Through the looking glass: U.S. aid to El Salvador and the politics of national identity

Abstract

ABSTRACT From 1980 to 1992, U.S. government aid funded extensive political and social reforms in El Salvador to undermine a revolutionary guerrilla insurgency and consolidate neoliberal governance. On the basis of ethnographic interviews of Salvadoran and U.S. aid managers, I examine the articulation of these U.S.‐sponsored reforms with changing relations of domination in El Salvador. The interaction of notions of Salvadoran sovereignty and national identity with U.S.‐promoted notions of modernity shaped the U.S. management and Salvadoran adoption of aid. This interaction favored a faction of the Salvadoran elite that defined itself as “progressive” yet not too beholden to the United States. As U.S. aid managers favored a Salvadoran elite compatible with U.S. governance schemes, this emerging local class engaged with development projects by relating them to its own evolving notions of national identity and sovereignty.

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