Peace Corps: Priority to People or the State?

Many of us go into the Peace Corps with an idealistic bent, thinking that somehow our investment will pay off in greater equity, access, and equality for those with whom we work. And many of us are able to work with a handful of people and see those benefits accrue. On the other hand, thinking back over the life of the Peace Corps as an organization, buffeted by the politics of the day, I don’t believe it has lived up to the ideals which many of us, no doubt naively, thought it might. Instead, it has often found itself at the service of short term U.S. or multilateral policies based upon who is in the White House or who determines U.S. foreign policy. In reflecting on its forty plus year history, either such idealistic expectations have not been realistic or its contributions should be judged by other criteria.

In the 1960s, and probably much of the 1970s, Volunteers in Latin America were likely to be assigned to work abroad through host country governments rather than non government agencies (NGOs). In recent years, because of more frequent assignment to large, multinational NGOs, the pattern has been different. But in either case, Peace Corps alignment with both governments and NGOs has often meant representing those who set policy in seats of power or those, like the World Bank, who provide a majority of NGO funding. These patterns of association have meant that Peace Corps has often missed working with the more innovative grass roots programs and initiatives in the region, programs which have been more aligned with the poor and disenfranchised than with policy makers.

I was in Colombia in the mid 60s during the heyday of Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress when most of the 700 Volunteers there worked with and through government to government programs. Volunteers were assigned to government schools and universities, community development agencies, a national educational television initiative, agricultural and health extension programs, and so on, almost always associated with some level of the Colombian bureaucracy. Our particular group taught physical education and coached athletic teams, so we were often in normal schools training teachers or we worked with state affiliated sports teams. For awhile, one of my jobs, for example, was to train the swimming team from the National Police Academy, which I was scheduled to do several times a week before sunrise, at an army base outside of Bogota. Another example found Volunteers helping prepare Colombian athletes for the Pan American Games.

Since the 1960s, Peace Corps involvement in these government to government and government to NGO programs seem to sanction an implicit support for the status quo rather than change. If change was intended, it was usually gradual rather than radical. The more radical change was generally occurring around Peace Corps, rather than with it. Radical change was also being put down, as when Lyndon Johnson landed U.S. military forces in the Dominican Republic in the mid-1960s forcing the Peace Corps out. The left, however, kept pushing for progress in the 1960s and 1970s. The Cuban literacy brigades, for example, brought a new perspective to rural education with a focus on political socialization. It was a time when the Catholic Church, led by relatively radical Bishops, sponsored community based social action programs. It was also the time when Paulo Freire was said to have several hundred community based organizations associated with his consciousness raising pedagogy of liberation in Northeast Brazil. His method used graphics to show the daily life of poor people in contrast to the wealthy. He displayed these graphics to organized community groups of the poor and then discussed the causes of being rich and poor. By labeling the graphics he also taught literacy. Originally associated with the Church, he influenced similar programs elsewhere, including that of the Bishops. He was exiled from Brazil and then used the method under Allende in Chile. While some of the activity in the region wasn’t so radical, like radio schools in Colombia, or family schools in Argentina, they nevertheless operated with a view from the community rather than the state. And while there were some innovative government initiatives, like the Brazilian (MOBRAL) and Ecuadorian literacy and numeracy programs, most attention was on the political left, outside of government channels, and associated with grass roots organizations. These were loosely knit groups, maybe financed by the Church or a philanthropic foundation, or perhaps operating with no funding at all. While individual Volunteers no doubt were influenced in their own work by what was going on around them, they were not likely to be officially placed with such organizations.

The left was active because the politically conservative right, by the end of the 1960s was in power – 15 of 21 countries were ruled by the military. The left used grass roots organizations to challenge the dependency status of their communities, ethnic groups, and nation states. In the 1970s, these efforts received new support from some international agencies, like the World Bank, which focused on the “poorest of the poor”. Beyond the rhetoric, however, local programs were where the real action was. Popular education at the time incorporated consciousness raising with social action, and sought to form cross class coalitions for greater economic and political power. While there were revolutionary movements occurring at various stages throughout the region, especially in Nicaragua in the late 1970s, they were often preceded by years of clandestine educational efforts. In the case of Nicaragua, Somoza’s ouster followed widespread radio programs, literacy primers, poster campaigns and community discussion groups, often sponsored by the Church. The 1980 Nicaraguan literacy campaign, employing elements from the Cuban campaign and Friere’s conscious raising, will be recalled as an extraordinary effort by a nation devastated by war and debt.

The late 1970s also saw national governments, at the insistence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), begin their move to slowly pull back from supporting social action programs. They were told to reduce financial sponsorship and increase privatizing services involving community development, literacy, extension, technical vocational education and similar programs. The economic crisis of the 1980s, which some have called the most serious financial crisis to hit the region in the last century, meant the acceleration of privatization through increased pressures from the IMF, World Bank, USAID, and others. As the IMF assumed control over the region’s economies, the gap between rich and poor widened, increasing unemployment, and fueling social protest. Accustomed to receiving basic social services, the resolve of some communities increased and filled the gap through strengthening local organizations.

Peace Corps appears to have followed this government exodus from counterpart Peace Corps programs and began assigning Volunteers to the larger NGOs. But this change in alignment didn’t seem to have much impact on the relation of Peace Corps with the top rather than the bottom. Local opposition to the IMF has increased over the years as the effects of globalization and U.S. inspired economic policies have materialized. Economic nationalism and opposition to free market and free trade policies have led to mass protests and riots. Promises of prosperity have simply not materialized. The backlash has led to more loosely affiliated groups coalescing around the indigenous, women, farmers, squatters, ecology activists, and human rights organizations. As NGOs filled in by providing some of the social services governments used to provide, they became known as the implementation arm of agencies like the World Bank. In other words, the Bank designed the projects and then found NGOs to deliver them. The web of connections between large corporations, multinational agencies and individual nations has become more transparent and the Peace Corps is now aligned with all three. An example of this web is the Bush Administration’s effort to ensure the loyalty of NGOs, which receive and distribute aid from the U.S. government. Through the use of funding as an incentive, NGOs are being reminded that as “partners”, their allegiance belongs to the U.S. and that part of their mission is to extol the virtues of U.S. foreign policy. “Silence” and”complicity” are words used to describe U.S. relations with NGOs.

Perhaps the only alignment of a U.S. government agency with locally funded programs on the left in which Peace Corps did have a role has been the Inter-American Foundation. But politics caught up with its funding of grass roots organizations and its existence today is a much smaller and much more conservative one than that which existed in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, it actually supported groups form across the political spectrum in Latin America, and almost always at the local, community based level.

As I said from the outset, we probably shouldn’t expect Peace Corps to be more than a U.S. government agency intended to deliver people to people services from the perspective of corporate and international financial market interests. The challenge remains, however. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) reports that some 90 million Latin American and Caribbean campesinos currently live below the poverty line and 47 million are living in extreme poverty. Clearly, past programs have either not been enough or have not been intended to do more than support U.S. hegemony and globalization on its own terms. Peace Corps alignment along similar lines in the future will effectively limit its impact and no doubt frustrate a new generation of Volunteers.

Tom La Belle has held academic and administrative positions in six universities over the last thirty years. Much of his scholarship has focused on non-formal education in Latin America. He is currently Executive Director, International and Area Studies, UC Berkeley. E-mail: tlabelle@uclink.berkeley.edu.