According to a Peruvian newspaper, the U.S. Agency for International Development has stopped funding the Manuela Ramos Movement since the beginning of this year. An official of the U.S. Embassy in Lima, who wants to remain anonymous, stated that “the contract for USAID support to Manuela Ramos has been cancelled and won’t be renewed” (Expreso, February 20, 2006). That is, without any doubt, a heavy blow to this organization and a serious warning to the rest of the population controllers in Latin America.
USAID Primary Funding
USAID has been, and currently is, the most important source of funds for population control in Peru (and all over Latin America), and Manuela Ramos used to be the most important grantee of USAID in Peru. As a matter of fact, a $36-million project managed by Manuela Ramos called Reprosalud started at almost the same time as the forced sterilization campaign of the Fujimori Administration in the mid-1990s. Both the Reprosalud and sterilization campaigns were carried out under a novel concept at that time: “Reproductive Health.”
For many years, pro-lifers have been investigating the results of Reprosalud because it seems to be a great failure. It has never published any results. Reprosalud propaganda is only focused on how many people are reached and how important are “sexual” and “reproductive rights,” never a single verifiable indicator of the Reprosalud project’s success or failure. In other words, project literature never includes quantitative or qualitative ways of measuring progress and determining which budgeted purposes and goals have been achieved. However, all the Peruvian promoters of “reproductive health” keep talking of increases in illegal abortions and unwanted pregnancies — the very problems Reprosalud was intended to reduce.
With a radical feminist ideology, members of Manuela Ramos known as “Manuelas” had done their best to obtain USAID funds, even renouncing public advocacy of abortion. For years, they have kept away from any pro-abortion venture even though they sympathized with the efforts of other radical feminist organizations, which were not funded by USAID, to promote the decriminalization of abortion, For Manuela Ramos, the U.S.’s Mexico City policy was always something to fulfill as a formality to receive U.S. funds.
Problem Described
Quality/Qualité/Calidad, a magazine of Population Council, described it eloquently:
A problem that has recently emerged for the Manuelas as a result of their collaboration with USAID is that the U.S. government — in response to anti-choice politicians — has reinstated a policy that denies funding to any project that provides abortions, refers for abortion, or even advocates for abortion reform. Therefore, to avoid abandoning the thousands of women being empowered by the Reprosalud project, the Manuelas have had to pay an enormous ransom in terms of their right to free speech (Quality, No. 10, 2000, http://www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/qcq/qcq10.pdf).
Tax Tangle
This cultivated profile is now useless. On February 9, another Peruvian newspaper, Correo, had reported citing anonymous sources that USAID had removed Manuela Ramos from the list of eligible grantees in Peru because of problems related to taxes. It became known that an audit report of USAID/Peru of Reprosalud project performance showed some irregularities, many of them related to the salaries of Manuela Ramos members as consultants. As a result of this audit report, Manuela Ramos will not be able to receive USAID funds for some years at least.
We recently reported how, at our instigation, USAID asked Manuela Ramos for a reimbursement of funds used improperly to violate a USAID neutrality policy on the morning-after pill debate in Peru. This new blow to Manuelas puts them in a very difficult position. Their usefulness, honor, and honesty have been seriously questioned,
