FRANCAISComité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement - History
1970-1979
-From 1971, France: the CCFD takes position in favour of a “new world order”, even if it implies supporting armed liberation movements. In his autobiography, Menotti Bottazzi, the secretary general of the CCFD between 1974 and 1983, disclaims non-violence but says he refuses to get involved in purchasing weapons. Close to the liberation theology in Latin America, the Committee creates a political commission and a propaganda department and insists on training militants and leaders. In September 1973, the Secours catholique officially protests and accuses the CCFD of embezzlement as the funds are used in political projects, not to help the poor.
-1973-1983, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, Cape Verde, Burkina Faso: to fight against the drought in the Sahel desert, the CCFD facilitates cattle vaccination as well as the purchase of agricultural tools.
-From 1974, Chile: through Gonzalo Arroyo, a Jesuit father and a former advisor of president Salvador Allende, the CCFD supports the opponents to General Augusto Pinochet. In the 1980s, for instance, the CCFD backs the APSI Review, created in 1976 and edited by Marcelo Contreras, a former member of the MAPU (Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria, or United Movement of People’s Action) and of the Briones Group of the Chilean Socialist Party. The other members of the Review belong to the Communist Party (Soledad Bianchi, Michel Launer, Sergio Vuskovig), to the Christian left-wing (Sergio Bitar, Luis Maira), to the MAPU (Jaime Cataldo, Garrigue Correa, Ivan Valdès) and to various socialist movements (Jerman Correa, Angel Ilisfisch, Ricardo Nunez and Anibal Palma, a former minister of Salvador Allende), not to mention Régis Debray’s wife, Carmen Castillo. In the face of the State repression, the CCFD helps political prisoners; this experience will lead, in the 1990s, to a continuous support to the Fedecam (Latin American Federation of Missing Prisoners Families). Nevertheless, with Chile’s democratic transition, the Committee reduces its level of action from 1995 onwards, as well as the number of its programmes in Latin America, and stops supporting projects in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Belize, Venezuela, Uruguay and Panama (in this country after 1982, the CCFD had worked with the Instituto Cooperativo Inter-americano, ICI, which aims at developing farmers’ co-operatives and at “fighting for a new society where there would be no more misery nor exploitation”).
-From 1975, Brazil: the CCFD applies Paulo Freire’s method to teach masses how to read and write —to “indoctrinate” them according to his critics. Head of the National Commission for People’s Culture during the government of João Goulart in 1963, Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was briefly jailed and had to live Brazil when the military took power and accused him of being subversive. In Geneva, he works for the World Council of Churches, influences a lot NGOs educational programmes and contributes to literacy campaigns in "progressive" countries such as Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Grenada Island. Back in Brazil in 1979, he participates to the launching of the Partido dos Trabalhadores and is in charge of education for the Labour municipal council of São Paulo.
-1976-1988, Philippines: in the suburbs of Manila, the CCFD starts working with the ZOTO (Zone One Tondo Organisation), an NGO created in 1968 and taken back in 1970 by Trinidad Herrera, a woman jailed by the military after martial law was imposed in September 1973. Threatened by the construction of a new harbour, Tondo dwellers refuse to leave their shantytown and are finally relocated to Dagat Dagatan, four kilometres away. From 1981, the CCFD also supports an association of poor fishermen in Samar, the KAGUPASA (Kapunungan Han Gudti Nga Parapangisda Han Samar) which, since it was created in 1976, has been trying to resist the illegal competition of big industrial trawlers in Zumagarra, on Buad Island. On the 12th of March 1988 in Paris, the Figaro Magazine weekly newspaper accuses the CCFD of supporting the communist NPA (New People’s Army). Opposed to the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, Cardinal Jaine Sin, the leader of the Filipino Catholic Church, expressed publicly his concerns about the financial backing by western NGOs of the National Secretariat of the Episcopal Conference for Social Action (NASSA). Created in 1966 and chaired by a Jesuit archbishop, Francisco Claver, this body is allegedly “deeply infiltrated” with communists, in particular with the political offshoot of the NPA, the National Democratic Front, whose representative in Europe is a former priest, Luis Jalandoni. Besides the NASSA and its branches in the islands of Luzon (VISSA), the Visayas (VISSA) and Mindanao-Sulu (MISSA), the CCFD supported the TFDP (Task Force Detainees of Filipinos), which helps political prisoners, and the KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno, or Movement of the First of May), a communist congress of trade unions of which the NFSW (National Federation of Sugar Workers) is very present in Negros Island, a NPA stronghold where it fights against the landlords paramilitary units of the Sugar Development Foundation. Through the VISSA, whose chief was the treasurer of the communist party in the middle of the 1970s, the CCFD also paid for the purchase of fishing boats that may have been used to carry weapons for the NPA in the Visayas Island.
