Liam Mahony, author of Unarmed Bodyguards, first encountered PBI in Guatemala while on a trip to the country in 1985, which prompted him to apply and join the team. He returned to the U.S. committed to PBI, playing an integral role in forming PBI-USA’s early institutional structure and co-founding PBI’s presence in Haiti in 1993.
Below we share an article written by PBI-USA staff in 2016 in which Liam reflects on the early days of PBI.
“I first ran across PBI in the field, in Guatemala, when I was on a trip there for other reasons in 1985 and I was very impressed.” - Liam Mahony
Liam later applied to join the PBI team in Guatemala, which he did in 1987. When he came back to the U.S. in 1988, he contacted the PBI International Office, then based in Philadelphia, and began working on U.S.-based support with a very energetic group of fellow volunteers recently-returned from Central America.
Liam focused on grassroots fundraising, and organizing speaking tours from a tiny office in a church basement in Cambridge while Karen Beetle and Carolyn Mow, working from Albany, started managing volunteer trainings and the Emergency Response Network. Later, John Lindsay-Poland took over the role of U.S.-based grant-writing from the International Office as well. With the support of the staff at the International office, these and other volunteer efforts formed the basis of what eventually became the PBI-USA country group.
“It was a bit ad hoc, with oversight from the International Office, which was overwhelmed with many tasks and glad to have the support.” - Liam Mahony
In 1990, after two years of their part-time staff work and the help of a whole lot of volunteers, the team pulled together a National Gathering outside of Boston and officially formed PBI-USA as an institution, named a board (its National Coordinating Committee), and approved new staff.
The concept of “country groups” had been formalized in PBI’s structure at its 1989 General Assembly in Trier, Germany, and several country groups were coming together in Europe in this same period. The function of country support groups was becoming more clear: raise money, find volunteers, and harness political support for the field. Although PBI-USA functioned legally under the auspices of the International Office until 1995, for all practical purposes it was an autonomous country group from 1990 on. Before 1990, a lot of volunteers were doing similar work through the International Office.
The late 1980s was a time of intensive interest in Central America and growth of PBI, and the founding of PBI-USA in 1990 reflected this energy and worked to capitalize on it by establishing a more permanent national structure.