.

The purpose of this journal is to share grassroots development experiences with a variety of readers. The editor encourages submissions on 

relevant topics including, but not limited to, the following: 

• how the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean organize and work 

to improve their lives; 

• issues and trends in the development community; 

• how institutions cooperate to further the development of the region.

Please direct query letters to Paula Durbin at the above address or 

e-mail pdurbin@iaf.gov. 
Contents

The IAF’s Investment in Young People 

First-Class Citizens: 

Father de Nicoló and the Street Kids of Colombia

Patrick Breslin........................................................... 2

Soccer and Change in the Conurbano

Jeremy Coon and Paula Durbin ...................................... 10

Hope amid Danger in Honduras: 

Education, Employment and New Entreprises

John Reed............................................................... 22

Forum for Fellows’ Findings

Landless Workers and Schools: 

An Alternative Approach to Rural Education

Rebecca Tarlau......................................................................... 28

Bonding or Bridging Ties? 

Social Relations and Indigenous Activism in Peruvian Amazonia

Danny Pinedo.......................................................................... 34

Brazil’s Virtuous Alliance: 

How the Grassroots and the Government Joined Forces against AIDS 

John Garrison and Jessica Rich....................................................... 40

At the IAF

Examining Assumptions: Aid, Development and What Counts as Success

Marion Ritchey Vance ................................................................. 48

Development Notes..................................................................... 56

A Book Conversation: The Long Lingering Shadow

Paula Durbin........................................................................... 60

Resources.................................................................................. 63

Online Edition: Focus Continued

How the Salvadoran Diaspora Funds Options for the Future

Megan Fletcher......................................................................... 66

Bridging Brazil’s Academic Gap

David Fleischer and Alexis Toussaint................................................ 71

Volume 34 

2013

Grassroots Development

Journal of the Inter-American Foundation

Paula Durbin
ii Grassroots Development 2013 34

I

t is my pleasure to introduce this issue of 

Grassroots Development focused on the InterAmerican Foundation’s support for youth, a topic 

that has never been more relevant. Today, more than 

half of the world’s 7 billion individuals are under 

30, giving us the largest generation of young people 

in history. Most countries in Latin America and the 

Caribbean mirror this demographic and the few 

exceptions hover just above it. 

As a national statistic, youth can correlate with 

poverty. The poorest countries are often those with 

the youngest population. Similarly, young people 

normally comprise a disproportionate share of those 

living below national poverty lines, and they are 

often the most vulnerable sector within each disadvantaged group. Even during good times they can be 

left behind if they are unprepared for a productive 

life and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. 

Denied viable opportunities to work or continue in 

school, many of those known as the “ni, ni” (que ni 

estudian, ni trabajan) provide a pool of recruits for 

gangs who further undermine the economic, social 

and political health of their communities. But I 

would insist that viewing youth through the lens of 

impending danger results in a narrow focus that distorts the reality. 

While young people are at the center of many of 

the hemisphere’s most daunting challenges, they are 

also a source of hope and tremendous opportunity. 

In the IAF’s experience, we find they are smart, work 

hard and, given the chance, contribute significantly 

to their communities. Since beginning operations in 

the 1970s, the Inter-American Foundation has interpreted its congressional mandate as a call to invest in 

young people, whether they are part of a struggling 

family or are fending for themselves. For more than 

Focus: Investment in Young People

To see how a country will turn out in five years, look at its young people.

—Fabián Ferraro, founding director, Club Atlético Defensores del Chaco

Above and right: Young Colombians in the Bosconia program.

Patrick Breslin
Grassroots Development 2013 34 1

40 years, the IAF’s grantee partners 

have assured generations of disadvantaged children and adolescents the 

safe and healthy start, good education, 

access to trustworthy adults, development of their talent, grooming in 

democratic practices, and personal validation that lead to a meaningful place 

in society. As young people mature, our 

partners have helped ease the transition to adulthood with training in 

marketable skills, job placement and 

start-up capital for new enterprises. 

This issue of our journal draws 

upon the IAF’s decades of experience 

with grassroots initiatives that channel youthful energy into effective citizenship. It 

starts, appropriately, with the Bosconia program in 

Colombia, a signature grantee partner from the IAF’s 

early years and among the most successful efforts 

anywhere in terms of numbers of kids pulled from 

the streets and, as they age out, of placing them in 

jobs. All of these are compelling stories of investment in change that counts and often starts with 

assets as intangible as pride and a sense of purpose. 

Another common element is the expectation that 

the young people themselves drive their programs 

and, over time, adapt them to evolving needs and 

circumstances. The articles also offer a glimpse into 

some of the adults who have guided the development 

of these essential organizations, bringing to mind 

the “searchers” described by William Easterly as key 

to intelligent support for development. Each organization profiled embodies values that work to make 

conditions better. Inevitably, questions of sustainability loom: How can we build a wider base of support 

for these grassroots pillars of our communities that 

not only benefit the young but welcome them as primary agents? How can they maintain a consistently 

high level of creativity and energy in initiatives that 

need to reach ever larger numbers of people?

The journal’s focus on young people doesn’t 

stop with its profiles of our grantee partners. Marion 

Ritchey-Vance brings us into contact with the millennials who took her course on foreign assistance at 

Carleton College. And the Forum for Fellows features 

juried articles showcasing young scholars whose work 

was supported by the IAF, the only donor that specifically funds academic research targeting grassroots 

development in Latin America and the Caribbean. A 

peer review by scholars on the IAF’s Academic Review 

Committee resulted in the selection of two articles 

for publication in this issue, one on the educational 

efforts of the Brazilian landless workers’ movement 

and the other on social capital among indigenous 

Peruvians in the Amazon region. A third Fellow, who 

researched grassroots mobilization to counter the HIV/

AIDS crisis in Brazil, collaborated with the former IAF 

representative who had awarded and monitored the 

IAF’s essential early support. Their article underwent 

an independent peer review in Brazil. 

Years ago, in a much different context, Martin 

Luther King, Jr., spoke of “the fierce urgency of now.” 

Those words come to me as I write about the IAF’s 

investment in young people, who not only will determine what kind of future the world will have but very 

clearly shape the present. Supporting them as they realize their potential will help their communities thrive.

Robert N. Kaplan

President

Inter-American Foundation

Grassroots Development 2013 34 3

At dawn, most mornings during the last four 

decades, a white van would stop near a highway overpass in Bogotá and sound its horn. 

After a few moments, a shaggy head would pop up 

among the tumbled rocks and concrete chunks and 

cardboard boxes under the highway. Slowly, boys 

would emerge, baggy clothes hanging like blankets 

from their shoulders, faces dirty and slack with sleep 

and pick their way from makeshift shelters toward the 

van’s open doors where one man was tilting a coffee 

urn to fill plastic cups, another arranging fresh buns 

on a tray. It was breakfast time for Bogotá’s street kids, 

thanks to an organization started by a young priest 

who had also grown up in poverty, in war-ravaged 

Italy. Out of the initial meetings between the streetwise priest and the street-wise kids a program emerged 

that has offered more than 40,000 young Colombians 

the education and moral support they needed to 

become productive citizens and has inspired similar 

programs around the world.

The coffee and buns always came with an invitation to a nearby daily shelter providing hot showers 

and meals, medical attention and opportunities 

for recreation. There the boys would learn about a 

residential program that included schooling, vocational training, the chance for an eventual job. The 

choice was theirs. They could stop with the coffee 

and return to the street; they could stop with occasional showers. Or they could apply to embark on the 

path to a very different future. What distinguished 

this program, known as Bosconia-La Florida, from 

most other approaches to juvenile poverty and delinquency was the lack of coercion. The kids were in the 

program from start to finish by their own decision. 

They could even drop out at any stage and be welcomed back.

This profile of Father Javier de Nicoló, the priest 

who put freedom at the center of his program, is the 

sixth in a series for Grassroots Development examining the experiences and personal qualities that 

have shaped successful grassroots leaders in Latin 

America. Among the qualities that enabled Father 

de Nicoló to make a pedagogic breakthrough on 

the streets of Bogotá were tremendous energy, a 

cavalry-officer-like confidence that reinforcements 

will appear to fortify any position he seizes and, 

most importantly, the ability to see human potential 

where others saw only problems. 

By the 1960s, there was general agreement that 

street kids in Bogotá and other Colombian cities were 

a big problem, one of many spawned by a violent 

process of social change. In Colombia’s first century 

as a nation, successive civil wars between Liberals 

and Conservatives had bled any practical or even 

ideological meaning from the two parties. In this 

insecure and hostile environment, party allegiance 

became more a part of a person’s identity, and often 

a life and death matter, than a political and policy 

preference. These allegiances were handed down 

within families and jealously maintained by rural 

elites. Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of 

Solitude is perhaps a better guide to the nature of this 

system than any political science textbook.

But in the 20th century, economic pressures sent 

peasant families migrating in search of work, mainly 

to the cities. Free for the first time from the rural 

oligarchy’s heavy thumb on the electoral scale, many 

migrants gravitated to the increasingly reformist 

and populist Liberals, shifting the balance of power 

away from the Conservatives. Political tensions and 

violence increased through the 1940s, culminating in 

the bogotázo, a bloody explosion of rage following the 

First-Class Citizens: Father de Nicoló and 

the Street Kids of Colombia

By Patrick Breslin All photos by Patrick Breslin
4 Grassroots Development 2013 34

assassination of a popular Liberal leader in April 1948 

that left some 3,000 dead and hundreds of buildings 

in downtown Bogotá destroyed or burning. Military 

intervention restored order, but the killing metastasized in the countryside in the following decade, 

a period that came to be known as la violencia driving new waves of terrorized migrants to the relative 

safety of the cities. 

Out of this background of poverty and trauma, 

the street kids invaded the centers of Bogotá and 

other cities. Frequently fleeing abuse at home, they 

sought security and comradeship in galladas, small 

gangs formed for protection and for petty crime. 

They roamed city streets, begging, stealing, mugging, 

scavenging and otherwise fending for themselves. 

Wristwatches and hubcaps were favored targets of 

opportunity. They slept in doorways and under 

bridges, dodged the police, sniffed glue, smoked marijuana and affronted conservatively dressed bogotanos

with their oversized handoff clothes that provided 

convenient spaces for weapons, drugs and stolen 

goods. They were generally considered a plague. It 

took a special kind of experience to see the positive 

potential in the ragamuffins. 

Javier de Nicoló, then a 21-year-old Italian 

seminarian, arrived in Colombia a year after the 

bogotázo, and he knew first-hand what war, violence 

and poverty did to families. His father was wounded 

three times in World War I, was discharged from 

the army in an era when veterans received no pensions, and died when Javier was still a child. He left 

six children to be raised by their devout mother in 

Bari, an Adriatic port just above Italy’s boot. By the 

mid-1930s, Italy was again at war, and both of Javier’s 

older brothers were called up. During World War II, 

Javier pursued his vocational training in a slaughterhouse, after bombing raids destroyed his high school. 

In the immediate post-war years, Italy continued 

to be racked by internal strife, poverty and shortages. “I managed to finish high school, but I was 

malnourished,” de Nicoló recalled. “I found occasional little jobs, working nights, coming home for 

a bowl of soup in the morning, sleeping a bit and 

then going to school, very much how people live in 

the informal economy in Colombia today. But what 

helped me most was a club for young people, a place 

to play football or billiards or take part in theatre, the 

activity I liked best. I played clowns, did pantomime, 

made people laugh. I even told fortunes, reading 

cards or dice. The club was run by the Salesians, 

who were famous for working with young people.” 

Founded in 19th century Italy by Don John Bosco, 

the order cared for poor children and encouraged 

vocations to the priesthood. By the mid-20th century, the Salesians had carried their work to dozens of 

countries around the world, many in Latin America. 

“Have you ever thought about becoming a 

priest?” de Nicoló was asked once at the club. 

“The truth is,” he explained, “I’d never thought 

about it, and the question just hung in the air. One 

day at a conference, a speaker asked us what the best 

profession was. We didn’t know. Doctor? Engineer? 

Soldier or sailor? But he said the best profession was 

to serve humanity, no matter how. And he said it so 

convincingly that it stayed in my mind. It was one 

of those moments that planted a seed.” Soon after, 

the Salesians arranged for de Nicoló to continue his 

studies in Naples. Early on, he decided he would 

quit and return home. “But one of the priests said 

to me, ‘You came here without thinking it through 

and now you’re leaving without thinking it through. 

Finish your degree and then decide,’” he recalled. As 

a student, he heard a missionary describe his work in 

Colombia. “He spoke of a marvelous country where 

there was so much work to do, so much poverty,” de 

Nicoló said. “And that decided me. I agreed to join 

the Salesians and soon after I was on a boat leaving 

Genoa for Buenaventura.”

During the 1950s, de Nicoló continued to pursue 

his studies while working in poor neighborhoods in 

cities throughout Colombia: Bogotá, Barranquilla, 

Cartagena, Bucaramanga. Late in that decade came 

another moment that would mark his life. In Rome, 

Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council 

to chart the direction of the Catholic Church. It 

generated a world-wide demand for information. De 

Nicoló, who had been ordained in 1958, was asked 

to report on the situation of young people in Latin 

America, an assignment that took him to most of 

the countries of the region. “What impressed me 

most were the conditions of young people in prisons,” he said. “I was outspoken about that, and 

finally someone said, ‘You are watching the bulls 

from the seats. If you were down in the arena, you 
Grassroots Development 2013 34 5

would think differently.’ And that decided me. ‘I’m 

going to work in the jails,’ I said.” 

In 1968 and 1969 de Nicoló served as chaplain in 

Bogotá’s juvenile prison, which changed his mind. 

“I realized that in a couple of months, the boys I 

was talking to in prison would be out on the streets 

again,” he explained. “Wouldn’t it be better, I thought, 

to work with them when they were free rather than 

when they were captives? So I started going around 

Bogotá at night, getting to know the places where 

they gathered, talking with them, organizing outings, 

winning their trust. I had a strategy, but I needed a 

shelter. And I discovered that the Salesians owned an 

abandoned house. So I had a shelter, but no money. 

I had a few contacts at Ecopetrol [the state-owned oil 

company] and they got me, not money but 600 tons 

of scrap metal that I could sell.” He also put toward 

his program the honoraria he received for lectures 

and preaching at retreats. Once he took 207 street kids 

to a beach near Santa Marta, on Colombia’s distant 

Caribbean coast. The railroad provided free passage. 

Most of the boys had never been outside Bogotá, never 

been on a train. “Late at night I went through the 

cars,” de Nicoló recalled. “No one was in the seats. 

They were all under the seats. Sleeping on the floor 

was normal for them. 

“The program began to grow. I found more spaces 

for shelters. At the beginning it was all voluntary. 

And then in 1970 the Bogotá district government 

invited me to work with them. But I was hesitant. I 

already knew it could be complicated to work with 

the government, because you could lose your freedom of action. So I told them the first thing we 

needed was a census of the street kids, and then I 

went and did the census and delivered the information. The officials looked at it and said, ‘Well, it seems 

you know what needs to be done, so why don’t you 

become the director of our program?’” 

For most of the next four decades, de Nicoló 

directed both the government’s Instituto Distrital para 

la Protección de la Niñez y la Juventud (IDIPRON) and 

the nongovernmental organization he had founded, 

Fundación Servicio de Orientación Juvenil (FSJ). It 

proved an effective partnership. IDIPRON brought 

in government resources and FSJ contributed energy 

and creativity. The division of labor was geographic—

IDIPRON provided land, buildings and financial 

support for all the youth programs operating within 

Padre Javier de Nicoló.
6 Grassroots Development 2013 34

the federal district of Bogotá. FSJ administered the programs operating elsewhere in the country and was the 

beneficiary of international funding, including major 

grants from the Inter-American Foundation. Created 

by Congress at the end of 1969, IAF was still feeling its 

way in Latin America and the Caribbean in the early 

1970s. In late 1974, Marion Ritchey Vance, then IAF 

representative for Colombia, was in Bogotá attending 

a presentation by a religious charity on its work with 

young people. She noticed a silver-haired priest in the 

audience who seemed to share her skepticism about 

the approach being described. They began to chat. 

“Would you like to see a program that deals 

with kids in a totally different way?” Javier de Nicoló 

asked. When she subsequently visited La Florida, the 

residential school set in attractive grounds on the 

city outskirts, Ritchey Vance expected to be met by 

de Nicoló himself or by the priest who directed the 

school. Instead, a young boy was waiting to give her 

a tour of the campus. He turned out to be the elected 

mayor of the community and he introduced her to 

the other students. “They just turned me loose with 

the kids,” Ritchey Vance recalled, “and I could ask 

anything. I hardly believed what I was seeing. I’d read 

about the street kids and seen them downtown. And 

here I was being escorted by these neatly groomed, 

polite, boundlessly enthusiastic young men. Only 

when it was time for lunch did I finally sit down with 

the priests.” 

Ritchey Vance was even more impressed on a 

subsequent visit. And any doubts she might have 

had about de Nicoló and his team’s street cred disappeared on a day that began with a young thief 

snatching a gold chain and pendant from her neck in 

front of her hotel. Shortly after, she told de Nicoló the 

story before continuing her meetings. Through boys 

in the program, the priest put the word out on the 

street. That night, at a dinner in La Florida, Ritchey 

Vance got her necklace back. 

Two significant IAF grants, in 1976 and 1983, 

each for more than $700,000, helped FSJ equip 

an industrial school providing skills in carpentry, 

metalwork and other trades, and later create an agricultural community at Acandí, Chocó, on the north 

coast. “Javier realized he was graduating kids with 

high school diplomas who were driving taxis because 

of the lack of job opportunities. He decided to at 

least get them some vocational training,” Ritchey 

Vance observed. The IAF later awarded smaller grants 

totaling $86,000 for travel and publications to share 

the approach in other countries, including the 

United States.

But hard on the heels of official recognition and 

international support came a tragic reminder of the 

violent world in which the program was operating. 

De Nicoló had acquired a house in El Cartucho, a 

notoriously dangerous zone in the Santa Inés neighborhood, and hired workmen to remodel it for the 

program. When he traveled to preach in the city of 

Medellin, he left one of the older street kids to look 

after the building. In his absence, the boy confronted 

some of the workmen who were stealing materials. 

They left, but later returned drunk and stabbed him 

to death, then burned his body. De Nicoló arrived in 

Bogotá to find fire engines still at the house. “A terrible thing,” he recalled. “He’d been a street kid, and 

he loved the program. He was already in high school. 

And for being loyal to the program, they killed him. 

It affected me deeply.” A few years later, one of de 

Nicoló’s colleagues, Father Alfredo Gómez, drowned 

when waves in the Gulf of Urabá swamped the boat 

in which he was carrying supplies to the new agricultural training school in Acandí. 

“There were a number of tragedies,” Ritchey 

Vance said. “When you think of the world the boys 

came from—the world to which many of them 

returned—it’s not surprising. I once estimated that 

about a quarter of the kids who entered the program 

eventually went back to the streets and the drugs.” 

Despite the setbacks, the program kept expanding. 

Acandí was only one of the experiments in teaching 

urban street kids skills in agriculture, still a major 

component of the Colombian economy. It also 

functioned as therapy, a bucolic escape into a tropical wonderland of exotic plants and animals, where 

fruit fell from the trees—all of it almost a fantasy 

for kids from the thin air and chilly temperatures of 

Bogotá, 8,600 feet above sea level. 

Other facilities offered technical training in 

large workshops stocked with industrial metal and 

wood lathes, table saws and drill presses. And always 

there were books to read, chess games, sports, music, 

art. Michael Shifter, who evaluated the program 

for the IAF in the mid-1980s, and who had taught 
Grassroots Development 2013 34 7

undergraduates at Harvard, considered Carlos Lara, a 

street kid who emerged as an impressive leader in de 

Nicoló’s program and now helps direct it, the bestread 22-year-old he’d ever met. Each facility had a 

musical group. La Florida, the principal high school, 

had a symphony orchestra and many of its musicians traveled abroad to perform. Music, in fact, has 

always been one of the pillars of de Nicoló’s educational approach. He believes it teaches discipline, 

teamwork, responsibility, cooperation—the fundamentals of getting ahead in society.

In its early years, the program was open only to 

boys, although three stowaways discovered on that 

train trip to the Caribbean coast turned out to be 

girls in disguise, which shocked de Nicoló when he 

learned of it. They were harbingers of what was to 

come. Many boys in the program had sisters and they 

urged de Nicoló to set up an educational program for 

girls, a plea echoed by de Nicoló’s sister Dora, a nun 

who had moved to Colombia to work in a shelter for 

girls. The FSJ program that began serving girls in the 

mid-1980s was run by Dora de Nicoló until her death 

three years ago. The girls attended school, learned 

to play music, were encouraged to take up painting, 

ceramics and other arts, wearing uniforms they made 

themselves, identical in style and quality to those 

worn in expensive Catholic prep schools. Their uniforms, as well as the neat, clean shirts and slacks the 

boys wear, the light, airy spaces for study and work, 

the flowers everywhere, suggest a cornerstone of de 

Nicoló’s design: Despite coming from the streets, 

these young people are as deserving of first-class 

treatment as any child of wealthy parents. “It’s an 

environment that says: ‘We value you, we trust you, 

we love you,’” Ritchey Vance pointed out. De Nicoló 

has a simple response when visitors note the taste 

and elegance of the facilities: “If you want first-class 

citizens,” he says, “give them first-class treatment 

when they’re growing up.”

Encouraged by the success of his approach 

obvious to anyone in the radiant faces of the eager 

students, de Nicoló kept expanding the program. 

There were more daily shelters, more schools offering vocational as well as high school education, 

recreational retreats. De Nicoló didn’t care much 

for looking back, collecting data, documenting the 

experience, a lack that even ardent supporters of the 

program—like former street kid Leonardo Escobar 

who now directs a major USAID-funded project in 

Mexico—see as a missed opportunity. But de Nicoló’s 

emphasis was always on reaching more and more 

kids. Funding and in-kind support, including land, 

buildings and equipment for the expanding program, 

came from government, individuals and corporations. The contributions seem considerable, but not 

when divided by the number of facilities, which 

eventually grew to more than 70, for the thousands 

of youths reached. Kids fed daily in 2006, when the 

program was at its most extensive, totaled about 

10,000, de Nicoló calculated. Even when resources 

were abundant, de Nicoló stretched them with what 

he called his “science of doing big things with a little 

Claudia Orjuela sewing a tablecloth.
8 Grassroots Development 2013 34

money.” In addition to girls’ sewing skills, internal 

economies relied on the boys’ ability to construct and 

repair the facilities and grow food. 