-Since 1976, Algeria: on a request from Caritas in Alger, the CCFD starts working with the AARASD (Association of the Friends of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic) in the Tindouf region’s refugee camps from where the Polisario Front fights for independence against Morocco. After the 1991 cease-fire, the CCFD favours self-determination for the Western Sahara and starts development projects with the minister of Education of the SARD (Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic) in exile. In the meantime, Algeria gets tense with the 1991 elections and the increasing violence between Islamic fundamentalists and the military. On the advice of the Alger bishop in 1993, the CCFD first restrains to act, because of its Catholic character. From 1997, the Committee then supports a family association of missing persons and a Jesuit co-operative in Ben Smaïn, in the suburbs of Alger.
-1977, France: a doctor and former president of the Men’s General Catholic Action (ACGH, which changed its name to VEA, Living the Gospel Together Today), René Tardy becomes the president of the CCFD, until 1981. The CCFD also takes part in the creation of an Asian partnership for human development (PADH), initially called Asia Funds when it was launched in 1973 with the Belgian from Broederlijk Delen, the Irish from Trocaire, the British from CAFOD, the Canadian from Development and Peace, and various Catholic charities from Indonesia, South Korea, Macao, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.
-From 1978, Mexico: with Samuel Ruiz Garcia, the bishop of San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas, the CCFD supports the Tzeltal Indians of the Selva Hacandona who have started a co-operative of peones, i.e. farm workers. In partnership with the CONPAZ (Coordinacíon de los Organismos No Gubernamentales por la Paz) and the Bartolome de Las Casas Human Rights Centre (Centro de derechos humanos Fray Bartolome de Las Casas), founded by Samuel Ruiz Garcia in 1989, the Committee also assists victims of the conflict between the army and the guerrillas of the EZLN (Ejercito zapatista de liberación naciónal) of Subcomandante Marcos (Rafaël Sebastian Guillen) from 1994 onwards. In other regions, the CCFD works with the FAPROP (Fundacíon de Apoyo al Proceso Popular) among the Purepecha Indians in the shantytowns of Morelia, the capital city of Michoacan State. At the national level, finally, it supports the Alianza Civica, which monitors the 1994 elections.
-Since 1979, Cambodia: with the invasion of the Vietnamese army, the end of Pol Pot’s regime reveals the extent of the Khmer Rouge genocide and prompts the CCFD to get involved in this country. Yet on the 27th of December 1979, in the Quotidien du Médecin’s daily newspaper in Paris, Doctor Xavier Emmanuelli, the president of MSF, denounces the way the CCFD, CIMADE and SPF collaborate with the Heng Samrin’s government established by the Vietnamese in Phnom Penh. The only French NGOs to be admitted into the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, they can only work for one side, and they can’t help the Khmer refugees on the Thai border. After the Vietnamese army withdraws in 1989, and elections are held under the UN supervision in 1993, it is possible to have a full access to the hinterland again. From 1994, the CCFD starts supporting farm projects in partnership with the CREDO (Cambodian Rural Economic Development Organisation) in the provinces of Kandal, Kampong Speu, Kampong Thom, Svay Rieng and Prey Veng.
