What is development? For the US government, development is capitalism. While certainly it's in the US interest to ensure certain minimal needs are met in countries like El Salvador, so that another revolution doesn't happen - they're really just trying to nail down a total laissez-faire, free market system.

Writer Hilary Goodfriend looks beyond the technocratic language around USAID's work in El Salvador to the consequences of conditional US money in the country - promoting corporate power and bypassing the leftist FMLN government, and mirroring decades of US policy in the region backing capital at the expense of peace and democratic sovereignty.

Hilary's article for Solidarity, USAID in El Salvador: The Politics of Prevention, also appears at Jacobin under the title USAID's Trojan Horse.