In recent years, the program has expanded to 

new homeless populations, especially to young adults 

with an overwhelming need for jobs. Many would say 

that by the time a boy growing up in severe poverty 

or on the streets reaches 17, his future is to a large 

extent determined. The Colombian label for many 

of these youths was desechables—disposables, throwaways but de Nicoló saw possibilities. “It’s true,” he 

said, “that you see a lot of psychological damage in 

poor youths, because of the hard knocks and abuse 

they take. But life is a carrousel that comes around 

again and again, to offer opportunities. And for me, 

that age, 17, has a good deal of potential. At 17, often 

the youth suddenly awakens, aware that he’s about 

to become an adult but has no education, no job, no 

family functioning as such, nothing that’s prepared 

him for the life that’s rushing toward him. It’s like 

when you arrive at the train and the doors are closed. 

And I’ll say to that youth, ‘You realize the train is 

leaving you behind, don’t you?’ And he responds, 

‘Yes, Father, and that has me panicked.’ 

“So I’ll put him in a group, invite him to come 

every morning at 7 a.m., tell him I need to see if he 

really wants to learn. And I’ll put him in front of a 

computer. And he’ll get terribly enthusiastic as the 

math, the reading and writing from his three or four 

years of schooling finally begin to make sense. Next, 

we’ll emphasize personal grooming, dignity, helping 

others. When I see some progress, I go to businesses 

or city agencies and ask for jobs for these boys. They 

generally say, ‘Father, you’re going to ruin my business.’ But I convince them to take a chance and we 

put them to work on simple tasks cutting grass, filling potholes, fixing traffic signals. They get a regular 

paycheck, something they’ve never seen before. We 

help them find a small room they can afford. We still 

provide breakfast, and two days a week they come 

back for more training. It’s not hard to pick up many 

skills now. In the past to become a cabinetmaker was 

a long process, for example. Today all the pieces are 

prefabricated. It’s much easier. 

“So, with five-month programs that you do again 

and again, you save a lot of people. We had begun 

with younger children, who needed a place to live. 

Older boys don’t need to be protected the same way. 

And the money we don’t spend on housing lets us 

reach many more. Some decide they want more than 

job training. And we move them to other programs. 

Sometimes they remind me of rockets that are spewing smoke, ready to take off.” 

De Nicoló’s success with this program may have 

contributed to a rupture in the system he had built 

that straddled government and nongovernmental organizations. In 2008, after 39 years directing 

IDIPRON, he was asked to resign because of a complaint that, at age 80, he had surpassed by 15 years 

the mandatory retirement age for public employees. 

During those 15 years, through the administrations 

of several mayors, no one had raised a question, and Youths from Bosconia repairing city streets.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 9

there were suspicions that something more than 

compliance with the retirement rule was involved. 

Some influential business owners chafed at de 

Nicoló’s success in getting government contracts 

that put the boys in his program to work. Five years 

later, those suspicions were rekindled when a scandal about city contracting touched some of those 

who’d played a role in forcing de Nicoló’s departure. 

That retirement was one of several blows that came 

in quick succession: a diagnosis of cancer; the loss of 

his sister, Dora; and a financial shortfall that meant 

shifting resources around and closing far-flung installations like Acandí. 

De Nicoló emerged from cancer therapy thinner but “like an oak,” according to Carlos Lara. 

His departure from IDIPRON was the occasion for 

a whirlwind of celebrations of his career, many of 

them parties, banquets and concerts with the boys 

and girls of the program. Multiple stories in the press 

recalled de Nicoló’s career and the tens of thousands 

of youngsters he’d saved from the streets. And there 

were official tributes, from a resolution in the U.S. 

House of Representatives to the Ordén de Boyacá, 

Colombia’s highest honor, which then-president 

Álvaro Uribe personally pinned on the jacket of the 

beaming priest. Not that the honors meant de Nicoló 

was retiring. The IDIPRON connection was gone, but 

FSJ continues to operate programs all over Colombia. 

“I still have a lot to accomplish with the poor children in other cities,” he told a Bogotá journalist. 

Patrick Breslin, former IAF vice president for external affairs, retired after 22 years of service. He can be reached at 

patbreslin@yahoo.com
 Gabriela Boyer

Eduardo Rodríguez-Frías
Grassroots Development 2013 34 11

Hands down, soccer is the world’s most popular sport and in Argentina it ranks as the 

national passion. Millions of Argentines 

play in thousands of clubs, cheered on by an enraptured following that includes Pope Francisco, the 

dues-paying member of San Lorenzo whose image 

is now emblazoned on the club’s jersey. A source of 

civic pride is the pool of A-list talent recruited to 

play abroad, most famously Lionel Messi, consistently rated the world’s best footballer today, and 

Diego Maradona, cited by many as the greatest player 

of all time. 

Fabián Ferraro discovered his own gift for the 

beautiful game early, paid his dues on local feeder 

teams and soon had a few seasons in Europe on his 

resume. His career stopped short of the major leagues, 

but he would become one of the most recognizable figures in Argentine soccer—just not for scoring goals as 

a midfielder. In 1994, barely into his 20s, he was about 

to focus on a different goal, one that would lead him 

to discover how enthusiasm for a sport could develop 

into a dramatic exercise of grassroots engagement. 

A corner in the conurbano

Small beginnings can lead to big things, and the 

beginnings of IAF grantee partner Defensores del 

Chaco were certainly inauspicious: 12 kids with time 

on their hands and nothing better to do than hang 

out on a street corner in Chaco Chico, then considered one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the 

suburbs that coil around Buenos Aires proper to form 

the conurbano. “All we wanted to do was play soccer,” 

said Maximiliano Pelayes, then just a little kid tagging along behind 14- and 15-year-olds whom adults 

in the barrio considered nothing but trouble. 

Like them, Ferraro hails from the northwestern 

reaches of the conurbano—comprising the municipalities of San Miguel, Malvinas Argentinas and 

José C. Paz as well as Moreno, where Chaco Chico is 

located. Less than an hour’s drive from the cosmopolitan veneer and apparent prosperity of downtown 

Buenos Aires, the conurbano was settled via decades 

of migration from the interior of Argentina and from 

Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay. Not surprisingly then, 

it reflects the ethnic mix of the country and the 

continent stretching beyond the city limits of the 

Argentine capital. Families in these northwestern 

municipalities are poor and barrios can be rough. 

Chaco Chico’s serenity belies the bleakness of its 

past. In the 1990s, like most of the conurbano, it was 

battered by unemployment, dependent on public 

assistance, lacking basic services and infrastructure, 

and mired in the apathy and decay those conditions 

breed. “People in the community used to say that 

their children had no future,” Ferraro said, “but they 

were talking about themselves.” 

Soccer and Change in the Conurbano

By Jeremy Coon and Paula Durbin

“Soccer acts as the great socializer and initiates its adepts into the life of 

groups, organizations, and educational programs.” 

 —Albert O. Hirschman, Getting Ahead Collectively
12 Grassroots Development 2013 34

Ferraro would often chat with the kids on the 

corner on his way to visit Julio Jiménez, a friend from 

school. They struck him, he recalled, as “essentially 

good kids, but without any support.” Maxi Pelayes 

offered more detail. “For better or for worse, they ran 

the neighborhood,” he said. “They got blamed for 

everything—fights, robberies, whatever happened 

here. They might not have been the perpetrators, 

but they were the usual suspects, the first the police 

would look for.” Although he insisted the kids never 

really “did anything,” he conceded that they ran a 

junior-grade protection racket, hustling “tolls” from 

passers-by. “We weren’t saints,” Pelayes admitted. “We 

understood that you solved problems with violence; 

that was the culture passed on to us by the role models 

we had then.” 

The situation was all too familiar to Ferraro. 

Homeless at 7, he had survived by peddling on the 

commuter train into the city and sleeping in the station until his rescue by a railroad employee. Ferraro 

credits his adoptive father with encouraging him 

to stay in school and introducing him to soccer. A 

brother had been less fortunate and died a violent 

death as a gang member. Ferraro saw those kids on 

the same collision course toward recruitment as, he 

said, “cheap labor for organized crime.” He talked to 

Jiménez, who also wanted to do something because he 

had a brother in the group. As a professional athlete, 

Ferraro enjoyed tremendous status in Chaco Chico, so 

they decided to engage the kids through soccer. 

With no other place to play, they took the group 

from the corner into the street. The kids named 

themselves Defensores del Chaco in honor of the 

largest soccer stadium in Paraguay and of the ethnic 

origins of Chaco Chico. Their game attracted others, 

including many younger boys. “Suddenly, at 14 and 

15, we were responsible for little kids whose parents 

left them with us,” Pelayes recalled. “We went from 

being seen as a danger to the community to being 

seen as a positive influence.” 

Soccer field of dreams

Coached by Ferraro, the team eventually won the 

district championship and represented Moreno in 

the torneos bonaerenses, the regional tournament. 

“It was something huge because when people in 

Moreno identified with our uniform and our group, 

everything clicked,” Pelayes explained. “All of a 

sudden, we were known for this, not for what had 

gone on before. And that was the start of a dream to 

Courtesy Defensores del Chaco

Defensores’ complex.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 13

change this place.” The kids began by taking over a 

lot that had become a dump, as often happens with 

abandoned property in the conurbano, where trash 

collection can be irregular or nonexistent. Ferraro 

encouraged the players to post a sign: Coming Soon: 

Club Defensores del Chaco Sports Complex. The neighbors scoffed, Pelayes recalled, but the kids stayed on 

course. “We began to clean up the property and we 

located the owner,” he said. “He had inherited the 

land and assumed it had been taken over by squatters. He was grateful that we wanted to buy it. We 

didn’t have to. But if we were going to bring about 

change, we needed to set an example.” So the kids 

knocked on doors until they had enough to pay for 

the lot. “In 1999, we bought it, fenced it, set up the 

field, put in lights and began to build our complex,” 

Pelayes said. 

Ferraro had also begun to shift focus. “We had 

12 kids, then 50, then 300, then 400 and the responsibility became enormous,” he recalled. “It meant 

understanding what was going on around us.” He, 

Jiménez and the other adults who had joined them 

as founding directors began to question the lack of 

infrastructure, basic services and public spaces in 

a neighborhood of 20,000 people, and the link to 

hopelessness and delinquency was obvious. The six 

hours a week they spent with the soccer club seemed 

totally inadequate, given the dysfunction and neglect 

that everyone in Chaco Chico lived with around the 

clock. “We began to think about an action plan that 

went beyond soccer,” Ferraro said. “We understood 

that we had to change the reality of this entire community. We had to have an organization with its 

doors open to community involvement, where people 

could come with their problems and find solutions.”

Game change

The idea of a more inclusive institution started 

Ferraro thinking less about the young people who 

were enrolled in Defensores and more about those 

who were not—because they weren’t fiercely competitive or blessed with talent or amenable to a training 

schedule or inclined to accept the authority of a referee or another reason that had nothing to do with 

their potential for leadership. And then there was the 

notable absence of girls, brought to Ferraro’s attention 

by a collaborating organization in Bariloche. Soccer 

in Argentina has been a domain exclusive to men, 

where rabid fans can erupt in mayhem and women 

do not feel safe, let alone comfortable. 

Defensores at the facility of Boca Juniors, one of Argentina’s premier soccer clubs.

Courtesy Fútbol para el Desarrollo
14 Grassroots Development 2013 34

In 2000, Ferraro introduced fútbol callejero, or 

street soccer, aligning the game with Defensores’ 

values. “The priorities are playing, sharing, respect, 

not winning,” Ferraro explained. “It puts the joy 

back into soccer.” Fútbol callejero calls for mixed 

teams that develop their own rules, do without a referee, instead elect a mediator, and base who wins on 

how the game is played—unheard-of notions that 

Defensores’ players and the community initially 

resisted, especially the part about girls. “We had to 

get beyond the stereotype that women can’t play,” 

Pelayes explained. “We had to work on the men and 

it was hard but we got through it. Today in activities 

like fútbol callejero, the proportion of men to women 

is about 60-40.” Traditional soccer is still in the 

athletic program, but Defensores has been a force 

driving the spread of fútbol callejero. 

In response to community demand, Defensores 

now has facilities for basketball, handball and volleyball as well as soccer; dressing rooms for both 

sexes; a cultural center; offices and rooms for workshops; a preschool; and a theater seating 250, the 

biggest public space in Chaco Chico, funded by IAF 

partner Fundación Arcor. Centro para Ayuda Legal 

Comunitario (CALC) operates out of an office on site, 

thanks to a grant from the World Bank’s Development 

Marketplace to Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la 

Justicia (ACIJ), a public-interest law firm that Ferraro 

brought to Chaco Chico in 2002. ACIJ 

attorneys assigned to CALC help with 

the legal obstacles as conurbano communities try to move forward. All this 

extends Defensores’ reach well beyond 

the young people to whom it offers 

safety and structure. Collaborations 

with dozens of like-minded organizations—sometimes on a staggering 

scale—address the lack of services and 

infrastructure in Moreno and also San 

Miguel, Malvinas and José C. Paz, with 

a total population of 1.3 million. 

Massive undertakings have originated with Culebrón Timbal, a cultural 

group headquartered in another 

neighborhood of Moreno. Directed 

by Eduardo Balán, a teacher, artist 

and musician, Culebrón offers some 

300 young residents programs in art 

and music and uses popular culture 

to rally and transform communities 

over a broad territorial base. Signature 

expressions include the street art that 

decorates Defensores’ complex; la 

murga, the musical theater that provides the soundtrack of the conurbano; 

and la Caravana, an annual festival 

and parade, credited with getting 

people out of their homes to take back 

the streets across four municipalities. 

“With the soccer ball and la murga, 

people began to get together and 

Marina Saieva

Street soccer, downtown Buenos Aires.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 15

Mothers and Justice in El Vergel

El Vergel had to be the most forgotten corner of Moreno in 2003. Home 

to 150 families, the community had a 

single functioning institution: a rustic 

chapel that doubled as a soup kitchen. 

The closest school was three kilometers away. There were no sidewalks and 

no streetlights, which prevented night 

access by emergency vehicles and taxis. 

There were no government services 

other than mail delivery and the barest 

of health care: a medical team that 

would set up every two weeks in the 

chapel’s limited space. Roads flooded 

with every rain, preventing school 

attendance, the medical team’s visits 

and access by ambulances or the police, 

even in daylight, sometimes for months 

at a stretch. For pregnant women, a 

delivery date during the winter wet season presented 

the terrifying prospect of trudging through mud and 

water in bitter cold, possibly in total darkness and 

often with small children in tow, to find transportation to the maternity ward. 

A group of mothers decided that asphalt would 

solve the worst problems in El Vergel, and for years 

they tried to persuade the local government to pave 

the roads. Frustrated but unbroken, they appealed 

to the attorneys from ACIJ who had come to work 

on Defensores’ site. The first meeting was tough. 

“The women barely spoke,” recalled attorney 

Daniela Lovisolo. “It was hard to figure out what 

was on their mind.” 

With ACIJ’s guidance, the mothers renewed 

negotiations with the authorities, a process that 

dragged out for five years. At one point boxes of 

rain boots arrived for the children, but the mothers 

weren’t accepting band-aids. Instead they sued, in 

2008, for paved roads and for a permanent clinic. 

After confirming conditions in El Vergel, the presiding judge ruled for El Vergel. Enforcing the court’s 

order became the next challenge. The mothers 

decided to call attention to their plight by blocking 

traffic on a main artery, a common form of protest 

in South America, but usually a last resort that carries the threat of arrest, denial of public assistance or 

loss of government-sponsored employment. Some 

40 strong, they went to the highway, court order in 

hand, and, to their surprise, the police who arrived 

on the scene formed an escort. “We were on television,” one recalled, “calmly pleading for our barrio.”

Before long, the mayor of Moreno called on the 

mothers and the respective authorities to develop a 

work plan and a budget. “Within a year streets were 

paved, the clinic was operating daily, the neighborhood had been transformed,” said attorney Martín 

Sigal, a founding director of ACIJ. “The very people 

who had been ignored decided where the asphalt 

should go, the schedule of vaccinations, when the 

pediatrician would visit.” Most importantly, the 

women had learned to speak up. “Some went back 

to school, including some who couldn’t read or 

write,” Lovisolo said. “Eventually they set the agenda 

and attended the meetings with the mayor without 

us. They got the mayor’s cell phone number and 

called him when work wasn’t on schedule. Paving 

the streets changed lives in ways we hadn’t planned 

for and can’t measure. We can’t take credit, but it 

happened.”

Attorneys Sigal and Lovisolo with Maxi Pelayes.

Paula Durbin
16 Grassroots Development 2013 34

petition the central, provincial and 

municipal government,” said Fernando 

Leguiza, one of Defensores’ founding 

directors. Important to this has been 

Balán’s tireless effort to assure that conurbano residents remain engaged on a 

daily basis with their communities. For 

many, the rewards have included connection to the electric grid and the gas 

line, garbage collection and access to 

public health services. 

An IAF grant of $228,300 awarded 

to Defensores in 2005 funded a tripartite project with Culebrón and 

ACIJ, currently an IAF grantee partner. A striking outcome (see page 15 

for another) was the mobilization of 

35 organizations—ranging from soccer 

clubs to soup kitchens—to bring participatory budgeting to San Miguel. 

This civic process has been unfolding 

throughout Latin America, as bureaucracies devolve responsibilities and 

resources to smaller units of government. Spearheaded by Culebrón, the 

effort began with the door-to-door 

distribution of educational materials 

and training for canvassers to survey the 

culture and deficiencies in each barrio. 

The results informed the draft of a Carta 

Popular, or Popular Charter, a proposal 

to improve democratic participation in 

San Miguel, so that every neighbor is 

heard. Disseminated via la Caravana 

for approval barrio by barrio, it became 

the basis for a city ordinance that San 

Miguel’s municipal council passed 

unanimously in 2008. The ordinance 

created barrio forums that receive a percentage of municipal resources to invest in 

infrastructure; the municipality offers training in the 

effective use of the process. 

Coming off the bench

In 2008, toward the midpoint in the IAF’s funding, 

Ferraro formally withdrew from Defensores, taking 

the other founders with him. “Our intention had 

always been that Defensores be run by young people 

for young people,” he explained, citing the by-laws 

that require directors of the athletic club and cultural center be under 30. Ferraro was then 36; the 

others had also aged out. Maxi Pelayes, 23 and about 

to become the first university graduate in his family, 

succeeded Ferraro as general director. He currently 

“Participatory budgeting—everyone’s accomplishment.”
Grassroots Development 2013 34 17

Culebrón Timbal informs conurbano residents 

of the advantages of civic participation via its 

annual Caravana featuring murga ensembles 

and numerous floats, right, and other popular 

gatherings, including concerts by its rock 

ensemble starring director Eduardo Balán, 

upper left.

Courtesy Culebrón Timbal
18 Grassroots Development 2013 34

oversees programs in sports, culture, education and 

community development involving 95 employees 

and volunteers; 1,700 dues-paying residents of the 

conurbano, ranging in age from 3 to over 60, take 

advantage of Defensores’ facilities. The youngest 

attend the preschool that the new leadership built 

and that triggered Ferraro’s departure.

The plea for a preschool had come from a group 

of desperate mothers whose children were among 400 

turned away from the overflowing public kindergarten serving seven neighborhoods. Why, they asked, 

Maxi Pelayes on the playground at Defensores’ preschool; right and below, preschoolers in class. Paula Durbin

Courtesy Defensores del Chaco
Grassroots Development 2013 34 19

couldn’t Defensores open a school? The idea excited 

the young men who had grown up with the club, but 

the founding directors turned the mothers down, 

citing the difficulty of obtaining permits and financing. The real reason, Ferraro admitted to himself, was 

that he and his colleagues had become comfortable 

and no longer had the energy for such a challenge. 

“It was like looking in the mirror,” he said of 

the revelation. “And we realized that the young 

people we had developed were capable of leading, 

but we weren’t getting out of their way. We adults 

had become an obstacle. So in three months we were 

gone.” The new leadership convinced the state-owned 

energy corporation YPF, Fundación Navarro-Viola 

and other Argentine donors to fund the preschool. 

Licensing, however, threatened to be the nightmare 

Ferraro had dreaded. Suspicious of the new directors’ youth, and of the light and airy classrooms, the 

authorities initially declared the gleaming new facility illegal. Eventually it passed inspection and opened 

in 2009. Parents pay modest tuition, in kind if they 

can’t afford cash, and operations are subsidized by 

Defensores’ sports programs. “It’s a first-class preschool,” Ferraro said. “And we couldn’t have done it.” 

Next moves

Profiles in the press and on the Web sites of various 

organizations confirm Ferraro’s relentless promotion 

of the power of soccer as a vehicle for social change. 

“In every neighborhood you’ll find an elementary 

school, a church, a clinic and the soccer club,” he told 

Grassroots Development. “On a weekend, it’s the soccer 

game that becomes the meeting place. It’s a citizenship school without walls.” Defensores has inspired 

dozens of new clubs, and with them in mind, Ferraro 

founded Fútbol para el Desarrollo (FuDe). Through it, 

new organizers benefit from Defensores’ experience 

and learn to keep their eye on the ball. “People form 

these groups with the idea of winning games instead 

of working together. They want to replicate a professional model, to develop a Messi for a scout to recruit,” 

Ferraro said, “but the idea is to use football as an 

excuse to mobilize the community for development.” 

Out of FuDe emerged Fútbol para la Oportunidad 

Social, or Liga FOS, a network of 18 grassroots clubs 

that stay in touch by playing each other and provide 

services, such as healthcare, for young people ages 7 to 

18. Families are welcome at the games and the public 

is asked to leave alcohol at home. 

