The creation and proliferation of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in our days find their origin in the ideas of the philosophers of the 18th century and the universality of the trades that embody them: the profession of healing, informing, and teaching; the exercise of law and the vocation to make the theological virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity) a reality from a lay perspective. When looking for evidence of the confrontation of barbarism against civilization, the infamous attack of Madurismo on NGOs may top the list

The dictatorship has weighed in on the extermination of NGOs, in a demonstration of backwardness that can be deemed prehistoric. It is an operation of the minuscule against the universal, the villager against the global, the gloom of the corners and the fear of the pygmies against the light and the freedom that have established on top of the most advanced societies in the western world. When looking for evidence of the confrontation of barbarism against civilization, the infamous attack of Madurismo on non-governmental organizations may top the list.

The origin of the entities against which the blade of the Venezuelan rules is now raised may be found at the cusps of the European culture of the second half of the 18th century when thinkers who were able to model behaviors in their entourage and on our side of the ocean pontificated on the goals of the men of the future as members of a single culture. Reason was tearing down borders and imposing norms of life and understanding of reality that would make it more hospitable, they assured. Selfishness and the cruelty of the old regime would yield to the impulses of Enlightenment, a movement that had started to show the way to fair coexistence to which national interests and borders would surrender, especially those held by force by those in power. Such was the message of thinkers during the Century of Lights, conveyed with more arrogance than humility because the Goddess of Reason, in whose name they used to write, was not as powerful as they claimed, nor could she destroy the remnants of reality that would seek a way to successfully recover.

Voltaire wanted France to mimic the English on freedom of worship, but his call was difficult to digest for a society still basked in the massacre of the Huguenots. Rousseau called for all the societies of the world to subscribe to a Social Contract like the one originally written by the founding fathers, but more rational and wise, without considering that the idea started from an abstraction that only circulated in his head. Jovellanos proposed that the Spanish Bourbons became more benevolent and open to the needs of enlightened times, without considering that he was speaking to a cold and inflexible wall. One of his American followers, Simon Rodríguez, told us that we had to be creative to avoid failure, without considering that he was extending an invitation to senseless demolition. And so on, always chasing the wish to refound universal principles that not only should be implanted in all latitudes of the “civilized” world -or in the process of civilization- but also work their way through the laws that each society wrote and put into practice. 

Despite the excesses, that is, the exaggerated weighting of the attributes of reason and the disdain of the forces from the past that would resist them, and the local peculiarities that refused to wear a single uniform, many of the proposals of the enlightenment not only remained a challenge but also rose to the roster of civil rights accepted and progressively defended by societies in the 19th and 20th centuries. Fields such as the administration of justice, public education and health, the expression of thought, and the prerogatives of minorities in the defense of their causes, gradually settled in national jurisdictions as part of a legacy that had achieved the purpose of rejuvenating the map of contemporary societies to make it more welcoming and tolerant within its heterogeneity.

The creation and proliferation of modern NGOs find their origin in the ideas of the philosophers of the 18th century, in the impulses of the Encyclopedia, and in the efforts of its American followers who drew a revolutionary map of republics; in principles of laborious dissemination that not only sowed the contemporary utopias but also the institutions whose actions are based on the universality of the mission that they have adopted since the end of the ancient regime. And, of course, in the universality of the trades that embody them: the profession of healing, informing, and teaching; the exercise of laws, and the vocation to make the theological virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity) a reality from a lay perspective. Not as a command of reason, as the enlightened pioneers used to claim, because reason could not be the ubiquitous and absolute empress of men, but through their progressive coupling to the various realities of the world. That coupling, an inevitable link, hints at situations that can be as scandalous as those fabricated by the Venezuelan dictatorship to stop the impulses of the non-governmental organizations established in its yard.

The campaign of the Maduro dictatorship against Venezuelan NGOs lies in the decision to associate them with terrorism. The regime’s acolytes affirm that behind a facade of solidarity and charity hides or can hide a design to destroy humanity that must be countered through strict scrutiny of the associations sheltering it. In the backyard of some angelic and supposedly well-intentioned homes, the bureaucrats of the “revolution” blatantly announce, the seeds of desolation find fertile ground. That is why the organizations must undergo urgent and mandatory x-rays that will expose the identity of their domesticated monsters. That is why the monsters must be hunted down, one by one. Such a far-fetched reason, such a hollow assumption, such a deceiving idea about the organizations that have earned the respect of the community for the transparency of their work and the bravery of their actors -but also for the intellectual height of their origin-, show how barbarism can do reckless tricks to whitewash itself, such as declaring war against causes and people who have given luster to mankind. That is why we said we are facing a prehistoric reaction, in the worst sense of the term.

Translated by José Rafael Medina