FuDe coordinates fútbol callejero activities for 

some 200,000 players in Latin America, according to a 

recent interview in the Argentine daily Clarín. Ferraro 

is credited with introducing the game in Paraguay 

and in Uruguay, where former IAF grantee partner 

Mundo Afro uses soccer to reach African descendent 

youths with its message on heritage, participation and 

voting. Chile, Costa Rica and Peru have programs. 

So does Ecuador. Athletes with former IAF grantee 

Ser Paz, which disarmed some 5,000 gang members 

in Guayaquil, Ferraro said, play at night to show that 

they have taken back the streets. Teams throughout 

the hemisphere meet in international matches and the 

first two games always take place in the street. Fútbol 

callejero teams are scheduled to meet in Brazil in 2014 

and play parallel to the World Cup. “Our dream is to 

play on Avenida Paulista,” Ferraro said. 

As shared open space, the street has been central to his concept of resilient communities, dating 

back to that first game with the kids on the corner. 

By scheduling games in the streets, he insists, fútbol 

callejero makes them safer. “The great problem with 

security in Latin America can be traced to its citizens’ abandonment of the streets,” he explained. “I 

played in the street when I was young and nothing 

bad ever happened. People would pull their chairs 

onto the sidewalk to drink their mate. The street 

was an extension of our homes. Neighbors watched 

out for each other. Fútbol callejero resurrects that 

idea and reclaims public spaces for everyone to use. 

When there are people in the streets, you don’t need 

a security force.” 

After so many years spent listening to and 

advocating for communities, Ferraro ran for mayor 

of Moreno in 2011, on the Moreno Vivo ticket, the 

party he helped found, and he came in second. In an 

interview with Grassroots Development he announced 

his intention to run again in 2015. Ferraro is also 

still active in Fundación Defensores del Chaco, the 

club’s fundraising arm. In June, he took time out 

from his busy schedule to celebrate the reopening 

of Defensores’ theater, which had been destroyed 

during the storms of April 2012. After the weather 

cleared, club members spent three days searching for 

zinc roofing and other salvageable materials, some 
20 Grassroots Development 2013 34

Representatives of the Uruguayan government, the municipality and program sponsor Mundo Afro opened the 2012 

championships of Red Sudamericana de Fútbol Callejero held in Montevideo. Post-game activities always offer athletes an 

opportunity to discuss community issues with the officials present. Below, players from Defensores and other teams in a photo op.

Courtesy Defensores del Chaco
Grassroots Development 2013 34 21

found hundreds of meters from where 

the theater had stood. To pay for the 

reconstruction, members organized a 

banquet and appealed to the neighbors, just as they had some 15 years 

ago. The difference was that their complex had become a bricks-and-mortar 

landmark, the pride of the barrio, not 

a dream. Streets in Chaco Chico might 

not have signs, but anyone in Moreno 

can direct a lost driver to Defensores 

del Chaco.

Ferraro praised the young people 

for doing the job so quickly, pointing out that the municipality, with 

more extensive resources, has still not 

installed streetlights in the neighborhood. There were shout-outs, including 

for the directors. Some are approaching 30, including Maxi Pelayes, who 

assured Grassroots Development that 

the next generation of leaders already 

participates in decisions. Renovation 

at the top is another constant theme 

for Ferraro. “We have always criticized 

staying in power. We believe that 

the exercise of democracy requires 

change,” he explained. “We are betting on change.” Cascading levels of 

responsibility have been built into the 

organization, and new leaders are being 

trained all the time. Pelayes expects his 

successors to expand the preschool to 

include more grades and add a pool to 

the sports complex. 

The organization that sprang from 

a street corner turned energy and hope into a vibrant 

institution that continues to grow. “To be honest, 

the beginning was not something we thought out,” 

Ferraro insisted. But if there was no strategic plan, 

there was a strategic vision, and he is modest about 

taking credit for where it has led. “I see kids on the 

street with Defensores’ jerseys,” he said. “Shops 

here don’t stock the jerseys of the First Division 

teams; Chaco Chico identifies with this institution. 

What Defensores accomplished was that a community of 20,000 inhabitants began to think in ‘green 

Fabián Ferraro at the celebration of the opening of Defensores’ theater after its 

reconstruction because of severe damage from storms.

and black,’ and that a community seen as violent 

became seen as an example. Defensores had something to do with this cultural change, but it wasn’t 

the work of one or two people, it was the work of the 

community.”

Jeremy Coon is the IAF representative for Argentina and 

Paraguay. Adriana Rofman, IAF data technician in Argentina; Gabriela Sbarra, IAF liaison in Argentina; Gabriela 

Boyer, former representative for Argentina; and Eduardo 

Rodríguez-Frías contributed to this article.

Eduardo Rodríguez-Frías
22 Grassroots Development 2013 34
Grassroots Development 2013 34 23

Honduras was the deadliest country in the 

hemisphere last year, with 96 homicides per 

100,000 inhabitants. The murder rate was 

even worse in Tegucigalpa, the capital, which now has 

a municipally-funded program that helps indigent 

families pay for burials. The grim statistics are driven 

in part by a teeming, home-grown gang population, 

thought to outnumber the police force and be better 

armed, that has regularly assaulted buses, levied an 

impuesto de guerra, or war tax, on small businesses and 

conducted a lucrative traffic in narcotics, weapons 

and human beings. Former U.S. Ambassador Hugo 

Llorens called the crime wave a tsunami. To paraphrase a colleague, the extreme poverty is face to face 

with tempting opportunities for the poor to become 

rich overnight, although that might mean death 

tomorrow. 

On May 28, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 

18 (M-18), both gangs with a presence in the United 

States, Guatemala and El Salvador, announced plans 

for a nationwide ceasefire in Honduras. Brokered by 

Catholic clerics and the Organization of American 

States, the arrangement has a precedent in El 

Salvador, where murders have dropped dramatically 

since the declaration of a truce last year, but illicit 

businesses still thrive. In that context, the Honduran 

gangs’ call for vocational training was something of 

a surprise. “I want my son to be a doctor or a cameraman, not a gangster,” said a spokesman for MS-13, 

identified only as Marco, during a press conference 

held inside the prison where he is confined. 

As Grassroots Development went into production, the effects of a truce were not yet evident, and 

some experts were skeptical about the prospects in 

Honduras, where the police factor into the violence 

and so does the presence of the international cartels 

transporting much of the cocaine that stocks the 

U.S. market. But no one harbors any doubts about the 

need for job training. 

Along with poverty, the absence of educational 

facilities at every level is a major force behind the 

criminal activity, said Will Aguilar, executive director of IAF grantee partner Grupo Juvenil Dion (GJD), 

a nongovernmental organization in Tegucigalpa 

that teaches marketable skills and helps its graduates 

lead productive lives. In a region desperate for tested 

models that give young people hope and keep them 

away from gangs, guns, drugs and prostitution, GJD 

has a sterling reputation for effectiveness. Visitors 

arrive in a steady stream, hoping to replicate its success, including in Guatemala and El Salvador, which, 

with Honduras, make up the “Northern triangle,” 

considered the hub for crime in Central America. 

GJD’s facility resides in La Pedregal, one of 

Tegucigalpa’s poorest and most densely-packed 

neighborhoods. Its students are hardworking, solid 

citizens. GJD’s teachers have put their lives on the 

line to fend off thugs intent on dragging a trainee 

out of school for reasons as inconsequential as wearing the wrong soccer jersey. In the 1970s, when a 

young nun, Marta Dion, joined other colleagues 

from Canada to work in the slums of Tegucigalpa, 

residents of La Pedregal were so underserved that 

some had to get their water from the polluted river 

nearby and no place offered food for sale. Operating 

out of La Pedregal’s Church of San José Labrador, Sor 

Marta founded an organization that brought piped 

water to the community and an outlet selling food 

at affordable prices. She also introduced the idea 

of basic and vocational education to local youths, 

got an enthusiastic response and adopted that as 

a primary focus. Before leaving San José Labrador, 

Hope amid Danger in Honduras: 

Education, Employment and New Enterprises

By John Reed All photos by Mark Caicedo
24 Grassroots Development 2013 34

she legally incorporated the organization and developed its governing 

body of La Pedregal residents, including students and graduates. It was 

this general assembly that decided to 

honor Sor Marta by naming the organization after her. 

Currently GJD offers more than 

450 students, age 14 and above, the 

opportunity to master the skills to 

work in electrical repairs, carpentry, 

baking, tailoring, salon services and 

information technology. They also 

learn math, Spanish, science and history, the subjects constituting a core 

education, as defined by the Honduran 

government, which certifies the graduates. Complementing the curriculum 

are an annual music fair and field 

trips to attend plays, concerts and art 

exhibits. Trainees give back to the 

community by applying their skills in 

schools and health clinics—repairing 

furniture and lighting, giving haircuts 

or baking a cake for a monthly birthday celebration. Internships offer a 

practical component to the training. A 

placement program helped 56 of its 152 

graduates find jobs in 2012; GJD does 

not have a system for tracking those 

who find employment on their own. 

Aguilar, a trained accountant, has 

led GJD for the past 13 years but his 

association dates back to age five, when 

GJD still functioned more as a community center and his older brothers 

took him there to socialize with other 

children. He and his family stayed 

on in La Pedregal, where the Colonia 

Supermarket and the Mexican retail 

chain Elektra are among the businesses 

now doing a brisk trade and the cacophony of smaller enterprises fills the main 

thoroughfares as well as serpentine back 

streets and alleys. Several establishments 

owe their existence to GJD, which has 

added enterprise development to a Ana Graciela Hernández, tailor in training.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 25

Carpentry student Jeison Andrés Rivas.
26 Grassroots Development 2013 34

vision that has put it and Aguilar in the vanguard of 

education in Central America. GDJ’s records indicate 

that 25 percent of the graduates of its vocational training start businesses. To date, out of every 10 businesses 

started, seven are going concerns a year later.

Since the mid-1990s, the IAF has awarded GJD 

four grants totaling $500,000, the first of which 

funded a building where training takes place. More 

recently, the IAF has supported innovations introduced by Aguilar to help its graduates’ businesses, 

including a loan program financing their start-ups. 

“It’s almost impossible for young people in this country to access microcredit as neither they nor their 

families can provide the required collateral and they 

are stigmatized by the knee-jerk association of young 

people with maras and narcotraffic,” he explained. 

“That’s why GJD believes it should fill the credit gap.” 

Aguilar also developed a business incubator that provided temporary space to get the new enterprises off 

the ground before they located to a permanent site. 

Predictably, demand far exceeded the space available, 

so Aguilar turned the incubator into a marketing 

center where graduates now display their products 

and customers can place orders. At his urging, a 

student group formed to conduct surveys that guide 

new ideas. Aguilar plans to use GJD’s latest funding for a store staffed by teachers and students and 

stocked with supplies for resale to graduates at a price 

point between wholesale and retail. Looming on 

the horizon are courses in repairing electronic auto 

components and in the skills that qualify students to 

work in call centers.

For the past three years, GJD has offered training to students in the outlying provinces of Francisco 

Fátima Raquel Coello, GJD mobile workshop in Aspiring bakers Lilian Cristina Vallecillo and Estafaní Jaquelín Cabrera. 

salon services, San José del Potrero, Comayagua.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 27

Morazán, Intibucá and Yoro, following 

the example developed by Colombia’s 

Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA). 

While SENA’s aulas móviles, or mobile 

classrooms, function in outfitted campers and buses, GJD instead transports 

the equipment to a semi-permanent site. 

Core features of its mobile workshops are 

the community’s choice of content—so 

far, baking, salon services and carpentry—and commitment to contributing 

counterpart in kind—space for training, 

watchmen or paying the electric bill. 

Once trained, these participants too can 

receive loans for equipment and supplies 

toward start-ups. 

Financial sustainability has been a 

goal since GJD was founded, an elusive 

one for an NGO providing services 

to marginalized youths from some 

of the hemisphere’s most depressed 

communities. Modest tuition offsets 

some costs of operation as do revenues 

from items produced in class, and 

GJD’s outlet is expected to yield some 

income. Another source of income, 

Aguilar hopes, may be the development of products in the training 

programs; currently a shampoo and a 

donut mix are sold under GJD brand 

names. Meanwhile international 

donors continue to provide a lifeline, 

including Microsoft whose gift of 

software worth $200,000 was a boon 

to GJD. In any case, donors are likely 

to continue to be necessary for programs like GJD’s—programs that The 

Washington Post in an editorial on the 

prospect of a truce in Honduras, called 

“worthy of congressional support.” 

Gangs have had La Pedregal in a 

chokehold and GJD has had to work to keep its foothold and its focus. “Any attempt to reduce the level of 

violence in this country is worth trying,” Aguilar commented on the proposed truce. “And there has to be 

serious investment in prevention. Here is where Grupo 

Juvenil Dion can play a role. GJD has fought this 

scourge with economic and social opportunities, so our 

young people have the tools for a future free of poverty 

and crime.” In other words, the same future that Marco 

claimed Honduran gang members now want. 

John Reed is the IAF representative for Honduras. 

Fany Dubón started a business after learning to bake in a mobile workshop.
28 Grassroots Development 2013 34

On the outside walls of a rural public 

school in Brazil, in the northern state 

of Pará, an unlikely set of images is 

painted: the Brazilian flag, the logo of the local municipal government, and the flag of one 

of the largest social mobilizations in Latin 

America, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores 

Rurais Sem Terra (MST)—the landless workers’ 

movement that has been a thorn in the side of 

Landless Workers and Schools:

An Alternative Approach to Rural Education

By Rebecca Tarlau All photos by Rebecca Tarlau

the Brazilian state for almost 30 years. Alongside these symbols is written, “Reforma Agrária 

para Justiça Social e Soberania Popular” [Agrarian Reform for Social Justice and Popular Sovereignty]. This school is representative of an 

apparent contradiction occurring throughout 

rural Brazil: the active coordination between 

the government and the MST for the provision 

of public education. 

Sem terrinha at school in a settlement of landless workers.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 29

Fellows’ Forum

But while bureaucrats in many states and municipalities are working cooperatively with MST activists, 

in other regions the official response is drastically 

different. Based on 17 months of ethnographic field 

research in three regions of Brazil, I analyze the conditions under which states cede power over education 

policy to social movements. Data come from 70 interviews with MST activists, 60 interviews with elected 

officials and government bureaucrats, extensive field 

notes, informal conversations, site visits, school observations, teacher training and shadowing MST activists.

Background 

The MST consists of more than 1 million women, 

men and children who have decided to combat their 

poverty by pressuring the government to give them 

land to farm (Branford and Rocha 2002; Wright and 

Wolford 2003; Ondetti 2008; Wolford 2010). It emerged 

in the late 1970s, during the Abertura, or opening, that 

paved the way for the end of military dictatorship in 

1985 (Skidmore 2010). During the decades of military 

rule, rapid economic growth and industrialization coincided with massive migration from rural to urban areas. 

In 1940, less than 32 percent of all Brazilians lived in 

cities; 75 percent of the total population was urban by 

1991 (Plank 1996). For Brazilians who remained in rural 

areas, hunger and malnutrition increased as the government pushed many owners off their small holdings to 

make more room for mechanized agricultural industries 

(Wright and Wolford 2003). 

Farmers in Southern Brazil began to contest these 

inequities by occupying large estates that had been 

left fallow and pressuring the government to give 

them the land. They based their claim on a clause in 

the Brazilian constitution specifying that land has 

to “serve its social function,” which they interpreted 

as mandating that ownership of unproductive land 

must be transferred to someone who would make it 

productive. In 1984, disparate groups from the South 

came together to found a national movement that 

has since expanded to 23 states. Since the first occupations in the early 1980s, the MST has succeeded in 

obtaining title to 20 million acres for 350,000 families (Wright and Wolford 2003). 

This success has made the MST famous around 

the world. Less well known is the movement’s 

simultaneous struggle for the right to free primary, 

secondary and tertiary education for all children, 

youths and adults living in MST communities. In the 

Brazilian countryside, families often have limited 

access to schools. Where rural education is provided, 

school systems are frequently dysfunctional due to 

minimal resources and lack of administrative support 

(Plank 1996; Reimers 2000; Schwartzman and Brock 

2004). Over the past three decades, the MST has successfully pressured state and local governments to 

build 2,000 new rural public schools that currently 

serve approximately 200,000 students (Movimento 

Sem Terra 2009). The MST has also set up education 

collectives that work with local governments to coordinate teachers, students and community members 

in their effort to improve schools. 

These collectives advocate for a range of goals. 

Activists teach students the importance of farming 

as well as studying and encourage cooperative forms 

of work and holistic learning. They envision schools 

as democratic spaces, where parents, teachers and 

students decide together how education should 

function. They want teachers to help students analyze contemporary and historical inequities in their 

communities, so the students can help transform 

these conditions. By applying these curricular and 

organizational principles, MST activists are trying to 

create an educational system that encourages young 

Brazilians to stay in the countryside and become 

farmer-intellectuals. This educational goal is connected to the MST’s larger vision of workers who 

own the means of production and farm together in 

sustainable communities. 

The roots of the educational approach 

While I was in the Southern state of Rio Grande do 

Sul, I was told I had to talk with Salete, a woman 

known as the “first teacher in the MST,” who currently runs an alternative high school. In 1978, 

Salete met Father Anildo, a proponent of liberation theology (Berryman 1987), who invited her to 

participate in a Comunidade Eclesial de Base, an 

informal religious and political study group. Salete 

eventually decided to participate in a land occupation in 1981. Then 27, and the only person in the 

encampment with a teaching degree, she began to 

work with the young people, applying ideas from 

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) that 
30 Grassroots Development 2013 34

she had learned through her earlier work with the 

Catholic Church. 

 Salete was officially granted the land she was 

occupying in 1984. A year later, another land 

occupation occurred, with thousands of families 

participating. Salete started traveling to the new 

encampment and organizing educational activities for the hundreds of children living in squatter 

tents. The occupation included 11 people with 

teaching certificates and they began to work with 

Salete to develop an alternative approach to education. Between 1985 and 1986, groups of educators 

from several settlements and camps discussed a more 

cohesive approach for the entire movement. The first 

nationwide meeting of MST educators occurred in 

1987; participants agreed on the need to train teachers who would convey the movement’s history and 

value the struggle for agrarian reform.

In 1990, the MST began training teachers in 

Braga, Rio Grande do Sul, in coordination with the 

municipal government. These courses allowed activists to earn their high school diploma simultaneously 

with a teaching certificate. Five years later, the MST 

founded an institution that became accredited by the 

state government as a private high school: Instituto 

de Educação Josué de Castro (IEJC), named for the 

activist-author who wrote The Geopolitics of Hunger. 

More than 3,000 MST activists from throughout 

Brazil have graduated from IEJC since its founding. In 1998, the federal government created the 

Programa Nacional da Educação na Reforma Agrária 

(PRONERA), which gave the MST an additional 

source of funding for educational initiatives. 

Activists wanted access to higher education as 

well and in the late 1990s approached dozens of 

universities on the development of a degree program 

specifically for MST communities. Only one small 

private university, located in city of Ijuí, Rio Grande 

do Sul, was interested. Together MST activists and 

these university professors designed an undergraduate degree program, “Pedagogy of Land,” which was 

funded by PRONERA and incorporated the approach 

to education that the MST had developed over the 

previous decade. Tailored to residents of communities 

settled as a result of land reform, it attracted activists from across the country when it was launched in 

1998. Since then, more than 40 public universities 

have partnered with the MST and PRONERA to offer 

undergraduate programs for residents of similarly 

settled areas. These include the Federal Universities 

of Pernambuco, Rio De Janeiro, Rio Grande do Norte, 

Piauí, Pará, Maranhão, Brasília, Espíritu Santo, Ceará, 

Acre, Sergipe, Minas Gerias, Goiás, Paraíba and Bahía, 

among others. 

MST initiatives across regions

Although the MST’ educational initiatives—known 

as Educação do Campo—are amply supported by 

several federal laws and a presidential decree, Brazil’s 

decentralized system has not consistently adopted 

them. My research shows that where they have been 

put into practice, the state bureaucratic apparatus 

is strong and has sufficient material resources and 

expertise. Another condition that favored adoption of the approach is intense mobilization by the 

MST movement that brings a sympathetic administration into office. For example, after the MST’s 

massive mobilization in support of the Partido dos 

Trabalhadores (PT) in Rio Grande do Sul in 1998, 

the administration that took office responded by 

constructing and accrediting public schools, known 

as Escolas Itinerantes, or itinerant schools, in the 

MST’s encampments (Camini 2009). The administration allowed MST activists to participate in defining 

the organizational structure of these schools because 

the MST’s educational, political and economic 

goals aligned with the PT’s. This is consistent with 

findings of other scholars, who also argue that committed public officials are critical to the cultivation 

of state-society synergy (Goldfrank 2011; Cornwall 

and Coelho 2007; Ostrom 1996; Abers 2000; Heller 

1999; Fox 1996).

Such an arrangement can abruptly end, as it did 

in Rio Grande Sul in 2007 when a new governor took 

office and vigorously campaigned against MST educational activities. Within four years the administration 

closed all schools located in MST camps, in addition to 

more than 150 other rural schools across the state. This 

administration’s discourse directly contradicted the 

movement’s position that schools should be located in 

the countryside and that the curriculum should reflect 

sensitivity to the needs of rural populations. “It is the 

destiny of the world for rural populations to migrate 

to the cities,” the then-secretary of education told me 
Grassroots Development 2013 34 31

Fellows’ Forum

during an interview in 2010, “which is why we need 

schools in urban centers.” 

In contrast to this case, my research in the 

Northeast showed that partnerships between the 

state and civil society can develop in locations where 

state capacity is limited and the administration is 

ambivalent toward the MST. In the municipality of 

Santa Maria da Boa Vista, in the state of Pernambuco, 

mayors who otherwise might not espouse the movement’s ideology have supported the MST’s educational 

program for over a decade. One reason for this is 

that they consider the MST more capable of organizing schools than the government itself, and perceive 

MST involvement as a benefit to the municipality. 

Many teachers interviewed said that the presence of 

MST activists in rural schools was a huge improvement over the total isolation they had previously 

experienced and they have communicated the merits 

of the MST’s approach to the municipal government. 

Finally, mayors in Santa Maria da Boa Vista solidify 

their political base through direct benefits, to citizens. 

This clientelism (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007) can 

facilitate MST participation because mayors don’t run 

on platforms ideologically opposed to the movement. 

Collaboration in Santa Maria da Boa Vista illustrates 

that active coordination between local government 

officials and a contentious social movement can 

develop in contexts where it might not be expected.

Sem terrinha protesting the closure of MST schools in communities in Rio Grande do Sul.
32 Grassroots Development 2013 34

Teachers from the municipality of Santa Maria da Boa Vista assigned to MST settlements. 

Conclusion 

The “state” is not a “united, single, competent, 

coherent or necessarily capable actor” (Yashar 2005), 

and the relationship between MST activists and 

government officials differs across Brazil. In some 

locations it is complementary and synergistic, in 

others, antagonistic. MST activists have succeeded 

in institutionalizing their approach through laws, 

a presidential decree and an office in the Ministry 

of Education that works directly with rural social 

movements. However, the MST’s ability to transform 

public education still depends on negotiations with 

hundreds of state and municipal governments. Local 

political and economic conditions affect how this 

transformation unfolds.

When the MST emerged in the early 1980s, the 

rural school system was marginalized and curriculum was determined by the middle-class assumption 

that all children needed to learn the same content. 

Just as they continued to struggle for land reform 

over the past three decades, MST activists pushed 

for educational innovation in the countryside, 

undaunted by the barriers. They brought into the 

Brazilian consciousness their own distinct approach 

to education. That approach advances a curriculum 

that values rural livelihoods, teaches the history of 

agrarian reform and emphasizes collective production. It also entails a radical reconfiguration of the 

traditional hierarchy of communities, students, 

teachers, principals and officials. An understanding of the conditions that allow for or prevent the 

MST’s transformation of the public schools—and the 

implications going forward—is critical for scholars and development professionals concerned with 

education, participatory governance and alternative 

models for rural development. 

Rebecca Tarlau, a Ph.D. candidate in education at the 

University of California at Berkeley, was a Fellow in the 

2010–2011 cycle. 
Grassroots Development 2013 34 33

Fellows’ Forum

Bibliography

Abers, Rebecca. 2000. Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots 

Politics in Brazil. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 

Berryman, Phillip. 1987. Liberation Theology: The Essential 

Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America and 

Beyond. New York: Pantheon Books.

Branford, Sue and Jan Rocha. 2002. Cutting the Wire: The Story 

of the Landless Movement in Brazil. London: Latin America 

Bureau.

Camini, Isabel. 2009. Escola Itinerante: na Fronteira de uma 

Nova Escola. São Paulo: Editora Expressão Popular.

Cornwall, Andrew and Vera Coelho, eds. 2007. The Politics of 

Citizen Participation in New Democratic Arenas. New York: Zed 

Books Ltd.

Freire, Paulo. [1970] 2002. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New 

York: Continuum International Publishing.

Goldfrank, B. 2011. Deepening Local Democracy in Latin 

America: Participation, Decentralization and the Left. University 

Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Heller, Patrick. 1999. The Labor of Development: Workers 

and the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India. Ithaca: 

Cornell University Press.

Kitschelt, Herbert and Steven I. Wilkinson, eds. 2007. Patrons, 

Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and 

Political Competition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ondetti, Gabriel. 2008. Land, Protest, and Politics: The Landless 

Movement and the Struggle for Agrarian Reform in Brazil. 

University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 

Ostrom, Elinor. 1996. “Crossing the Great Divide: 

Coproduction, Synergy, and Development.” World 

Development 24(6):1073-1087.

Plank, David. 1996. The Means of Our Salvation: Public 

Education in Brazil, 1930–1995. Boulder: Westview.

Reimers, Fernando. 2000. “Educational Opportunity and Policy 

in Latin America.” In Unequal Schools, Unequal Chances, ed. 

Fernando Reimers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Schwartzman, Simon and Colin Brock, eds. 2004. The 

Challenges of Education in Brazil. Oxford: Symposium Books.

Skidmore, Thomas. 2010. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. 

Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wolford, Wendy. 2010. This Land is Ours Now: Social 

Mobilization and the Meanings of Land in Brazil. Durham: Duke 

University Press.

Wright, Angus and Wendy Wolford. 2003. To Inherit the 

Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil. 

Oakland: Food First Books. 

Yashar, D. J. 2005. Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: 

The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge. 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rebecca Tarlau, sem terra settlement, Pernambuco.
34 Grassroots Development 2013 34

On the morning of June 5, 2009, Peruvians 

awoke to the shocking news of a massacre that had claimed the lives of 34 

people near the northern city of Bagua. The violence erupted two months after thousands of 

Awajún and Wampís Indians, supported by mestizo farmers, had begun blockading a highway, 

demanding the repeal of decrees issued in 2008 by 

President Alan García to facilitate corporate access 

to indigenous lands and resources in the Peruvian 

Amazon. The unrest had spread. In Madre de Dios, 

the Federación Nativa del Río Madre de Dios y 

Afluentes [Native Federation of the Madre de Dios 

River and its Tributaries] (FENAMAD) organized 

several strikes in support of these demands. While 

the area has a history of indigenous insurgency, 

the uprising culminating in the tragedy of Bagua 

seemed to mark the emergence of Amazonian peoples as a pivotal force on Peru’s political landscape 

(Rénique 2009). 

The infamous events in Bagua aroused my interest in the role of social relationships and the resulting 

ties and networks in mobilizing thousands of indigenous Amazonians. These networks have been based 

primarily on Amazonian alliances with Andean 

indigenous peoples and a range of nonindigenous 

partners. Before 2009, the last successful AndeanAmazonian alliance dated back to the mid-1700s, 

when Juan Santos Atahualpa, an Inca descendant, 

led the Asháninka people of the central Peruvian 

Amazon in a rebellion against the Spanish. Since 

then, attempts at collaboration have been undermined by cultural perceptions stemming from the 

intrusion of Andean peoples into the Amazonians’ 

territory (Rénique 2009). It was not until the 2009 

Amazonian uprising that networks took on greater 

importance for indigenous mobilization. What kinds 

of social ties underlie these networks? How do they 

facilitate mobilization to secure land rights and 

economic resources? Scholars contend that social networks within discrete kin and ethnic groups, called 

bonding ties, lead to fragmentation, while networks 

of unrelated people or distinct ethnic groups, called 

bridging ties, lead to social cohesion (Narayan 1999). 

Sociologist Mark Granovetter (1973) calls the former 

“strong ties,” as they create emotional attachments 

based on kinship and ethnicity, and the latter “weak 

ties,” as they refer to the loosely knit relationships 

beyond the immediate circle of family and ethnic 

group. Granovetter sees “weak ties” as essential to 

economic opportunities for individuals and to their 

integration into larger communities.

Kin, compadres and the gold rush

In 2011, I arrived in the department of Madre de Dios, 

in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon, for some 15 

months of dissertation research in Puerto Maldonado, 

the regional capital, where FENAMAD is headquartered, and in the Harakmbut community of Puerto 

Luz, a FENAMAD constituent. The Harakmbut, who 

constitute the largest indigenous group in the region, 

are spread along the banks of the upper Madre de Dios 

River and several tributaries. Like other indigenous 

Amazonians, they live from gardening, fishing, hunting and gathering. As the river basin is rich in gold 

deposits, gold mining has been a source of income for 

most Harakmbut since the early 1970s. 

Changes to Peruvian law in the late 1970s suspended the central government’s exclusive control 

of the extraction and sale of gold. That, and the rise 

in the international price of gold in the early 1980s, 

attracted corporations and thousands of impoverBonding or Bridging Ties? Social Relations and 

Indigenous Activism in Peruvian Amazonia

By Danny Pinedo
Grassroots Development 2013 34 35

Fellows’ Forum

ished Andean farmers to territories claimed by the 

Harakmbut. Most mining companies and settlers 

ignored the Law of Native Communities, enacted 

in 1974 during the administration of General Juan 

Velasco, which enabled the Harakmbut to obtain 

clear title to their land by the mid-1980s. Reforms 

intended to promote private investment in the oil 

industry in the early 1990s spurred an increase in 

oil concessions, which some call “the new Amazon 

boom.” As land titles do not convey rights to minerals beneath the surface, and as many oil concessions 

overlap indigenous lands in Madre de Dios, the boom 

resulted in conflict with native communities. The 

Harakmbut mobilized to defend their lands and livelihoods, a process in which bonding and bridging ties 

have played different, sometimes contradictory, roles.

Among the Harakmbut, the patrilineal clan, 

whose members trace descent through the father’s 

line, is a primary source of identity, reciprocity and 

solidarity. In Puerto Luz, clan members tend to live 

in close proximity, forming clusters of households. 

They regard themselves as sharing a common ancestor and as obligated to help each other (Gray 1997b; 

Moore 1975). In a dispute between members of different clans, a man is expected to support those who 

belong to his clan, regardless of who is right (Moore 

1975). Bonds among clan members are reinforced 

through generalized reciprocal relationships. When, 

for example, a woman distributes meat that her husband has brought home, she privileges the spouses 

of men in her husband’s clan (Moore 1975). Kinship, 

however, does not create bonds among all members 

of a community, as reciprocity with people beyond 

the cluster of households is nearly nonexistent. Even 

routine socializing is confined to family gatherings 

involving residents of the same cluster. Activities 

Danny Pinedo and a Harakmbut elder.

Stéphanie Borios
36 Grassroots Development 2013 34

that bring together all residents are limited to community meetings, celebrations of the community’s 

anniversary and, sometimes, fishing with the poison 

plant barbasco. Even then participants tend to sit, 

chat and drink based on kinship. Communal labor 

is rather rare. 

Clans have been essential to community mobilization. Heads of household easily mobilize kinsmen 

in their clusters, where proximity makes communication easier and faster. Members of all clans and 

clusters of Puerto Luz have coalesced to confront the 

encroachment of miners on their lands. In 2003, for 

example, men, women and even elders and children rallied with bows and arrows to throw Andean 

intruders off the lands where the Harakmbut hunted 

and gathered. Such solidarity endures as long as the 

common threat and does not provide a basis for intercommunity alliances.

Social ties with Andean and mestizo settlers may 

benefit individuals but not the community. Individual 

Harakmbut have engaged settlers in friendship and in 

compadrazgo, the relationship between a parent and 

a godparent. In some communities, residents have 

allowed settlers to mine gold in exchange for regalía, 

or rent, and the settlers have become invitados. For the 

Harakmbut, rent has become a source of cash. Over 

time, some have saved enough to purchase their own 

mining equipment and have become less dependent 

upon invitados, but others have continued to rely on 

regalías for cash. When, fearful of losing their lands, 

the Harakmbut of Puerto Luz decided to expel invitados from their territory, those with ties of friendship 

and compadrazgo rejected the idea. Clearly, personal 

feelings clashed with the interests of the community. 

Friends, communities and federations

My research confirms that ties to nonindigenous 

individuals and organizations, including international 

donors, have facilitated indigenous mobilization and 

have been essential to obtaining title to land and 

undertaking development projects. As the threat posed 

by miners and corporations grew, so did the need 

for an indigenous federation, one capable of defending indigenous possession and control of land, which 

the Harakmbut lacked the experience and funding 

necessary to launch. They obtained the technical and 

Gold miners, Karene River, Puerto Luz.

Danny Pinedo
Grassroots Development 2013 34 37

Fellows’ Forum

financial support needed to found FENAMAD in 1982 

by entering into durable collaborations with Peruvian 

and foreign anthropologists who had conducted 

research among Harakmbut communities. A local nongovernmental organization facilitated contact with 

the Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva 

Peruana (AIDESEP), an umbrella organization grouping most regional indigenous federations, which sent 

a representative to help organize FENAMAD (Moore 

1985). NGOs also assisted with registration and the 

definition of boundaries, enabling several settlements 

to qualify officially as “native communities” and 

receive title to land (Gray 1997a). 

Ethnic divisions, however, have been a recurring 

source of internal conflict. FENAMAD was mainly an 

initiative of Harakmbut communities (Gray 1997a). 

But the Harakmbut number between 1,500 and 2,000 

individuals, a population too small to constitute a 

political force locally. For this reason, FENAMAD 

leaders wanted to incorporate all ethnic groups in the 

region, but this has not been easy, given a history of 

rivalry and conflict. Even members of the Harakmbut 

communities of Puerto Luz and San José del Karene, 

for example, may treat each other with suspicion and 

disdain. In precontact times, Harakmbut groups lived 

in permanent conflict. This persisted into the 1950s, 

when Dominican missionaries made contact with 

the last Harakmbut group to remain isolated from 

outsiders and persuaded its members to settle in the 

missions of Palotoa and Shintuya, along the Upper 

Madre de Dios, and convert to Christianity. At first, 

the Harakmbut appreciated the availability of metal 

knives, machetes and cooking pots as well as Western 

medical care. But in the late 1960s, tensions arising 

out of accusations of sorcery and competition for 

gifts from the mission and for the few marriageable 

women caused the Harakmbut to retreat to their traditional lands, where they settled according to their 

customary geographic divisions (Gray 1997b).

Ethnic-based tensions are clear in the internal struggle for control that has characterized 

FENAMAD’s evolution. Leaders of the Ese’Eja, Shipibo 

and Amahuaca peoples, who reside near FENAMAD’s 

office, exploited their proximity to take control of the 

federation and its resources. Harakmbut along the 

upper Madre de Dios River responded by forming the 

Consejo Harakmbut (COHAR) in 1993, which later 

included the Matsigenka and Yine groups, also from 

the upper basin (García 2003). Some communities 

wanted to withdraw from FENAMAD, which they felt 

did not serve their interests, and join other federations. 

When the Harakmbut regained control, the communities of the lower basin organized the Consejo Indígena 

del Bajo Madre de Dios (COINBAMAD) in 2007, and 

have since threatened to withdraw from FENAMAD.

FENAMAD owes its existence to networks that 

have contributed to reduce interethnic tensions. By 

regularly bringing together the headmen of its distant constituent communities, who otherwise would 

not have much contact, FENAMAD has improved 

communication. These leaders not only discuss their 

affairs and make decisions together but also, more 

importantly, exchange information and reinforce 

ties. This has resulted in shared identity that has 

caused communities of diverse ethnicities to bond. 

Rosengren (2003) describes how the Matsigenka leaders of Upper Urubamba, in the southern Peruvian 

Amazon, developed the idea that Matsigenkaspeaking communities belong to a single ethnicity 

and organized them into a federation. In Madre de 

Dios, I suggest, FENAMAD similarly overcame the 

potential divisiveness of identification with specific 

ethnic groups by promoting the notion of a single, 

broadly defined indigenous people.

Building alliances with almost all organizations 

in Madre de Dios has been crucial to FENAMAD’s 

ability to express its demands. While its main ally 

has been the Federación Agraria Departamental de 

Madre de Dios (FADEMAD), representing farmers 

from the Andean highlands, FENAMAD has also 

allied with loggers, miners, gatherers of Brazil nuts, 

teachers, residents of settlements on the outskirts of 

Puerto Maldonado and even moto-taxi drivers. In 

2000, these groups and FENAMAD formed a coordinating body, Alianza de Federaciones de Madre de 

Dios (García 2000). In 2008, this coalition joined 

the Frente de Defensa de los Intereses de Madre de 

Dios, the labor union Confederación General de 

Trabajadores del Perú, and other social and political 

organizations in an even higher level of coordination: Comité de Lucha de la Región Madre de Dios. 

Mobilizing as part of the larger regional movement 

has proved advantageous. One accomplishment 

was the designation, in 2002, of the Amarakaeri 
Communal Reserve as a protected area intended 

to benefit the surrounding Harakmbut, Yine and 

Matsigenka communities. 

More recent evidence of the effectiveness of 

interethnic alliances materialized in March 2012. 

FENAMAD allied with the Federación Minera 

de Madre de Dios (FEDEMIN), a body representing Andean and mestizo miners, to protest a ban 

on mining outside a designated 500,000-hectare corridor, issued by President Ollanta Humala’s 

administration in response to the devastation caused 

by decades of illegal extraction. Individuals as well 

as native communities feared for their livelihoods. 

FENAMAD demanded the government approve legislation allowing indigenous people to mine gold 

within their communities. When the government 

refused, FENAMAD joined thousands of miners 

in a two-week mining strike that resulted in the 

death of three protesters. Although its alliance with 

the miners was criticized by conservationists and 

other sectors of civil society, including indigenous 

organizations, FENAMAD succeeded in forcing the 

Puerto Maldonado, 2009. Danny Pinedo
Grassroots Development 2013 34 39

Fellows’ Forum

government to negotiate the proposed legislation 

(LaRepublica.pe 2012).

Social networks have had both positive and 

adverse consequences for FENAMAD and its constituencies. For example, FENAMAD considers the 

plans of an American-Spanish consortium to drill 

for oil within the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve 

a threat to one of the most pristine rain forests in 

the region and the indigenous livelihoods derived 

from it. I observed how some networks that advance 

particular economic interests caused internal divisions that weakened FENAMAD’s campaign against 

drilling. These networks, of course, arose out of the 

consortium’s efforts to cultivate consent to its oil 

project—by hiring indigenous workers, targeting gifts 

and exacerbating kinship-based rivalries.

Upon returning to Puerto Maldonado, after 

fieldwork in Puerto Luz, I reported to the leader of 

FENAMAD on my research. When I told him how my 

findings could help the relationship between the federation and the communities, he turned his astonished 

gaze toward me and said, “But FENAMAD and the 

communities are one and the same.” The communities 

may perceive the relationship differently. “FENAMAD 

Bibliography

García, Alfredo. 2000. “Madre de Dios: Cuando el Mosquito 

Pica.” Asuntos Indígenas 3:46-51.

García, Alfredo. 2003. “FENAMAD 20 Años Después: 

Apuntes sobre el Movimiento Indígena Amazónico en 

Madre de Dios.” Los Pueblos Indígenas de Madre de Dios: 

Historia, Etnografía y Coyuntura, ed. Beatriz Huertas and 

Alfredo García, 274-309. Lima: International Work Group 

for Indigenous Affairs.

Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” 

American Journal of Sociology 78(6):1360-1380.

Gray, Andrew. 1997a. Indigenous Rights and Development: 

Self-Determination in an Amazonian Community. Providence: 

Berghahn Books.

Gray, Andrew. 1997b. The Last Shaman: Change in an 

Amazonian Community. Providence: Berghahn Books.

LaRepublica.pe. 2012. “Federación de Nativos de Madre de 

Dios y Ministro del Ambiente Firman Acuerdo para Acabar 

con Minería Ilegal.” Accessed April 8, 2013. http://www.

leaders come here and just tell us not to accept the 

company,” said the headman of Puerto Luz, “but they 

should say they’re going to provide the community 

electricity or gasoline for our power generator.” In 

this context, allegiance to FENAMAD, and solidarity 

among communities, may depend upon the extent to 

which FENAMAD satisfies needs and demands.

Bridging ties are crucial to bringing small and 

highly autonomous kin groups into larger multiethnic political organizations. They are also key 

to helping individuals and organizations access 

economic resources and other benefits. But, in the 

process, dilemmas have arisen to pit individuals 

against the group, threatening to weaken indigenous 

mobilization in Madre de Dios. What remains to be 

seen is how indigenous communities and federations face these contradictions in a globalized world 

in which increased interaction with nonindigenous 

people renders bridging ties more relevant. The future 

of indigenous Peruvians depends on how they balance what they want as individuals and as peoples.

Danny Pinedo, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the 

University of Florida, was in the 2011–2012 cycle of Fellows.

larepublica.pe/17-03-2012/fenamad-y-ministro-del-ambientefirman-acuerdo-para-acabar-con-mineria-ilegal#!foto1.

Moore, Thomas. 1975. Resumen de la Organización Social y 

Religión Harakmbut. Unpublished manuscript.

Moore, Thomas. 1985. “Movimientos Populares en Madre de 

Dios y Regionalización.” Promoción Campesina, Regionalización 

y Movimientos Sociales, ed. María Isabel Remy, 165-191. Lima: 

Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas.”

Narayan, Deepa. 1999. “Bonds and Bridges: Social Capital and 

Poverty.” Policy Research Working Paper 2167. Washington, 

D.C.: The World Bank.

Rénique, Gerardo. 2009. “Law of the Jungle in Peru: 

Indigenous Amazonian Uprising against Neoliberalism.” 

Socialism and Democracy 23(3):117-135.

Rosengren, Dan. 2003. “The Collective Self and the 

Ethnopolitical Movement: ‘Rhizomes’ and ‘Taproots’ in 

the Amazon.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power

10(2):221-240.
40 Grassroots Development 2013 34

I

n Brazil, epidemiology, politics and institutions converged to produce a grassroots 

movement and partnership with government that proved crucial to fighting AIDS. 

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/

AIDS (UNAIDS) regularly identifies the Brazilian National AIDS Program as an example 

of “good practice” and points to the significance of its government–civil society collaboration (UNAIDS 2007). But even this distinction understates the multifaceted role of 

grassroots organizations as a driving force in 

Brazil’s Virtuous Alliance: 

How the Grassroots and the 

Government Joined Forces against AIDS

By John Garrison and Jessica Rich

AIDS policy. Their representatives have participated actively on the nation’s policymaking commissions as well as in countless planning meetings with Brazilian government 

officials and politicians. They do not hesitate, 

however, to voice criticism publicly or, when 

the state falls short of their expectations, to 

advance policy through the courts. An unusual blend of grassroots activism and political pragmatism over a 30-year span led to this 

effective approach to the AIDS epidemic, an 

effort that the IAF actively supported. 

AIDS activists in São Paulo. Jessica Rich
Grassroots Development 2013 34 41

Fellows’ Forum

Early, proactive responses

AIDS arrived in Brazil in the early 1980s. As in the 

United States and Western Europe, it initially devastated urban gay communities, compounding the 

stigma and discrimination that already plagued them 

(Daniel 1991; Parker and Daniel 1991: 17-18; Galvão 

2000: 52-59, 173-174). But in contrast to the denial 

that greeted the appearance of AIDS elsewhere in Latin 

America, the civic response in Brazil was early and 

proactive. (See Galvão 2000, Parker 2003.) Brazilians 

diagnosed as HIV-positive, their families and their 

friends were the first who rallied to decry alarming 

death rates, denounce discrimination, educate the 

public about prevention and pressure the government for increased treatment. Other organizations 

quickly sprouted, often led by highly educated, wellconnected professionals dedicated to working with the 

marginalized. Despite resistance from traditionalists, 

clergy in some of the largest dioceses helped HIVpositive Brazilians form support groups often allied 

with the Pastoral da Saúde, the healthcare arm of the 

Catholic Church. Also notable were the Grupos de 

Apoio à Prevenção à AIDS (GAPA) that spread from 

São Paulo to other state capitals, including Salvador, 

where, in 1994, the IAF funded GAPA-Bahia’s preventive services. Brazilians at the helm of some of these 

pioneering efforts would eventually provide the leadership for the government’s AIDS program.

Perhaps the best-known of the advocacy groups is 

Associação Brasileira Interdisciplinar de AIDS (ABIA). 

Soon after its founding in 1986 by Herbert “Betinho” 

de Souza, ABIA became the first IAF grantee partner 

funded for the express purpose of producing and disseminating educational materials on AIDS. Betinho 

himself was an iconic social critic and activist who 

had spent the 1970s in exile, stripped of his citizenship by the military regime then in power. Upon 

his return to Brazil, thanks to new amnesty laws, he 

embarked on a career of grassroots organizing that 

extended through the early 1990s. Its legacy includes 

IAF grantee partner Instituto Brasileiro de Análises 

Sociais e Econômicas (IBASE), highly regarded for 

its socio-economic research and policy work and 

launched in 1981 with just three people and a 

computer. Betinho also led nationwide movements 

pressuring for agrarian reform and ethics in politics, and organized the massive Citizens’ Campaign 

against Hunger and Poverty and for Life, also supported by the IAF. (See Grassroots Development for 

1995, vol. 19, no. 2.) The Citizens’ Campaign would 

later influence the design of social programs instituted under President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, 

such as Bolsa Família, which has helped lift 28 million Brazilians out of extreme poverty.

Betinho reluctantly took on the challenging 

cause of AIDS in the 1980s, during the early days 

of the epidemic, when Brazil’s blood banks functioned virtually unregulated. An estimated 80 

percent of the hemophiliacs in Rio de Janeiro alone 

contracted HIV through transfusions. Among them 

were Betinho and his two brothers. Leveraging 

his national reputation, Betinho announced his 

diagnosis and put a human face on AIDS in Brazil, 

much like basketball superstar Magic Johnson did 

in the United States in 1991. Images of Betinho in a 

friendly hug, which flooded the media, convinced 

Brazilians that they could not contract HIV through 

such a casual social gesture. 

He also used his access to the media and civil 

society partners to spur the government to expand 

its response. To clean up the blood supply, he helped 

launch a national campaign, Save the Blood of the 

Brazilian People, eventually winning support for legislation in 1988 that banned the private sale of blood 

(Galvão 2008). “Now, the fact that I am fighting 

back is a relief,” Betinho said in an interview. “If you 

only concentrate on the personal dimension of the 

misfortune, you will sink with it.” ABIA was instrumental in the passage of the 1996 law mandating free 

antiretroviral drugs for AIDS patients throughout 

the country. Brazilians receiving these drugs jumped 

from 35,900 in 1997 to more than 200,000 in 2007, 

while the number of reported deaths declined during 

the same period (Galvão 2008; World Bank 2005: 36).

Betinho’s outreach included meetings with 

the CEOs of Xerox, Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, 

Petrobras and other corporate giants to encourage them to provide treatment to their HIV-positive 

employees, conduct prevention programs in the 

workplace and donate to grassroots educational 

efforts. Hesitant at first, executives soon discovered 

that exercising social responsibility by investing in 

measures to address the AIDS epidemic improved 

branding and in some cases the bottom line. Betinho 
42 Grassroots Development 2013 34

also worked to convince the World Bank that civil 

society should be an essential component of its AIDS 

project in Brazil. In 1997, he met with the Bank’s 

president and invited the country director to his 

home to discuss ways to improve the impact and 

reach of the Bank’s AIDS financing (Galvão 2008). 

As it turned out, the expertise developed by ABIA 

and other civic organizations factored into the government’s willingness to collaborate with civil society 

on policy guidelines. To this day ABIA is known as 

a leading source of information on AIDS in Brazil. 

Before agreeing to a second loan of $165 million in 

1999, for example, the World Bank asked the head of 

ABIA, Jane Galvão, to determine the social impact of 

its first loan earmarked to address AIDS. 

In 1990, ABIA set aside its garage space and 

$10,000 toward the founding of Grupo PelaVIDDA, 

an organization intended to complement ABIA’s work 

with more aggressive positions and a greater focus 

on treatment. PelaVIDDA was headed by another 

returned exile, Herbert Daniel, openly gay and the 

AIDS movement’s second most iconic figure. The two 

Herberts were near opposites in personality—Betinho 

intellectual and reflective, Daniel passionate 

and expressive—and so 

were the organizations 

they led. ABIA’s team 

of physicians, lawyers, 

sociologists and journalists provided the research 

and analysis required by 

the movement to inform 

legislation and monitor 

government programs. 

PelaVIDDA was combative and theatrical, staging 

protests in pursuit of 

cultural transformation and grabbing the 

headlines. Its very existence stemmed from 

a dramatic gesture: Its 

founders had all publicly 

announced their diagnosis without regard for the 

consequences—a radical move at the time, given the prevailing stigma and 

ostracism. PelaVIDDA complemented ABIA’s agenda 

by providing needed support for people living with 

HIV and AIDS, including psychological counseling. 

It developed the first AIDS hotline in Brazil, after 

Daniel discovered this tool during a trip to California. 

Herbert Daniel’s groundbreaking work was recognized 

in AIDS in the World, the seminal book published in 

1992, the year he succumbed to AIDS.

Eventually the clusters formed by these and 

other early grassroots AIDS groups evolved into local, 

regional and nationwide networks that exchanged 

information and began to influence public policy. 

Those located in state capitals—São Paulo, Rio de 

Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Salvador—became active 

and highly visible. One, Rede Nacional de Pessoas 

Vivendo com HIV/AIDS (RNP+), grew to include 

dozens of care and support organizations throughout 

Brazil. Several others joined forces in 1989 to organize the first National AIDS Conference that brought 

together hundreds of HIV-positive Brazilians, their 

family members and activists to discuss community 

responses (Galvão 2000).

Herbert “Betinho” de Souza.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 43

Fellows’ Forum

Government support 

By the 1990s, AIDS had spread to low-income 

heterosexual populations. New advocacy and 

prevention organizations emerged in favelas and 

in rural areas of the impoverished North and 

Northeast, reflecting the changing demographics. 

They included Brazilians of African and indigenous 

descent, sex workers, street children and Brazilians 

with disabilities. 

A significant force behind this new phase of 

grassroots organizing was federal support. When the 

government developed its National AIDS Program 

in 1985, partly in response to relentless public pressure, its director was careful to integrate civil society 

into the policy process. The program offered civic 

organizations the means to improve their delivery 

of services, manage their finances and raise funds, 

and even organize meetings of advocacy networks. 

Between 1994 and 2010, the Brazilian government 

disbursed some $145 million to more than 1,500 

grassroots organizations undertaking some 3,500 

projects in education, prevention or treatment. This 

sum included $52 million or 12 percent of the World 

Bank’s $432 million loan to the Brazilian government 

to address the spread of HIV (Ministry of Health 

2008, World Bank 2010). Channeling World Bank 

resources to civil society was unusual at the time, 

but the approach worked so well in Brazil that it was 

emulated in Africa where civil society organizations 

in 30 countries received $1.8 billion, nearly half of 

the funding for the Bank’s regional Multi-Country 

AIDS Program throughout the 2000s.

The investment enabled Brazilian organizations 

to analyze policy, continue their advocacy and offer 

services that ordinarily a government agency might 

provide: educational campaigns in communities and 

in public schools, the distribution of prophylactics and 

medications, patient care and counseling and family 

support. The National AIDS Program itself recruited 

representatives of civil society to serve on policymaking committees, manage its grant-making, advise 

grantees, monitor their progress, conduct demographic 

surveys and design community responses. Their grassroots groups used public funds to fight discrimination 

and develop young advocates and leaders. All this, 

along with access to information on the government’s 

decision-making process, encouraged confidence on 

the part of AIDS organizations as well as professional 

growth and greater responsibility for AIDS work. 

The National AIDS Program pursued collaboration 

with civil society for several reasons, among them its 

need for their support. The mere mention of the epidemic and the preventive measures needed to address 

it was sufficient to galvanize the opposition of certain 

sectors. Civil society could mobilize grassroots constituencies to counter this pressure and monitor local 

implementation of federal AIDS policies in order to 

assure compliance with national guidelines. In addition, the social complexities of AIDS made officials 

view civil society’s support as essential. Authorities 

with the National AIDS Program considered organizations working at the community level or with the 

marginalized better positioned to reach the populations most at risk and more apt to be realistic about 

how to modify behaviors. Their staff enjoyed the 

trust required to approach personal issues, such as sex 

practices and drug habits, and interact with Brazilians 

who might be suspicious of authority. And working 

through civil society could spare the government association with such politically sensitive topics as condom 

use or needle exchange. 

The dynamic and effective grassroots response 

to the epidemic, which the government assisted, is 

supported by examples found throughout Brazil. 

In the Northeastern state of Sergipe, public funds 

awarded in 1993 financed a multifaceted program 

launched by the Associação Sergipana de Prostitutas. 

The goal was to train 400 health agents in preventive measures work now credited with substantially 

reducing the rate of HIV infection among the sex 

workers targeted. The government also channeled 

resources to the Associação Brasileira de Redutores de 

Danos (ABORDA) based in Rio Grande do Sul, whose 

capital, Porto Alegre, had reported in the 1990s the 

highest rates of infection due to intravenous drug 

use. The support allowed ABORDA’s mostly volunteer staff to reach more than double the number of 

drug users envisioned as well as form effective working relationships with key care facilities and medical 

professionals, counsel children of users, and train 

university students and “neighborhood agents” to 

manage needle exchanges. Importantly, this work 

restored dignity and purpose to one of the most discriminated and vulnerable groups in society.
44 Grassroots Development 2013 34

The Operations Evaluation Department of the 

World Bank, which analyzed the role of these organizations in the control of AIDS in Brazil, confirmed 

their benefit when it reported that they were “highly 

effective in reaching stigmatized and marginalized 

groups, making available to them both prevention 

and care services, for which they have a comparative 

advantage vis-à-vis public services” (World Bank 2004). 

What this report recognized was that the Brazilian 

government’s willingness to partner with civil society 

to expand and improve its own AIDS response efforts 

was key to its overall success. 

Brazil has stood out as an international standardbearer for AIDS policy development. Its guarantee 

of free access to life-saving antiretroviral drugs 

is a benefit lacking in many wealthier countries. 

Brazilians living with HIV/AIDS enjoy legal protection against discrimination. Prevention programs 

reduced the incidence of HIV to half the number of 

infections predicted for Brazil by the year 2000 (The 

Economist 2007). “Due to the efforts of civil society 

and Government,” the World Bank reported, “Brazil 

has been able to contain the epidemic at 0.6 percent 

of the adult population and has halved the number 

of AIDS-related deaths” (World Bank 2010). This led 

then-director general 

of UNESCO, Koichiro 

Matsuura, to comment: 

“[W]e must draw lessons 

from Brazil’s experience 

so that your example 

can save lives and help 

development elsewhere: 

in Latin America, in Asia, 

in Africa, in Europe. We 

must learn from Brazil. 

We must learn fast. And we must apply what we learn 

quickly and effectively” (Matsuura 2002). 

The movement today

Government support has had two significant repercussions. First, Brazil’s AIDS movement has grown 

from a few dozen groups to more than 500 civic 

organizations officially registered with the Ministry 

of Health—the vast majority of which receive some 

form of government support. Second, activists use 

a broader repertoire of strategies to influence AIDS 

policy. Grassroots associations still organize street 

protests, publicize their demands via the media 

and otherwise openly air their grievances. But 

negotiations that were once anchored in personal 

connections to insiders have given way to institutionalized relationships with all three branches of 

government. AIDS councils formed by governments 

at the national, state and municipal levels have 

become important venues where grassroots advocates work with executive agencies to shape policy. 

Attorneys with civil society organizations have 

become effective at litigation, often partnering with 

state and federal prosecutors to file class-action suits. 

And a congressional caucus builds the constituencies 

necessary to advance legislation.

At the same time, close ties between grassroots 

associations and the government have generated 

some controversy over the years. Activists and 

academics warned of the dangers of co-optation, 

whereby Brazil’s grassroots AIDS associations would 

temper their criticism for fear of biting the government hand that feeds them. But while the effects of 

official funding on grassroots advocacy continue to 

be debated, evidence indicates that the Brazilian government’s practice of awarding grants to civic groups 

has introduced significant opportunities for 

organization and mobilization. Funding from the 

National AIDS Program 

not only financed service 

projects but also advocacy campaigns and the 

growth of grassroots 

networks. Rather than 

silencing AIDS activists, 

federal support seems to have enabled them to voice 

their demands even louder. 

Challenges ahead 

Despite Brazil’s remarkable achievements, AIDS is 

still a problem that requires grassroots mobilization. 

Ironically, early achievements have given rise to new 

challenges. As more effective antiretroviral drugs are 

developed, for example, grassroots organizations must 

encourage the Brazilian government to pay for and 

distribute new and increasingly expensive medication. 

We must learn from Brazil. 

We must learn fast. 

And we must apply what we learn 

quickly and effectively.

—Koichiro Matsuura, 

director general, UNESCO
Grassroots Development 2013 34 45

Fellows’ Forum

They must also reach a new generation of Brazilians 

who might be lulled into complacency by the relatively wide availability of antiretrovirals and the 

success of these drug therapies (O Globo 2009). 

But while the Brazilian AIDS movement is still 

strong, its future is uncertain. Grassroots organizations are experiencing budget shortfalls. Even the 

most prominent and professionalized have suspended 

prevention programs, and some have shut their doors. 

The movement can no longer depend on formerly 

reliable sources of funding. Reasoning that Brazil has 

“graduated” from the need for an emergency response 

to AIDS, international donors such as the World Bank 

have retreated over the last decade, shifting their support to poorer regions around the globe suffering from 

more widespread infection. In this context, government support has become even more important to the 

Brazilian movement’s survival, but it too is threatened. 

Once protected from legislative meddling, funding for 

the National AIDS Program is now subject to congressional approval and, according to recent reports, could 

be susceptible to channeling to other public health 

purposes (Agência de Notícias da AIDS 2012). 

The Brazilian experience has shown that it is possible for grassroots organizations to actively engage 

governments and rely on their funding, while still 

maintaining the independence to push for policy 

changes and better services. Key Brazilian authorities have appreciated the complementary role of 

civil society in the design and implementation of 

the Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic 

and recognized pressure as legitimate even when it 

has targeted them. Grassroots groups, for their part, 

have shown commitment, resolve and patience as 

they have cooperated with different levels of bureaucracy, resorting to protest only after exhausting the 

Jessica Rich and grassroots activist Roberto Pereira, former president of the umbrella organization Fórum de ONGs/AIDS do 

Estado do Rio de Janeiro.

Courtesy Jessica Rich
46 Grassroots Development 2013 34

Decades of uninterrupted commitment: Betinho and John Garrison in 1994 at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C.; 

grassroots activists in Rio calling attention to depleted antiretroviral stocks in 2010.

Ron Weber Jessica Rich
Grassroots Development 2013 34 47

Fellows’ Forum

possibilities for dialogue. No one exemplified this 

process of effective and strategic evolution better 

than Betinho, who began his career as a vocal opponent of the Brazilian government and evolved into a 

civic leader who influenced both official policy and 

the practice of corporate social responsibility. While 

the historic convergence of an activist civil society 

and a proactive government bureaucracy to fight 

the AIDS epidemic was indeed “made in Brazil,” the 

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de DST/Aids estão preocupadoscom fim de Portaria que 

especifica verbas da União para ações contra a epidemia nos 

estados e municípios.” October 25.

Agência de Notícias da AIDS (São Paulo). 2013a. “Fórum de 

ONGs organiza protesto na Avenida Paulista contra desmonte 

de política de aids.” June 7.

Agência de Notícias da AIDS (São Paulo). 2013b. “Ativistas 

organizam protesto virtual contra a permanência de Padilha 

no Ministério e o desmantelamento do Departamento de 

Aids.” June 13.

Agência de Notícias da AIDS (São Paulo). 2013c. “Ativistas 

protestam em frente ao Ministério da Saúde contra o 

desmantelamento do Programa de Aids.” June 18, 2013.

Agência de Notícias da AIDS (São Paulo). 2013d. “ABIA 

manifesta indignação e preocupação com as políticas de 

prevenção à aids em carta de repúdio à censura da campanha 

das prostitutas.” June 19.

Daniel, Herbert and Richard Parker. 1991. “A terceira 

epidemia: o exercício da solidariedade.” In AIDS: 

A Terceira Epidemia, edited by H. Daniel. São Paulo: 

Iglu Editora.

Clinton, William Jefferson. 2006. “The Age of AIDS.” 

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Galvão, Jane. 2000. AIDS no Brasil: a agenda de construção de 

uma epidemia. Rio de Janeiro: ABIA/ Editora 34.

Galvão, Jane. 2008. “Betinho: Celebration of a Life in Brazil.” 

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and Roy A. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

approaches and lessons of this virtuous circle are 

already being replicated in other parts of the world. 

Jessica Rich, a Fellow in the IAF’s 2009–2010 cycle, is 

currently conducting post-doctoral research at the Center 

for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) of Tulane 

University. John Garrison was IAF representative for Brazil 

from 1987 to 1995; he now coordinates the World Bank’s 

efforts to engage with civil society. 

Matsuura, Koichiro. 2002. Address at University 

of Brasilia, Brazil. . http://unesdoc.unesco.org/

images/0012/001248/124869e.pdf#xml=http://unesdoc.

unesco.org/ulis/cgi-bin/ulis.pl?database=dgsp&set=3CFF20CA

_2_84&hits_rec=6&hits_lng=eng.

O Globo (Rio de Janeiro). 2009. “Temporão alerta para o risco 

da banalização da AIDS.” June 18.

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Programa Brasileiro de AIDS. Brasília: Ministry of Health.

Parker, Richard. 2003. “Building the foundations for the 

response to HIV/AIDS in Brazil: the development of HIV/

AIDS policy, 1982 – 1996.” Divulgação em Saúde para Debate

(27):143-183.

Souza, Herbert de. 1994. A cura da aids. Rio de Janeiro: 

Relume Dumara.

UNAIDS. 2007. “Brazil shares best AIDS practice with 

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Resources/PressCentre/Featurestories/2007/June/20070629par

liamentariansvisitBrazil/.

UNESCO. 2003. The Contemporary Response of the 

Brazilian Government, the Civil Society and UNESCO to 

the HIV/AIDS Epidemic: CCO Meeting, New York, October 

2003. Brasília: UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/

images/0013/001362/136285e.pdf.

World Bank. 2004. Brazil First and Second AIDS and STD 

Control Projects: Project Performance Assessment Report. 

Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.

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in Responding to the AIDS Epidemic: Brazil Case Study. 

Washington, D.C.: Operations Evaluation Department. 

World Bank. 2010. AIDS-SUS Project: Project Appraisal 

Document. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.
48 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF

Carleton College—my alma mater in 

Northfield, Minnesota—has steadily evolved 

from the traditional and somewhat insular 

school I knew half a century ago into a dynamic 

and experimental learning environment. I was, 

in a small way, part of that ongoing transformation. With a great deal of hesitation I accepted an 

invitation to teach a short course in spring term of 

2012. Under the Headley program for distinguished 

visitors-in-residence, these invitational courses cut 

across departments and disciplines to bring external 

perspectives to the halls of academe. My patently 

non academic career, Carleton convinced me, was a 

drawing card, not the liability I imagined. 

Expectations seemed simple enough—to impart 

25 years of experience with grassroots development 

in Latin America. Preparing to do that coherently 

and within the time assigned was another story. The 

subject matter was straightforward: the genesis and 

evolution of the Inter-American Foundation. The 

challenge: to breathe life into an era more remote for 

these students than was World War I for my generation and to bring myself in step with their digital, 

technological 21st-century world. The learning curve 

on the latter was steep! The essence of my proposal 

appeared in the course catalogue: 

At the close of the turbulent 1960s, 

the U.S. government took a remarkable 

step. Disillusioned by the failures of conventional foreign aid, Congress created the 

Inter-American Foundation outside the aid 

establishment. Its mission? To make grants 

directly to grassroots organizations for projects they themselves design and implement 

to empower the poor. Foundation staff was 

to listen, not lecture. How did it work? Can 

development emanate from the bottom up? 

Aid, Development and What Counts as Success

By Marion Ritchey Vance

“Prior to this course, I was under the 

impression that foreign aid is unhelpful, 

counter-productive, does not reach the 

people who need it the most, is wasteful and sometimes even does more harm 

than good.”

“This class has made issues more concrete, giving me a much broader and 

more complex understanding of not only 

what foreign aid is, but what doing it 

right entails.”

Examining Assumptions
Grassroots Development 2013 34 49

Marion Vance will speak from personal experience and encourage discussion of issues that 

confront development programs. 

A mindset turned on its head 

A report issued by the United Nations in 1958 

summarized the ideology generally accepted by 

development professionals through the 1960s, when 

U.S. know-how reigned supreme: “Native culture 

is the major obstacle to improving conditions in 

Latin America. The majority of the people are still 

speaking their ancient languages, maintaining 

their age-old customs and superstitions, wearing 

their traditional costumes, and farming their land 

on a subsistence scale.” This perspective echoed an 

earlier study published by the U.S. Department of 

State, which asserted that the “native world view” 

and antiquated traditions in Bolivia are “inimical to development.” Native peoples’ reluctance to 

adopt the mechanized farming techniques of the 

U.S. heartland or import purebred cattle and sheep 

showed “lack of motivation toward economic progress.” Decades later, as the U.N. itself acknowledged, 

detritus of imported development models and technologies litters the Southern hemisphere: rusted-out 

machinery; flush toilets stacked in villages with no 

running water; abandoned farms where fragile soil 

was stripped of its rainforest cover. 

In the context of those times, the founding 

principles of the Inter-American Foundation were 

downright revolutionary. The unlikely source of the 

unorthodox thinking that produced IAF was no less 

an establishment figure than George Cabot Lodge, a 

Harvard professor and scion of a socially and politically prominent New England family. Drawing on 

years of research and experience in Latin America, 

Lodge postulated that no attempt to address poverty 

in the region would succeed without fundamental 

changes in relationships, in the social and political 

imbalances that impede progress for the poor. His 

conclusions, later published in his book The Engines 

of Change, strongly influenced the intellectual and 

political climate that favored a quest for alternatives. 

An exceptional group of Lodge’s contemporaries 

from both the public and private sectors took advantage of a propitious moment to advocate for a small, 

experimental agency that could identify and support 

home-grown initiatives for change in Latin America 

and the Caribbean. The IAF was to work from the 

bottom up, to engage people at the grassroots. 

The intent was not simply to fund projects but to 

strengthen the nongovernmental organizations that 

would eventually undergird a viable civil society.

The notion that progress could be generated 

within communities found strong echo in the testimony of returning Peace Corps volunteers and others 

who had experienced village life first-hand and the 

consequences of misguided aid. A stinging critique 

of top-down programs appeared in 1973 in William 

and Elizabeth Paddock’s We Don’t Know How: An 

Independent Audit of What They Call Success in Foreign 

Assistance (Iowa State University Press). The IAF 

responded in 1977 with They Know How, which drew 

on its own early experience in the field and candid 

feedback from local leaders to articulate its signature 

thesis: that poor people are capable of taking the initiative to improve their own lives.

Looking back on the aspirations of the IAF’s 

founders, how did their bold move play out on the 

ground? Did the offbeat approach of respecting 

local ideas and honoring local culture bear fruit? 

Have projects supported by IAF helped change the 

relationships so eloquently described by Lodge? 

What succeeded and what failed? How do you assess 

results? What is the lasting legacy of the IAF? What 

were the breakthroughs and where did it stumble? To 

get a better handle on these questions, I dusted off 

publications from the IAF’s early days. I found myself 

stunned by their lasting relevance. Rereading articles 

in the IAF’s journal Grassroots Development and books 

authored by colleagues and external consultants, I 

began to see patterns and trends over time and similarities across regional lines. I acquired new respect 

for an institution willing to take risks, to publish 

unvarnished feedback from early interlocutors, and 

to devote an entire issue of Grassroots Development to 

failed projects. 

From prologue to podium 

Course notes, new laptop and flash drives in hand, 

I arrived on campus in April. Physically, the core of 

Carleton was so familiar that I had trouble thinking of myself as “faculty” not a student treading 

the familiar paths. Socially, especially for women, 
50 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF

the scene was worlds removed from the strict dress 

codes and curfews of our day. A vibrant multicolor, 

multiethnic, multicultural collage has replaced the 

monotone hues of the 1950s. 

Though my teaching stint was under auspices of 

the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the 

class was open to students of any discipline. A roster 

of some 40 applicants was winnowed to 25, the limit 

for discussion classes. Majors ranged from sociology/

anthropology to political science and environmental studies to biology, economics and math making 

for an interesting mix of responses to the material. Some students had assumed that foreign aid is 

altruistic and a positive force; others were deeply 

disenchanted by what they had seen in Africa, Haiti 

and South America.

“Prior to this class, my conception of foreign aid was, 

admittedly, overly simplistic. I found the phrase rather 

self-explanatory, typically what a wealthy and developed nation provides a less developed country with 

the intention of benefitting its people.” 

“Taking this class...has both confirmed and contradicted 

previous opinions. While it unfortunately seems that 

many of the problems of [foreign] aid I had heard about 

are more the rule than the exception, I was very surprised 

to discover a U.S. government agency that operates in a 

very different manner.”

Faces of foreign aid

The task I set for myself was to flesh out the abstract 

concept of foreign aid. A brief overview of the Alliance 

for Progress of the 1960s examined the premises that 

underlay one of its main tools—wholesale transfer 

of U.S. technology and know-how to Latin America. 

Failure of that top-down strategy set the scene for the 

radically different tack taken by the Inter-American 

Foundation a decade later. To bring to life the context 

and the characters behind the creation of the IAF, I 

assigned first-hand accounts by the original board and 

staff and subsequent reflections by evaluators. Students 

were particularly moved by the writings of Bill Dyal, 

Bob Mashek, Doug and Steve Hellinger, and Pat Breslin. 

“The assumption that people know what they need 

and are capable of creating solutions to their problems 

deeply resonates with me.” 

More through images than words, the class got a 

feel for the enormous diversity of groups that applied 

to IAF for grants and the range of their projects. In 

each case, the feature that captured students’ attention was—in the campus parlance du jour, “agency,” 

the fact that people who were to benefit had a role in 

shaping the project and carrying it out. 

“I have come to learn that there is a significant difference between large-scale aid efforts that seek 

immediate change by throwing in money and supplies 

and grassroots efforts working with locals to create 

sustainable change.”

A small subset of grants, described in “The Arts 

and Social Change,” published in the 1979 journal, attracted particular attention. The article grew 

out of IAF’s endeavor to understand the rationale 

behind grant requests that seemed frivolous, even 

to its own staff. What do music, dance, theater and 

cultural identity have to do with development? Why 

fund such things when people are going hungry? A 

Caribbean grantee helped explain why, especially in 

post-colonial or multiethnic societies, validation of 

cultural roots and traditions is not a frill; why respect 

for cultural identity can be a touchstone for progress: 

“European cultural patterns have overshadowed most 

others in the Americas. People of different origins find 

themselves shedding the culture that gave their life 

meaning. [Culture determines] what is exalted and 

what is denigrated in a society. Ultimately, denigration produces feelings of inferiority which become 

expressed as lack of initiative—an important, but often 

unacknowledged, barrier to development.” Seeing 

one’s heritage accepted and celebrated can help overcome alienation and apathy and unleash creativity. 
Grassroots Development 2013 34 51

Something learned, even from failure 

Did “they know how” work in practice? The short 

answer is not always. Assigned readings and class 

discussion covered projects that had succeeded, if 

not always quite as envisioned, but also those that 

faltered or failed. In fact, failures prompted some of 

the most interesting conversations. We talked about 

a project in Mexico, described in “Curdled Milk: 

A Dairy Project Gone Sour,” published in the 1988 

journal. The proposal had appeared to include the 

elements for success: participating campesinos had 

an impressive record of organizing to negotiate fair 

prices for agricultural products; experienced advisors 

were on hand to apply a tested technological model; 

the dairy herd was adapted to the local environment; 

there was a ready market. Yet the endeavor failed. As 

it turned out, the enthusiasm behind the campesino

movement, which had so impressed the IAF representative, did not translate into a solid organization 

capable of managing a complex project. The technology was there; the social cohesion was not. 

“If I were to put into words what I have learned in this 

class, it would have to be that nothing is as easy as it 

sounds.”

Organizational issues, in fact, underlie many 

failures. The story of two Guarani communities in 

Argentina appears in “Dreams Among the Ruins” 

in the 2005 journal. Initially, the project went well. 

The local bishop granted land for community use. 

Bilingual schools were set up. The IAF funded facilities 

to raise chickens and pigs. But when the church hierarchy changed and the well-meaning advisors withdrew, 

it became obvious that the community itself had 

been sidelined. The advisors had run the ambitious 

enterprise rather than work through indigenous organizations. However, although the infrastructure soon 

lay in ruins, the effects of education endured. Fifteen 

years after the project collapsed, bilingual leaders have 

emerged and organized, confident in their cultural 

identity. “It is painful to remember what the community had and has lost,” one of them reflected. “But 

we learned from it; our generation has a sense that we 

have to start building again.”

The case is representative of a rather common 

dynamic, in which a given project fails but the experience becomes the basis for a more realistic endeavor 

down the road. First to give this phenomenon a name 

was the late Albert Hirschman, a noted development 

economist who spent 14 weeks in 1983 visiting IAF 

projects. He dubbed it the principle of conservation and mutation of social energy. To paraphrase 

Hirschman, sometimes when an organization fails 

to attain its objectives, the “social energy” it generates does not die out; it resurfaces later on, channeled 

more productively.

And what of the Inter-American Foundation 

itself? Like the organizations it supports, the agency’s 

trajectory has been uneven. The simple fact that 

its approach endures after 40 years is noteworthy. 

The IAF did not invent grassroots development, but 

its experience has played a key role in legitimizing it and giving voice to local leadership. “Today 

[that] voice echoes in the language of multilateral 

banks and...development assistance agencies,” Ron 

Weber noted in his report on a recent meeting of IAF 

alumni. “What is less clear is if the words mean the 

same thing.... [but] the fact that large institutions 

are gearing down to work with NGOs...testifies to the 

importance of grassroots development.” The NGOs’ 

advantage lies in agility, flexibility and willingness to 

take risks—qualities that tend to diminish over time. 

It will take effort for the IAF to maintain its edge, 

keeping the arteries clear, unclogged by the bureaucratic quicksand its founders so passionately sought 

to avoid.

Evaluation, measurement, results

Conversations about the multifaceted, sometimes 

ambiguous, nature of grassroots projects led into 

the question of evaluation. How does one go about 

assessing results of projects (or institutions) that don’t 

neatly fit a traditional mold? Outcomes may be more 

subjective than concrete; there may be no bright line 

between “success” and failure. Grantees urged the IAF 

to differentiate between basic needs, such as food and 

shelter, and quality of life, which also encompasses 

self-respect, identity, sense of place and purpose, 

and human relationships. Evaluation derives from 

values. Questions posed by the dilemma of evaluation 

segued into a session on the conceptual tool created 
52 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF

at the Inter-American Foundation, the Grassroots 

Development Framework (GDF or “the Cone”). In 

addition to standard material measures, it takes into 

account intangible effects on the quality of life; on 

attitudes, policies and practices; on the fabric of civil 

society. This aspect of the course more than any other 

prompted students to question, to examine assumptions and to undertake research on their own. 

“Imagine [development] as an iceberg. The tip of 

this iceberg contains measurable gains from foreign 

aid, such as increases in standard of living. This tip 

[becomes the basis] on which many organizations 

judge the overall impact of the aid project. But how 

much of the iceberg is hidden under the water? ... Aid 

organizations should refine methodologies to measure 

the depth and volume of intangible benefits in the icy 

waters of foreign aid”

Tangible

Policy

Environment

Organizational 

Capacity

Standard

of Living

SOCIETY

ORGANIZATION

INDIVIDUALS

Intangible

Community

Norms

Organizational 

Practices

Personal

Capacity

Grassroots Development Framework

“Where is the Power in Empowerment?” 

Classroom discussions led up to that question, 

which became the topic of my presentation to a 

wider campus audience. The underlying theme was 

changes in relationships, that key ingredient identified by George Cabot Lodge some 50 years earlier. 

The buzzword “empowerment” has long been 

convenient shorthand. Many agree on the ideal in 

principle but they differ on what constitutes it in 

practice. In They Know How, IAF took a first step 

toward defining some indicators. Dubbed “vital 

signs” and “social gains,” they were intended to get 

at the transformation of relationships presaged by 

Lodge: status and legitimation of marginal cultures; 

accountable leaders and a voice in governance; 

access to resources and leverage in the marketplace. 

To put a human face on “empowerment,” I presented 

some success stories, with a big caveat that not all 

grantees wrought such change, and for those that 

did, the road was long and bumpy.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 53

Once denigrated as “just Indians,” Andean weavers, primarily 

women, have become recognized as the artists they are. Their 

works are displayed in museums and sold in exclusive galleries. 

In 2010, 400 accomplished textile professionals celebrated 

their art at the Tinkuy de Tejedores, a three-day meeting 

organized in Urubamba, Peru, by IAF grantee Centro de 

Textiles de Cusco.

The power in empowerment: The transformation of relationships has led to status 

and legitimation for marginalized cultures, a voice in governance, 

access to land and leverage in the marketplace.

After centuries of living on the margin without 

the right to vote, indigenous populations 

are now enfranchised. By 2006 indigenous 

Ecuadorians had elected more than 1,000 

representatives, accountable to their 

communities, to municipal and provincial 

councils and the head of county governments, 

as well as 11 indigenous deputies to the 

Ecuadorian Congress. Practical projects funded 

by IAF helped build literacy and organizational 

skills that paved the way for participation in 

political life and a shift in relationship with the 

dominant culture. 

Indigenous Ecuadorian activist Mariano 

Curicama, center in blue, leads a meeting 

on the management of forest resources 

in Chimborazo. Curicama rallied the 

newly enfranchised indigenous majority 

of Guamote to win election as town 

councilman, alternate national deputy and 

finally mayor, a post he left in 2000. Later 

he became a cabinet minister. 

Jefry Andrés Wright

Courtesy Carlos Criollo
54 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF

An early IAF grant, $35,710 in 1971, helped the basureros in the Corporacíon 

de Papeleros de Colombia improve their livelihoods. Over time, awards enabled 

scavengers in sordid urban dumps throughout the Americas to organize into 

recyclers with safer workplaces, better incomes and most importantly, status 

in society and respect. “People used to confuse us with the trash,” one recycler 

said. “Now they treat us like human beings.”

In 2003, IAF grantee 

Associação dos Catadores 

de Papel, Papelão e Material 

Reaproveitavel (ASMARE) 

hosted The Second Festival 

of Trash and Citizenship in 

Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which 

began with a march for 

inclusion and respect. Later, 

recyclers from throughout the 

hemisphere attending the 

summit heard from Marina 

Silva, then the Brazilian 

minister for the environment 

and later a presidential 

candidate, who spoke at the 

opening ceremony on the 

importance of their work.

Patrick Breslin Paula Durbin
Grassroots Development 2013 34 55

The craggy profile of success

Articles in Grassroots Development have tracked the 

gains made by growers of coffee, sisal, cacao and 

other raw materials. The poster child for leverage in 

the marketplace and a dramatic change of status is 

El Ceibo, a federation of Bolivian cooperatives whose 

spirit reflects its namesake, the deep-rooted tree that 

grows steadily and seems never to die. The group’s 

origin and evolution are documented in Llamas, 

Weavings, and Organic Chocolate (University of Notre 

Dame Press 2001) by Kevin Healy, IAF representative 

for Bolivia.

Once a small and precarious group, the organization is now 1,200 farmers strong. Its family farms 

harvest 70 percent of the organic cacao produced 

in Bolivia. Their federation is a leading exporter of 

cacao beans and chocolate products, bearing the El 

Ceibo brand, destined for Europe, Asia and the U.S. 

Last year, the federation celebrated its 35th anniversary by announcing that the Bolivian development 

bank, unapproachable in the early days, took the 

opportunity to offer a hefty line of credit. El Ceibo 

exemplifies changes in relationships across the spectrum: farmers to the land; producers to suppliers, 

markets, and financial institutions; and recognition of an authentic indigenous organization on the 

national stage. 

On a larger scale, El Ceibo typifies characteristics common to projects ultimately seen as successes. 

They are tuned to local culture and mores. They 

build organizational strength and the leadership 

base is broad. They address the causes, not just the 

symptoms, of poverty and inequality. They tap into 

aspirations that transcend their particular bounds. 

They take a long time, perhaps decades. Progress is 

not linear; at any juncture, they can look like failures. They raise a question: How, and at what point, 

does one assess this complex, circuitous process 

called grassroots development? Some results can be 

calculated in dollars and cents. Others are intangible, but real, and immeasurably meaningful to 

the people who live them. They have a great deal to 

do with attaining that holy grail of development: 

sustainability. The campus-wide talk culminated 

with a brief glimpse of the Grassroots Development 

Framework, developed precisely to take into account 

multi-dimensional projects such as El Ceibo. 

Introduction to “the Cone” prompted rich conversations; one Carleton professor planned to incorporate 

aspects of the GDF into her classroom.

Final reflections

The opportunity to reflect with Carleton students 

on a unique chapter in U.S. interaction with Latin 

America closed a long loop from the theoretical 

world view of my undergraduate days through realities in the field. Doubt about whether I’d managed 

to convey the experience as I had hoped was dispelled in spades by students’ papers. I was blown 

away by the quality of their written work and the 

underlying clarity and originality of 

thought. Some of their thoughts are 

captured in the quotes interspersed 

throughout these pages. I came away 

buoyed by confidence in America’s 

youth and with hope that the values 

and the social conscience that permeate student life can somehow be 

carried over into the broader society.

Marion Ritchey Vance retired from the IAF 

in 1995 following two decades’ service 

as regional director for the Andes and 

as director of learning. She created the 

Grassroots Development Framework in 

collaboration with Carl Swartz and Latin 

American colleagues. El Ceibo chocolate for sale in the United States.

Manuel Nuñez
56 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF

Grassroots Transformadores

Representatives of grassroots organizations, businesses, corporate foundations and their allies 

gathered Feb. 27 in Antigua, Guatemala, to celebrate with the winners of the first Latin American 

Grassroots Development Award, recognizing outstanding community development initiatives as well 

as the donors that financed, encouraged and otherwise supported them. 

The award, known as Transformadores, was 

sponsored by the Inter-American Foundation 

and the Inter-American Network of Corporate 

Foundations and Actions for Grassroots Development 

(RedEAmérica), an IAF-initiated business alliance 

committed to supporting the self-help efforts of the 

organized poor throughout the hemisphere. Four initiatives took the honors: 

• Empresa Comunitaria que Genera Desarrollo 

en el Cauca, undertaken by Cooperativa de 

Productores de Fresa de Sotará (FRESOTA) with 

the support of Fundación Smurfit Cartón de 

Colombia, improved the income of families 

who grow strawberries in rural communities of the municipality of Sotará, department 

of Cauca. Access to training and technology 

enabled farmers in FRESOTA to add value 

to their production, bypass intermediaries, 

develop and manage a loan fund, and invest 

profits in a library, sanitation and other benefits 

for the community. 

• Parceria Votorantim pela Educação, supported 

by Instituto Votorantim, mobilized families, 

schools, local governments and businesses in 

28 municipalities in 12 Brazilian states, in a 

massive boost to education. Activities include 

an annual call for essays which drew more than 

6,000 entries in 2012. Educators now reinforce 

crucial skills by structuring lessons around the 

popular contest. 

• Holcim Brazil’s takeover of a cement factory resulted in the loss of more than 1,000 

jobs in the municipality of Barroso, Minas 

Gerais. To mitigate the effect on families, 

Instituto Holcim, the company’s foundation, 

worked with residents, the municipality and 

other businesses on a 10-year plan to improve 

Barroso. Among other results, it led to the 

formation of Associação Ortópolis Barroso, 

Development Notes

In partnership with Colombian RedEAmérica member Fundación Smurfit, farmers in the grassroots cooperative FRESOTA increased 

their income from strawberry production.

Courtesy FRESOTA
Grassroots Development 2013 34 57

which has mobilized resources for projects that 

have employed milk producers, mechanics and 

recyclers, and improved the municipal cultural 

and sports infrastructure. 

• Modelo de Desarrollo Integral: La Experiencia 

Caluco [Comprehensive Development Model: 

The Caluco Experiment], an initiative of 

Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo 

Económico y Social (FUSADES), targeted the 

reduction of poverty in Caluco, one of the 

poorest municipalities in El Salvador. FUSADES 

spearheaded an alliance of residents and local 

government officials to draft a development 

plan for Caluco, which improved infrastructure 

for electricity, water and education and helped 

subsistence farmers earn income by growing vegetables for sale to Wal-Mart and other 

supermarkets. 

RedEAmérica members submitted 38 nominees, 

representing nine countries, which were subsequently 

winnowed to 11 finalists. The four winners were 

selected by a jury that included Robert Kaplan, the 

IAF’s president; Yolanda Londoño, vice-president for 

global social responsibility for Tupperware Brands 

Corporation; Rosario Quispe, founder and director 

of the Argentine grassroots organization Asociación 

Warmi of Argentina; and Marcos Kisil, president 

of Brazil’s Institute for the Development of Social 

Investment (IDIS). Selection criteria included the 

successful application of the grassroots approach, 

demonstrated development of the ability to get ahead 

collectively, transformation, sustainability and meaningful learning. The initiatives in Cauca and Barroso 

had received IAF funding under bilateral agreements 

requiring the RedEAmérica members to match the 

IAF’s contributions. 

“All these donors gambled on innovative 

responses to recurring problems,” said Margareth 

Flórez, executive director of RedEAmérica. “The 

experiences inject new energy into the search for 

solutions that address the causes rather than the 

consequences of poverty and provide grist for 

public policies that empower communities, develop 

organizations, build citizenship and social capital, 

promote inclusion and strengthen democracy.” For 

more information, visit www.redeamerica.org/premiolatinoamericano.—Eduardo Rodríguez-Frías with 

Eliana Nieto Rodríguez, communications coordinator, 

RedEAmérica

Brazilian recyclers working with Instituto Holcim and Associação Ortópolis Barroso to improve their community.

Courtesy Instituto Holcim
58 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF

Haitian-Dominican Exchange

On Jan. 24, four young Haitians from the new 

Coopérative des Artisans en Métallurgie de Jérémie 

(COOPAMEJ) arrived in the Dominican Republic to 

learn first-hand how cooperatives function. Fineau 

Anthoniel, Jean-Félix Gesnel, Mifrand Rénold and 

Jean-Philippe Geslin Adony, who range in age from 22 

to 25, are metalworkers trained by IAF grantee partner 

L’Ecole de Fabrication Métallique pour les Démunis 

(EFAMED). Although the two countries share a border, 

the voyage from Jérémie, on the tip of Haiti’s southern 

peninsula, had taken two days by plane and bus. 

COOPAMEJ produces industrial building 

components, grates, doors and windows, as well 

as furniture, agricultural tools and, since May, 

wheelbarrows. In anticipation of registering their 

organization with Haiti’s Conseil National des 

Coopératives (CNC), members completed the 

required course on cooperatives, which stressed 

theory, but they wanted to experience a working 

cooperative on site. 

Three such going concerns welcomed them in 

the Dominican Republic: 

COOPCreativa, which 

manufactures toys 

and furniture in Santo 

Domingo; Cooperativa 

de Pescadores y 

Prestadores de Servicios 

Turísticos de La Caleta 

(COOPRESCA), whose 

fishers and tour operators work in the La 

Caleta marine reserve; 

and Cooperativa La 

Altagracia, a savings 

and loan association in 

Santiago. COOPCreativa 

and COOPRESCA had 

received IAF support 

through grantee partners 

Fundación FOCO and 

Reef Check Dominican 

Republic, respectively. 

Cooperativa La Altagracia was on the itinerary at 

the recommendation of the Insitituto de Desarrollo 

y Crédito Cooperativo, CNC’s counterpart in the 

Dominican Republic. 

The visitors felt the most kinship with 

COOPCreativa. “They were about the same age as 

us,” Adony explained. “And like us, they also have 

a trade.” Upon their return to Haiti, the young men 

immediately applied practices learned from the toy 

makers. “They continue to meet even if they don’t 

have orders to fill. It helps them stay motivated and 

solve problems together. Probably the most important thing we learned from COOPCreativa was 

problem solving,” said Anthoniel. Now members of 

COOPAMEJ meet weekly instead of monthly, which 

they say helps develop a group ethos. They are also 

developing reserves to cover returned items and are 

organizing themselves into shifts, other tips offered 

by COOPCreativa. 

COOPRESCA’s seafaring members appeared at 

first to have little in common with the metalworkers but the Dominican cooperative’s organizational 

structure, bylaws and the training required for membership soon felt familiar. Because the Haitians are 

from a seaside city, a bonus was learning something 

about protecting a marine environment. Cooperativa 

La Altagracia’s thousands of members and six-decade 

history impressed them. “One day we can be 60 years 

old like Cooperativa Altagracia and maybe even offer 

financial services,” Adony commented.

Luis Mena, who provides liaison services for the 

IAF in the Dominican Republic, organized the visit. 

“I was most struck by the warm reception and immediate connection between visitors and their hosts,” 

he said, “as well as the real desire of the members 

of COOPCreativa and COOPRESCA to continue to 

support the Haitians, if from a distance, and to visit 

Jérémie and learn about COOPAMEJ.”

Even metalworkers who stayed home recognize the value of the trip, and a second group plans 

to visit the Dominican cooperatives next year. An 

important subtext here is the power of interaction and optimism among young people, a subject 

the local and international media overlook when 

reporting on the relationship between Haitians and 

Dominicans. —Jenny Petrow, IAF representative for the 

Dominican Republic and Haiti COOPAMEJ metalworkers.

Jenny Petrow
Grassroots Development 2013 34 59

Advocate for Afro-Descendants

Delegates from the Plataforma Cumbre Mundial de 

Afrodescendientes (PCMA) visited the IAF on Feb. 11, 

the first stop in a week-long itinerary co-sponsored 

by the IAF. They represented communities of African 

descent in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama, 

Peru, Spain and the United States. The PCMA was 

formed to combat exclusion and advocate for the 

rights of African descendants. It emerged from the 

First World Summit of Afro-descendants organized 

by IAF grantee partner Organización de Desarrollo 

Étnico Comunitario (ODECO) and attended by more 

than 75 representatives of civil society organizations, donor agencies and government in conjunction 

with the United Nations’ declaration of 2011 as the 

International Year of the African Descendant. 

The summit’s action plan called for an organization representing African descendants across 

the Americas and elsewhere and designated 

ODECO as the executive secretariat. Since helping 

Organización Negra Centroamericana (ONECA) 

become legally constituted in Honduras, ODECO 

has developed into a leading advocate and source 

of information on issues that affect African descendants in Central America. Its immediate priorities 

include the development of a proposal for a university, a permanent forum for African descendants 

within the Organization of American States, 

and work and fundraising plans. The delegates’ 

February agenda also included meetings at the U.S. 

Department of State, the Pan American Health 

Organization, the Inter-American Development 

Bank, the World Bank and the U.S. Congress. —John 

Reed, IAF representative for Honduras

PCMA delegates and IAF staff.

Mark Caicedo
60 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF A Book Conversation

Such was the demand for Grassroots Development

for 2007, with its focus on African descendants and 

development, that the Inter-American Foundation 

reprinted it twice. A highlight in that popular issue 

was Robert Cottrol’s introduction, “Coming into 

Their Own: The Afro-Latin Struggle for Equality and 

Recognition,” summarizing the history and current 

conditions of this population. The Long, Lingering 

Shadow, Cottrol’s latest work, expands that essay into 

a comparative exploration of race relations in the 

Americas over some five centuries. Like the compressed version published in this journal, it benefits 

from a historian’s factual repertoire and encyclopedic grasp and from a legal scholar’s dispassionate 

analysis. Cottrol wears both hats professionally 

at the George Washington University, where he is 

Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and also 

teaches history. 

At the outset of his book, Cottrol asserts that 

every country in the Western Hemisphere counts 

among its citizens descendants of the 10 million 

Africans who survived the brutal transport to the 

auction blocks of the Americas. This study, however, 

concentrates on three distinct regions: Brazil, the 

United States and a group of seven of the countries 

that emerged from the Spanish Empire: Argentina, 

Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican 

Republic, Peru and Uruguay, selected for the range 

of issues they illustrate. Worth noting is that Brazil 

received the most African slaves. Mainland British 

North America was a minor consumer, the destination of fewer than 400,000, while several times as 

many Africans went to Spanish America.

The particular form that the “peculiar institution” took in these vastly differing contexts is at the 

core of Cottrol’s study, along with the manner in 

which racism was practiced and the diverse paths 

toward overcoming it. Contradictory and inconsistent are two words that crop up often in The Long, 

Lingering Shadow. We see this in the detail of the complex systems that evolved in Brazil and the Spanish 

colonies—cruel yet susceptible to flexibility—and 

in the English colonies’ legal and explicit protection of slavery, a condition to which, Cottrol writes, 

“common law was distinctly hostile.” 

The book follows these beginnings through 

emancipation, the official or unofficial segregation 

that followed it, and scientific racism, with its corollary deprecation, and sometimes wholesale denial, 

of African heritage and parallel concept of equalThe Long, Lingering Shadow: 

Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere

By Robert J. Cottrol

The University of Georgia Press: Athens, 2013 

African Descendants and 

a Past Still Present

by Paula Durbin
Grassroots Development 2013 34 61

ity as a zero-sum game. For African descendants 

everywhere the legacy of centuries-long patterns of 

discrimination and exclusion has been disproportionate poverty and disadvantage in the extreme. 

The Long, Lingesring Shadow ends with a comparison 

of the ongoing struggle to change course toward 

full citizenship and economic justice in the regions 

discussed. Just before Cottrol left to teach law in 

Buenos Aires during the austral winter, he spoke to 

Grassroots Development about the challenges facing 

the hemisphere’s citizens of African descent as the 

struggle moves forward and about the genesis of a 

book that has much to teach. Excerpts of this conversation follow:

What made you want to write The Long, Lingering 

Shadow?

I had always wanted to look at the contrast between 

the U.S. and Latin America. What would become the 

Spanish-speaking nations abolished slavery with their 

revolutions for independence, while the U.S. had to 

reconcile the existence of slavery with egalitarian 

principles. And Brazil remained a highly structured 

society, indeed a monarchy, so it didn’t experience 

that glaring contradiction and need to resolve it. 

Certainly there was racial subordination but not categorical exclusion.

Since the 1960s, the U.S. has undergone a more 

thorough-going civil rights revolution that I would 

attribute in part to a society uncomfortable with 

hierarchy. I like to joke that that this is the only 

country in the world where Bill Gates and the bus 

drivers describe themselves as middle class. Once 

the U.S. turned against racism it took measures to 

root it out. As more nations in Latin America say 

they are multiethnic and multicultural, which we 

now see in national constitutions, it will be interesting to see whether they, too, root out traditional 

patterns of inequality linked to race. 

What kind of effort went 

into the book?

Obviously I used many 

sources. Today you can 

cast a much wider net 

than when I was a graduate and undergraduate 

student and you had 

to physically be in the 

library or the archives or 

on site. The Internet has 

made life easier. There 

is a wider array of books 

you can get your hands 

on without having to 

travel a great distance. 

For example, all Brazilian 

master’s and doctoral 

dissertations are online 

so you can go to Google 

and get dozens of very 

well researched works 

on any topic under the sun. Of course that’s also the 

difficulty because you have to decide what you must 

read and how you are going to absorb it all. 

What about interviews?

I found it fascinating to speak to people about their 

emerging conscientiousness. But there’s a long history of denial in Latin America, so while you have 

individuals who are looking at things through a 

racial prism, you wonder how many are really buying 

into this as opposed to the traditional view that black 

ancestry should be downplayed. 

Who impressed you?

I was very impressed by María Magdalena “Pocha” 

Lamadrid and Miriam Gomes in Argentina because 

they have had to struggle so much against the 

As more nations in Latin America say they are multiethnic and multicultural, 

which we now see in national constitutions, it will be interesting to see whether 

they, too, root out traditional patterns of inequality linked to race.

Robert J. Cottrol

Courtesy George Washington University
62 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF

national ethos that said, “You’re not there. Even if 

we see you standing in front of us, you’re not there.” 

And Jorge Ramírez Reyna in Peru, where the issues 

of African descendants and Asians are missed, along 

with those of a lot of people who are not culturally 

indigenous but because of their ancestry are victims of racial exclusion. Also Chief Justice Joaquim 

Barbosa Gomes of the Brazilian Supreme Court, a 

leader in the anticorruption fight and the fight for 

racial equality. He has apparently impressed Time

magazine as well since it selected him as one of the 

world’s 100 most influential people in 2013. 

What is the takeaway from the Latin American 

experience in addressing inequality?

We are constantly questioning some of the raciallyconscious measures that we have developed over the 

past 40 years, and many people argue the value of 

simply ignoring race and looking at race neutrally. 

And yet we see that if you have a caste system and a 

tradition of discrimination and stigmatization, you 

can’t just say, “OK, today all racial discrimination 

ends.” The Brazilians tried that. The result of just 

saying that race is no longer a factor in admissions or 

hiring is that old patterns of exclusion are simply not 

broken down. That’s a lesson we might learn.

How is affirmative action working in Brazil?

Brazil’s move toward affirmative action is something that we have to see unfold. A good beginning 

has been made. The opinions of Justice Ricardo 

Lewandowski were certainly responsible jurisprudence that said, “We as a nation have the obligation 

to address this,” and he saw it constitutional to 

do so. Add to that the legislation passed in August 

2012. These are hopeful steps, but I see potential 

problems if we concentrate simply on university 

admissions. Given the very low quality of public 

primary and secondary education, and that the poor 

who suffer from it are mainly pretos and pardos, you 

have what educators call the pipeline problem—

relatively few students who are even potentially 

candidates for university admissions, particularly 

for the more rigorous programs. They might have 

affirmative action, but will they be able to take 

advantage of the more rigorous, and more rewarding, professional careers?

Is there any alternative?

Everything is upside down when you take the survivors of a bad educational system and give them the 

possibility of affirmative action, which is what we 

have done here in the U.S. But if you simply work 

on K-12, and if you have a situation where no one 

going to university is black or brown, are you sending a message to students in K-12 that this is not 

really for them, they should set their sights lower? 

You really should do both. 

Do you have any guidance on how aid programs can 

further inclusion?

The strength of the U.S. system is that most professional education is post-graduate so you can have a 

bad secondary education and correct it before you go 

on. In Latin America, you have to be ready at 18. I 

suspect the real impact that donor funding can have 

is on education, to the extent that it supplements 

what is going on in primary and secondary schools 

to give people the skills that are needed, in terms of 

language, mathematics, an introduction to science, so 

that they are competitive. 

Is there any reason for optimism?

As I indicate in the book, there has been a change 

of attitude; elites are more willing to think of themselves as multiethnic and much less invested in 

thinking of themselves as European. But the idea of 

really effective civil rights law is still in its infancy in 

Latin America. There are still a lot of people in Latin 

America who are uncomfortable with the idea of race 

as race. Some governments treat African descendent 

issues as they treat indigenous issues, by recognizing a group as culturally unique and then developing 

programs to preserve a specific culture. They take 

the indigenous handbook off the shelf and substitute Afro for Indian. But what about the person who 

is not part of this culturally distinct universe, who 

lives in the city and wants to be a bank manager or 

to buy a house in a decent neighborhood and runs 

into discrimination? (And that’s a problem with 

people of indigenous descent as well.) There has been 

progress toward including the African descendant in 

the national mosaic, but in terms of developing the 

policy tool with which to address discrimination, I 

think that’s still on the horizon.
Grassroots Development 2013 34 63

O Mundo Negro: 

Relações Raciais e a 

Constituição do 

Movimento Negro 

Contemporâneo no Brasil 

By Amilcar Araujo Pereira

Rio de Janeiro: Pallas and 

FAPERJ, 2013 

Brazilian attitudes toward 

race have shifted dramatically in a very short span of time. The portrayal of 

Brazil as a “racial democracy,” whose upbeat projection 

of harmony and equality persisted throughout most 

of the 20th century, has been displaced by widespread 

recognition that Afro-Brazilians are disproportionately 

poor and disadvantaged because of race. According to 

the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), a 

government think tank, the average income of white 

Brazilians is more than double that of African descendants, who also suffer in terms of education and access 

to health care and public services. This is a serious 

matter in a country where, according to the 2010 

census, 51 percent of the population defines itself as 

black or of mixed African ancestry. Race has moved to 

the center of Brazil’s public agenda, along with policies 

to further integration, eliminate discrimination and 

assure justice. 

All this makes Amilcar Araujo Pereira’s work a 

timely contribution to knowledge and memory. For 

the record, Pereira is the son of a black intellectualactivist father and a white mother. This background 

sparked his decision to become a historian and his 

scholarly focus on race in Brazil, academic goals 

that both parents encouraged. His book, whose title 

translates into English as “The Black World: Race 

Relations and the Formation of the Contemporary 

Black Movement in Brazil,” emerged from his doctoral dissertation. It is substantially cornered on the 

testimony of Afro-Brazilian activists and U.S.-based 

scholars and other professionals. 

Full disclosure: I was last person that Pereira 

interviewed in the United States. In the late 1970s, 

while I was a graduate student and an intern with the 

Brazil team at the Inter-American Foundation, the 

IAF added to its portfolio five Afro-Brazilian grantees that were developing the cultural awareness and 

identity of their constituencies. According to Pereira, 

these awards made IAF a pioneer, the first U.S. government agency, in fact the first international donor, 

to support the cause of Afro-Brazilians. Such aid had 

been unheard-of, first, because it was at odds with 

the official denial of the existence of racism in Brazil 

and, second, because, according to sources cited by 

Pereira, the military regime then in power considered it subversive and a threat to national security. In 

December 1977, through the Embassy of the United 

States in Brasilia, the Brazilian government notified the IAF that it was suspending all IAF activity in 

the country, a hiatus that lasted five years. In 2008, 

Pereira reviewed the files and spoke with me about 

this episode as I had experienced it. O Mundo Negro is 

to my knowledge the only publication in which it is 

fully and accurately documented.

Pereira organizes his material into four chapters 

that take the reader through theories of race and racial 

democracy; the origins of the Afro-Brazilian movement; 

the “circulation of ideas” among the U.S., Brazil and 

Africa; and the contemporary iteration of the Brazilian 

movement, between 1971 and 1995. O Mundo Negro

is yet another reminder that the scale and duration 

of slavery in Brazil were unmatched in the Western 

Hemisphere. Most historians today believe that of the 9 

million to 11 million slaves shipped across the Atlantic 

between the 16th and 19th centuries, some 5 million 

landed in Brazil. When Brazil finally abolished slavery 

in 1888, rather than support their transition, it left the 

former slaves to fend for themselves. 

This neglect had a profound impact on society,

contributing to the extreme inequality that continues to this day, even as Brazilians acknowledge 

the past and enter a new era of consciousness. The 

Constitution of 1988 criminalized racism and racebased abuse, and every presidential administration 

since ratification has taken steps toward inclusion. 

O Mundo Negro illuminates the crucial role of AfroBrazilian leaders and activists in this process, and 

more importantly, it honors their contribution and 

memory. This fascinating account is a “must read” 

for those who care about race relations, social change 

and inclusion in Brazil.—Miriam E. Brandao, IAF representative for Peru and former IAF representative for Brazil

Resources
64 Grassroots Development 2013 34

At the IAF

Tattoos on the Heart

By Gregory Boyle, S.J.

Free Press; New York, 2010

Gangs in Mexico and 

Central America have 

become a scourge and 

source of fear to the local population, including in 

the communities where IAF grantee partners live and 

work. Gang-related violence accounts for many of the 

96 homicides per 100,000 citizens recorded in 2012 

in Honduras, a country that has skyrocketed to the 

top of the murder charts. The numbers for El Salvador 

and Guatemala reached 69 and nearly 39 per 100,000, 

respectively. To put these figures into perspective, the 

United States had 4.7 homicides per 100,000 in 2011. 

Ironically, many of the most violent gangs in 

Central America, notably Mara Salvatrucha and 

Barrio 18, were born on the streets of Los Angeles 

and other U.S. cities, then exported, first to El 

Salvador and then to Honduras and Guatemala, when 

members were deported as felons. Gangs, often in 

conjunction with narcotraffickers, routinely assassinate honest prosecutors, witnesses and judges 

considered threats. Prisons are overcrowded, poorly 

maintained and often ruled by the inmates themselves, who continue to do business via cell phones. 

Officials in cities throughout the U.S. and 

Central America, as well as development professionals, are desperate for an approach that focuses 

beyond police, prosecutions and prisons and provides young people an exit from crime. Tattoos on 

the Heart documents one such approach that seems 

to be working in the barrio of Los Angeles: Homeboy 

Industries, started 25 years ago by the author, a 

dynamic Jesuit priest. Father Gregory Boyle begins 

by insisting that a need to belong and feel important drives youths to join gangs. Once they do, their 

life expectancy shrinks. Boyle has lost count of the 

young people he has buried, including innocent victims of drive-by shootings. 

It was for the survivors—young people who have 

been on drugs and in prison—that Boyle founded 

Homeboy Industries, which works tirelessly to teach 

its constituents marketable skills and build their selfesteem. He boasts that Homeboy Industries is the 

only employer requiring its hires to have a felony 

conviction to work in its bakery, restaurants, catering 

service, farmer markets and graphic design shop that 

also makes clothes including a T-shirt with “Jobs, not 

Jails” on the front and “Nothing stops a bullet like a 

job” on the back. While in the program, the youths—

mostly Latinos, some recent arrivals—study for their 

GED, improve their English and gain work experience. 

Homeboy also offers them housing, drug and alcohol 

rehabilitation, counseling, even parenting classes; legal 

aid and mental health services are open to anybody 

who walks in the door. “Homies” are often covered 

with tattoos, which the staff at Homeboy Industries 

offers to remove using the latest laser technology. Last 

year, 400 young men and women took classes ranging 

from anger management to yoga; 300 were enrolled 

in vocational training; 300 alumni are employed by 

Homeboy Industries. The cost of this comprehensive program totaled some $12 million, a budget that 

would be difficult to match in Central America. 

Boyle also describes his service as a mediator brokering truces between gangs and the police during his 

early years in the barrio. He stopped, feeling the process gave gangs too much credibility and recognition, 

but his involvement brings to mind the truce brokered 

among imprisoned gang leaders, the Catholic Church, 

the police and other authorities in El Salvador and, 

more recently, in Honduras. While homicides have 

plummeted by 50 percent in El Salvador, the wisdom 

of negotiations with “criminals” is hotly debated. Most 

striking, however, was that the gang leaders wanted 

training and jobs as the price of peace.

Boyle’s life and work in the “hood,” as a parish 

priest and civic leader, has won him the respect of 

gang members and their families—along with the 

nickname “G-Dog,” also the title of a documentary 

on Boyle that recently premiered in Los Angeles. His 

book is compassionate, inspiring and full of hope 

despite the dire circumstances of the young people 

involved. This is a good read, but if you don’t have 

time, at least visit www.homeboyindustries.org.—

Patrick Ahern, IAF representative for Nicaragua
Grassroots Development 2013 34 65

A Soapbox in Haiti—

Recovery. One Speaker at 

a Time.

Directed by Scott 

Kirschenbaum

Fractured Atlas: 2010 

The earthquake that 

rocked Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, killed some 200,000 

Haitians and injured, traumatized and displaced millions more. As the media broadcast the destruction, 

and aid flooded the country, the world discussed how 

to help. But one perspective was barely expressed—

that of the Haitians affected. 

Scott Kirschenbaum gives these missing voices 

a platform in A Soapbox in Haiti—Recovery. One 

Speaker at a Time. Filmed in fall 2010, the documentary consists of 12 speakers, accessible in any 

order—a singer, an aspiring rap artist, a doctor, 

priest and other citizens. The absence of other narration brings the viewer into close contact as the 

individual on screen offers vivid glimpses into the 

devastation, the efforts to recover and his or her 

aspirations for Haiti. 

Some speakers are associated with IAF grantee 

partners that, because they were among the few 

institutions functioning after the disaster, rose to its 

challenges—Fondation Festival Film Jakmèl (FFFJ), 

Oganizasyon Kominotè Fanm Veyon (OKFV), Rezo 

Fanm Fwonty Ba Plato (Renzo Fanm) and Sant Pon 

Ayiti (SPA). Students enrolled in FFFJ’s film school, 

for example, dug their cameras out of the rubble 

and showed the world the damage, prompting an 

unexpected flow of contributions toward recovery. Inundated with refugees, Renzo Fanm quickly 

set up makeshift dormitories for the homeless and 

connected pregnant women with medical care. (See 

Grassroots Development 2010.) 

Locations, sounds and raw emotion bolster 

Kirschenbaum’s candid approach and reinforce the 

focus on each Haitian featured. Even viewers who 

know nothing of Haiti should be captivated by quotations from a rich culture tradition. Rhyming to 

the beat of his tanbou, or Haitian drum, Pierre Yves 

Edmond calls on his village to rebuild and explains 

how neighbors formed a konbit, or work group, to 

launch a radio station. Renold Laurent revisits the 

devastation in Port-au-Prince with a poem recited 

among dusty tents sheltering the displaced, the spirited chatter of children in the background. Rapper 

Jacques Belfort Belfort, sings out “Haiti is your 

country. Work for her.” Certainly another speaker, 

digital cartographer Guensmark Alcin, did that, and 

very resourcefully, by creating Open Street Map, a 

guide detailing reliable and direct routes, to help first 

responders access and transport the injured. Civil 

engineer Joel Lochard reacted to his own personal 

tragedy by pulling himself together to provide emergency services. 

On Jan. 10, 2011, ABC News marked the first 

anniversary of the earthquake with excerpts from A

Soapbox in Haiti. The entire work was screened the 

same day in communities throughout Haiti, a vivid 

reminder to learn from history and the mistakes of 

the past. In 2010 these included defective construction, easily reduced to rubble, and poorly planned 

roads that hindered rescue efforts. Kirschenbaum 

has expressed the hope that the 12 Haitians on 

screen will spark a grassroots dialogue on taking 

responsibility for the recovery efforts still ongoing, 

on recognizing the beauty of Haiti and on making a 

positive impact on future generations. “Haiti is your 

country. Work for her.” The documentary can be 

viewed at www.asoapboxinhaiti.com.—Amanda Hess, 

IAF program staff assistant
66 Grassroots Development 2013 34

Online E diti o n: F o cus Co ntinued

Yensi Santamaría, farmer and student, Santa Marta, El Salvador. Sean Sprague
Grassroots Development 2013 34 67

Online E diti o n: F o cus Co ntinued

One wet weekday evening in May, two dozen 

Salvadoran immigrants found their way 

to a restaurant in a Virginia suburb of 

Washington, D.C. They weren’t drawn there by the 

pupusas or the cumbia rhythms. They had come to 

learn from Andrés “Elmer” Arias and his like-minded 

associates how to help their families and friends back 

in El Salvador.

Arias arrived in Washington, D.C., from El 

Salvador in 1980, desperate to escape the civil war. 

He was broke, just 19 and spoke no English, but he 

managed to find a job cleaning bathrooms and washing dishes. Fifteen years later, he opened his own 

restaurant in Fairfax, Virginia, the first of two. Along 

with friendships formed on the job and on the soccer 

field, his enterprises allow him to channel energy 

and resources into binational efforts that benefit 

communities in the United States and El Salvador. As 

someone who avoids the spotlight, Arias was caught 

off-guard in 2012 when the White House honored 

him as a Champion of Change for organizing Fútbol 

Positivo, whose three soccer leagues give young 

people in northern Virginia the opportunity to play 

the game in an environment that encourages them 

to stay in school and to reject the lure of gangs and 

drugs. The Fairfax Police Department credits Fútbol 

Positivo with contributing to a 65 percent decrease in 

juvenile delinquency over a three-year period.

But Fútbol Positivo was just Arias’ most recent 

launch. For years, he has been collaborating with 

other Salvadorans to raise funds for communities 

in El Salvador. After Hurricane Mitch hit Central 

America in 1998, Arias coordinated a massive drive 

that not only resulted in the delivery of food, clothing and other supplies to Salvadorans devastated by 

the storm but also informed the diaspora’s response 

How the Salvadoran Diaspora Funds 

Options for the Future 

By Megan Fletcher

to subsequent natural disasters. In 2001, he founded 

the Salvadoran-American Chamber of Commerce, 

whose first initiative helped a community in El 

Salvador get started on organic production. Seven 

years later, he successfully incorporated Fundación 

para la Educación Social, Económica y Cultural 

(FUPEC) in the U.S. and El Salvador. The groundbreaking nonprofit organization, now an IAF grantee, 

helps hometown associations of migrants (HTAs) 

in the United States and residents of their respective communities of origin pool resources and invest 

in development for long-term results. Thousands 

of Salvadorans who, like Arias, are determined to 

maintain ties with and assist people back home are 

members of the 90-some HTAs currently affiliated 

with FUPEC—almost half the Salvadoran HTAs in the 

United States.

A median age of 23.9 puts El Salvador among 

the youngest countries in the hemisphere, and its 

young people have been a priority in the diaspora’s 

development effort. Salvadorans in the U.S. are conservatively estimated to number 1.5 million and most 

left home at an early age, like Arias did. Many working through FUPEC want young men and women 

back home to have what they did not: a future there, 

in El Salvador. They see a role for their financial 

support but the challenges are daunting: 35 percent of Salvadorans are poor and, according to the 

International Labor Organization, some 24 percent of 

those between the ages of 15 and 24 neither work nor 

attend school. The situation is compounded by the 

legions of undereducated, underemployed youths in 

the ranks of gangs that had substantially contributed 

to a national murder rate of 69.1 per 100,000 in 2011 

and a toll of disproportionately young victims. Until 

a truce that went into effect last year significantly 
68 Grassroots Development 2013 34

Online E diti o n: F o cus Co ntinued

reduced the number of homicides, El Salvador ranked 

as the second most violent country in the hemisphere, behind Honduras. Everyone, from the gang 

leaders to the Salvadoran president, agrees that education and employment are crucial to a future of peace 

and a way out of poverty. 

Even before FUPEC became fully incorporated, 

the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) 

and Banco Agrícola, El Salvador’s largest bank, 

approached Arias about partnering to improve 

educational opportunities in El Salvador via a joint 

venture called Manos Unidas por El Salvador (Manos 

Unidas). The plan called for FUPEC to structure the 

program, identify potential U.S.-based HTAs as participants and administer a pool of resources. FUPEC 

developed rules requiring Salvadoran communities 

to compete for awards via detailed proposals that 

commit the applicant and its respective HTA each 

to contribute 15 percent of the cost of their project 

while PADF and Banco Agrícola cover 70 percent. 

Reina de Paniagua, FUPEC’s executive director in 

San Salvador, and her colleague, Engel Flores, are 

available to guide the applicants. “Raising consciousness takes more than a year,” de Paniagua said. 

“An organization matures relative to the attention 

it receives.” She cautions members of HTAs to trust 

the priorities of hometown residents and to let them 

take charge. Manos Unidas requires individuals from 

both the HTA and the community’s committee to 

learn bookkeeping and the other basic skills necessary to provide an accurate accounting.

Since its launch in 2006, Manos Unidas has 

awarded more than 200 grants funding school 

infrastructure and scholarships in disadvantaged 

communities throughout El Salvador. San Julián, 

in the western department of Sonsonate, offers an 

example of how collaboration with an HTA gets 

started and what it can achieve through the program. José Mauricio Gallegos, just 18 when he left 

San Julián to flee the civil war, began traveling back 

to his hometown in 1996. The poverty so tore at his 

conscience that he eventually gathered 10 friends in 

Virginia, founded the HTA Comité de San Julián and 

has served as its president since 2000. The HTA’s affiliation with FUPEC and 

its subsequent participation in Manos Unidas 

resulted in an investment 

of $55,000 in classrooms, 

a computer center, a 

multipurpose room and a 

soccer field in San Julián. 

Of that amount, FUPEC 

disbursed $25,000 and 

residents convinced their 

local government to 

provide another $30,000. 

“It’s a dream come true 

to give back to the same 

schools where I studied 

and help the children of 

today,” said Gallegos. 

Success with Manos 

Unidas has inspired 

FUPEC and its HTA associates to focus beyond 

education. An IAF grant 

of $286,485 awarded in 

2011 is helping FUPEC Elmer Arias, center, with Mauricio Gallegos and Federico Espinoza at La Hacienda, the 

restaurant Arias opened in 1995.

Mark Caicedo
Grassroots Development 2013 34 69

Online E diti o n: F o cus Co ntinued

and its affiliated Salvadoran communities invest in 

development. To date seven grassroots groups from 

throughout El Salvador have received funding conditioned on the HTAs and their respective hometowns’ 

mobilization of 40 percent of the resources required 

while the IAF contributes 50 percent; and FUPEC 

raises 10 percent from other sources. Most of the 

successful applicants emphasized young people or 

agriculture. The proposal submitted by a cooperative 

in Santa Marta, Cabañas, a community 90 kilometers from San Salvador, combined both priorities. 

Its farmers, all between the ages of 15 and 30, cultivate organic produce, raise tilapia and make organic 

fertilizer. The cooperative has invested its award in a 

multipurpose center; an electrically-powered system 

that irrigates crops consistently, making them less 

vulnerable to fungi and bacteria; and in training 

in business skills. According to Moisés López, 28, a 

member of the coordinating committee, the farmers 

now keep records and a balance sheet, so they know 

if they are turning a profit; they understand the value 

of reinvesting some of their earnings. Partnering with 

another cooperative has resulted in better prices.

“As young people, we like to relate to others our 

age, so we joined the cooperative. We see that young 

people can do this work,” said a young farmer who 

identified himself as Santos. “We’ve improved our 

production, our workplace, our group and the entire 

community.” When Grassroots Development visited, 

young men and women were filling trays with seeds 

for fertilization, snipping ripe jalapeños and clearing one of the cooperative’s four greenhouses for the 

rotating detoxification period. Workers step into a 

pool before entering a greenhouse, to rid their shoes 

of contaminants. The young men who founded the 

cooperative say the incorporation of more young 

women as members makes for a more orderly workplace and more careful handling so produce is less 

likely to become damaged. Weekly shifts are staggered 

because many members still attend school or work 

on family plots. Security is a concern; duties include 

night watch, recently facilitated by electricity that 

powers flood lights, thanks to FUPEC. Many members 

see the cooperative as the key to a livelihood in Santa 

Marta and are determined not to follow in the footsteps of relatives in the United States. For Francisco 

Ramírez, who works several jobs in metropolitan 

Washington, D.C., and heads the HTA Comité Santa 

Marta, the progress makes his investment of time, 

energy and resources worthwhile.

An unexpected consequence of the IAF’s grant to 

FUPEC has been the elevation of the committee in the 

community of Santa Teresa to Fundación Santa Teresa, 

a brand new IAF grantee that will use its IAF funding 

to involve diaspora Salvadorans in efforts to improve 

agriculture. Federico Espinoza, who has lived in 

northern Virginia since 1985, is president of the HTA 

Comité Santa Teresa that motivated residents to form 

the committee that initially helped the elderly. Now its 

longer-term vision is to prepare young people to take 

advantage of local opportunities. “We’re investing in 

their desire to work, we’re pushing our communities 

Megan Fletcher

Grafitti art is a reminder of the conflict that caused many Salvadorans to flee their country.
70 Grassroots Development 2013 34

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forward together.” said Espinoza. “This is development 

that is happening. It’s beautiful to see.” 

In addition to Salvadorans, Elmer Arias has 

mentored Hondurans, Guatemalans and Peruvians 

who want to organize hometown associations supporting their communities of origin. “Surround 

yourself with others who share your mentality,” he 

advised them. Certainly that describes Espinoza, 

Ramírez and Gallegos, men who also share his 

narrative and respect his tireless efforts on behalf 

of Salvadorans in two countries. As the conduit 

channeling considerable resources from donors 

to recipients, Arias also comes under close scrutiny and has had to learn to manage criticism 

with grace. “I need to feel 100 percent sure that 

everything has been done right, and then keep on 

working,” he said. “The acts speak for themselves.” 

He admits that the pressure has nearly made him 

give up. But, he said, “If I do, thousands of families 

will be left without help when they need it.” 

In 2011, the most recent year for which figures 

are available, the diaspora sent $3.6 billion to El 

Salvador; remittances sent worldwide were estimated 

at $372 billion. But for years, working migrants 

abroad have been sending home whatever they 

could afford, often at considerable sacrifice, resulting 

in a volume of cash that has held together the economy in developing countries around the globe. In 

the early 2000s, when this financial flow attracted 

the attention of the foreign-assistance community, 

it provoked optimism that some benefit of these 

resources could be channeled beyond individual 

households. Often arrangements proposed toward 

that end were met with failure because the parties 

underestimated, or totally ignored, the complexity 

of the interaction among HTAs, the communities and the nonprofits or government agencies 

brokering the project. FUPEC took a different 

course, through the grassroots, patiently cultivating relationships as organizations matured. What 

resulted was an important breakthrough, allowing Salvadorans in the diaspora and in El Salvador 

to maximize their support for young people, so 

they take charge of their future. Other diaspora 

communities may learn from FUPEC‘s pursuit of 

development. 

Megan Fletcher is IAF’s congressional affairs specialist.

Megan Fletcher, center in white blouse, with farmers of the cooperative in Santa Marta.

Megan Fletcher
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Arivan Ribeiro Reis still tears up behind his 

glasses when he recalls how 20 years ago he 

quit his job as a day laborer in the industrial 

complex in Manaus to bet on his future. The stakes 

were high, because he was leaving his brother as the 

sole provider of a multigenerational family. And the 

odds that the gamble would pay off seemed against 

him. Reis wanted to study agronomy at the Federal 

University of Amazonas (UFAM), one of the institutions that make up Brazil’s public system of higher 

education offering students a first-rate education at 

taxpayer expense. Reis knew that in every department, applicants would far exceed the slots available 

and admission would be strictly based on the vestibular, a three-day exam that tests mastery of Portuguese, 

English or Spanish, math, social sciences, hard sciences and the skills necessary to write a lengthy essay 

on a topic drawn from current affairs. To talk about a 

passing score on the vestibular misses the point; passing means admission to the university and vice versa. 

The exam is tough and preparation for its rigors 

is only available in private schools or cram courses, 

often expensive, known as cursinhos. That means 

graduates of public schools or individuals who are 

self-taught are unlikely to score high enough on 

the vestibular to be admitted to a public university, 

especially in programs in medicine, law or engineering. This reflection on the quality of instruction is 

decried as a serious indictment of public education 

and, because students in public schools are overwhelmingly poor, as a prime obstacle to overcoming 

inequality and disparities in wealth. The hundreds of 

thousands of Brazilians who took to the streets this 

year cited the government’s neglect of public schools 

among the reasons for the protests.

Alternativo de Petropolis do Amazonas Vicente 

Ferreira da Silva (ALTPET), an IAF grantee until 

December 2012, is a pioneer among the grassroots 

and nongovernmental organizations working to 

address the academic gap so that young people from 

struggling families can pursue higher education. For 

the past 25 years ALTPET has been offering impoverished young men and women cursinhos taught 

by volunteer instructors drawn from graduate students and university faculty. “The cursinho used to 

be organized on the terrace of Dona Iracema, now 

Bridging Brazil’s Academic Gap 

By David Fleischer and Alexis Toussaint 

Students enrolled in Bahia Street.

Courtesy Bahia Street
72 Grassroots Development 2013 34

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90 and one of the oldest residents of the Petropolis 

neighborhood where we operate,” recalled Jonas 

Gomes, ALTPET’s program coordinator, a graduate of 

its cursinho and professor of industrial engineering 

at UFAM. Reis enrolled in ALTPET’s cursinho in 1993, 

mastered the material—despite the noise and exposure to the elements during the classes then held in 

open air—and passed the vestibular a year later. He 

graduated from UFAM in 1999 and now works as an 

agronomist in Amazonas for the Brazilian Ministry 

of Agrarian Development. “The cursinho helped me 

learn math and science and improved my writing 

skills—all crucial to passing the vestibular,” Reis told 

Grassroots Development from his office in Manaus. He 

did so well in UFAM’s science courses that ALTPET 

invited him to teach that section of its cursinho. 

In recent years, brand new secondary school 

graduates throughout Brazil increasingly take the 

Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (ENEM), but it 

has not yet completely replaced the vestibular, and 

students from public schools usually do as poorly 

on the ENEM. ALTPET now prepares students for 

both exams. By 2010, when ALTPET received its IAF 

grant, its cursinhos taught by a corps of 50 volunteers 

had reached 1,800 disadvantaged young Brazilians 

in Manaus. Another 1,000 students went through 

the program during the IAF grant period. Even with 

classes increased to five days a week, thanks to the 

IAF’s funding, the young men and women enrolled 

have to be quick studies: Both exams require mastery of the vast material covered during the last three 

years of the Brazilian high school curriculum, which, 

along with practice exams, is compressed into two 

and a half hours daily over six months. Nonetheless, 

students from ALTPET have had an impressive record: 

four out of 10 graduates of ALTPET’s cursinho have 

passed the vestibular or ENEM and entered universities. To place that ratio in context, consider that the 

class to graduate from UFAM as agronomists in 2013 

began with 30 students culled from 230 via their 

exam scores. Public universities in other regions of 

Brazil boast even lower admission rates. 

Race adds another dimension to access to educational opportunity, given the correlation of race 

with poverty in Brazil. According to the 2010 census, 

55 percent of Brazilians identify as of indigenous 

or African descent, but only between 5 percent and 

10 percent of the students enrolled public or private 

institutions of higher education belong to these ethnicities. For at least a decade, the Brazilian government 

has been working to remedy this statistic via quotas 

and by adding points to scores on entrance exams, 

enabling more Afro-Brazilian and indigenous students 

to enter public universities, or via scholarships funding 

study in private universities. The application of these 

measures has been controversial. Critics point out, 

for example, that they don’t necessarily benefit the 

disadvantaged and that graduates of public school who 

do end up in a university are often seriously underprepared. Those arguments notwithstanding, affirmative 

action, Brazilian style, has withstood legal challenges, 

including one that reached the Supreme Court. “The 

quota system in use at UFAM and the State University 

of Amazonas (UEA) has definitely given Afro- and 

indigenous Brazilians more opportunities,” said 

Gomes. “And so have federally- and municipallyfunded scholarships. The problem is ensuring that 

these students receive their degree on schedule.” 

IAF grantee partner Bahia Street is also forging 

ahead to level the academic playing field—for African 

descendent girls and young women between the ages 

of 6 and 17 from public schools in Salvador’s favelas. Without intervention they risk facing the most 

extreme exclusion of any segment of Brazil’s population in terms of education at all levels and later in 

employment, access to health care and participation 

in civic life, according to Brazil’s Geographic and 

Statistical Institute (IBGE) and Institute of Applied 

Research (IPEA). Since Bahia Street started operations, 

500 girls and young women have gone though the 

program and all of them are now gainfully employed. 

“This organization prepares children and adolescents 

to confront the social, political and economic challenges and break the cycle of poverty,” explained Rita 

de Cassia, Bahia Street’s director.

Since its founding in 1997, Bahia Street has targeted its academic programs at just getting students 

into the next grade level in elementary and middle 

school and helping them make a successful transition into secondary school. Often the youngest girls 

must learn to read and write. After-school sessions 

reinforce public-school classes in Portuguese, history, 

geography, math and English in anticipation of final 

examinations. Basic instruction in personal hygiene, 
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Jonas Gomes, fourth from the left, with students. Below: ALTPET’s classes used to be held in spaces exposed to the elements, left. 

IAF’s support helped ALTPET move into the facility on the right.
74 Grassroots Development 2013 34

nutrition and safety is also included. A team of psychologists monitors constantly, alert to challenges at 

home, in school and on the street. Incidents of child 

abuse and domestic violence are resolved directly 

with the family and everyone is taught the risks of 

teen pregnancy and substance abuse. In addition to 

academics, students take advantage of enrichment 

programs that mirror those offered in elite private 

schools: classes in the arts, physical education and 

civics; a marching band and a dance troupe that give 

public performances; and field trips to museums, 

parks, libraries and historic sites. 

More recently, Bahia Street has taken into 

account the changing job market and its demand 

for more skilled workers. “We began to feel responsible for guiding our students toward university 

admission,” de Cassia said. Bahia Street received 

its IAF award in 2010 and invested the funds in 

offering its program on a daily basis and placing 

more emphasis on math and science. An evening 

cursinho is open to Bahia Street graduates and working women from the community at large. So far, 10 

young women from the cursinho have been admitted 

to the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), the State 

University of Bahia (UNEB) or private institutions 

offering scholarships to Afro-Brazilians. De Cassia 

noted the demand for the cursinho is growing, along 

with interest in pursuing an undergraduate degree. 

A university education is very much in the sights 

of Livia de Jesus Nascimento, 16. Abandoned by her 

parents and raised by her grandmother, she discovered Bahia Street’s after-school opportunities five 

years ago and has been enrolled in its program since 

then. “I intend to continue studying and take the 

ENEM or vestibular,” Livia said. “Girls and women 

transform their lives, ideas and attitudes with Bahia 

Street. My father was a drug addict and my mother 

never came back for me, but I managed to become 

self-confident and I learned to use the obstacles in 

the way as stepping stones.” 

Recently ALTPET also broadened its program 

in response to local demand for basic education 

in reading, writing and math as well as vocational 

training and digital inclusion that prepare skilled 

workers for the industrial complex in Manaus. But 

Gomes remains focused on the insufficient supply of 

qualified professionals in engineering and technical 

fields to staff the complex and on secondary school 

students interested in these careers, who require 

preparation. ALTPET’s community radio station uses 

popular music to attract listeners and advertise its 

offerings. “You have to speak the language of the 

youth,” Jonas Gomes told IAF staff when he visited 

the United States invited by the Department of State. 

“A lot of people still don’t know about our work.” 

The Bolsa Familia that has lifted millions out of 

poverty via cash transfers conditioned on school attendance has resulted in more children and teenagers in 

school than ever before. According to a study published by IPEA in 2012, a decade into the Bolsa Familia, 

academic achievement has not improved. “Low-income 

students have better access to higher education, which 

was the privilege of the few until the 1990s,” said 

Gomes. “But if access has improved, knowledge has 

not. The quality of education in public schools is getting worse. As a professor of engineering in a public 

university, I see students with problems with math and 

verbal expression that should have been resolved before 

they enrolled in university. They might be prepared to 

pass the ENEM or vestibular but they are not ready for 

calculus or to write at a university level. Public education has to be reformed beginning with the most basic 

level.” That would require serious public investment 

in infrastructure, curriculum and teachers. Meanwhile 

ALTPET, Bahia Street and organizations like them 

continue to offer an essential service to disadvantaged 

young Brazilians with aspirations for a better future. 

David Fleischer, IAF representative for Brazil and Alexis 

Toussaint, program staff assistant

Bahia Street.
www.iaf.gov