Through the Looking Glass: U.S.

Aid to El Salvador and the Politics of National Identity

Author(s): Adn Quan
Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 32, No. 2 (May, 2005), pp. 276-293
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 ADANQUAN
MichiganState University

lErough the looldng glass:

U.S. aid to El Salvador and the politics of national identity

n this article,I use ethnographicdata to examine the interplayof two

A B S T R A C T
I processes surrounding U.S.-government involvement in E1 Sal-
From1980 to 1992, U.S. governmentaid funded
vador's 1980-92 civil war: official U.S. nation-building efforts in E1
extensivepoliticalandsocial reformsin ElSalvador
Salvador and the emergence during this period of a reformed
to underminea revolutionaryguerrillainsurgency
national Salvadoranelite linked to internationallyacceptable norms
and consolidateneoliberalgovernance.Onthe
of political and economic liberalism.l Extensive U.S. development assis-
basis of ethnographicinterviewsof Salvadoran
tance generated many debates among Salvadorans about national sover-
and U.S. aid managers,I examinethe articulation
eignty and the nature of a reformed Salvadoransociety. Salvadoranelites
of these U.S.-sponsoredreformswith changing
benefiting from yet wary of U.S. influence affirmed their identity and
relationsof dominationin ElSalvador.The
legitimized themselves in domestic and transnationalsettings by balancing
interactionof notions of Salvadoransovereignty
evolving notions of Salvadoranidentity and sovereignty with notions of an
and nationalidentity with U.S.-promotednotions
internationallyacceptable modern social order.I analyze U.S. aid programs
of modernityshapedthe U.S. managementand
and their links to Salvadoranelites not only as part of a counterinsurgency
Salvadoranadoptionof aid. Thisinteraction
war but also as part of a set of global flows of capital, lifestyles, and
favoreda faction of the Salvadoranelite that
internationalstandardsof governance.These global flows create conditions
yet not too beholden
defineditself as "progressive"
for the rise of transnational elites who benefit from external resources
to the UnitedStates. As U.S. aid managers
(materialand symbolic) but who are ambivalent about the challenge those
favoreda SaLvadoran elite compatiblewith U.S.
resources may pose to what the elites perceive as local or national culture
governanceschemes,this emerginglocal class
and power structures.
engagedwith developmentprojectsby relating
U.S. involvement in E1 Salvador was linked to the civil war fought
them to its own evolvingnotions of national
from 1980 to 1992 between the Salvadoranstate and the leftist guerrillas
identity and sovereignty.[developmentaid, El
of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)and was one
Salvador,nationalidentity,globalization,elites,
of the most costly and thorough interventions by the U.S. government in
U.S.foreignpolicy,neoliberalism]
Latin America. Besides military aid, the U.S. government channeled over
$4 billion through USAID (also referred to as AID), the federal govern-
ment agency that manages most foreign economic assistance, to reform
multiple sectors of Salvadoran civil society. Motivated by a strategy of
counterinsurgencywarfare, U.S. policy makers provided development aid
to eliminate what they perceived as the root causes of the conflict: poverty,
corruption, economic inefficiency, and lack of political and civil liberties.2
Although rooted in a long-standing desire to fight communism in the
Americas,USAIDreforms relied on a neoliberal policy toolkit emphasizing

AMERICANETHNOLOGIST,Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 276-293, ISSN0094-0496,electronic

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free trade, a market economy, a modernized and smaller
state sector, and formal democratic governance, which
has opened up some spaces for the participationof under-
privilegedsectors in many other LatinAmerican countries
where it has been applied but which has largely bene-
fited those countries' elites. Most analyses of this interven-
tion have come from outside of anthropology and have
adopted a macro-oriented political economy perspective,
focusing on U.S. support of a repressivemilitaryinstitution
and wealthy class, ineffectiveness in dealing with E1Sal-
vador's social inequities, and links between development
aid and the war effort.3
Examining how U.S. and Salvadoran aid managers
related and represented each other and their work clari-
fies the critical personal interactions and discursive cate-
gories through which the United States exerted power in
E1Salvadorand through which some Salvadoranmanage-
rial elites appropriatedaid toward their own ends, and it
provides a more nuanced and complete understanding
of U.S. influence in E1Salvador.Personal interactions and
perceptions were intertwined with U.S. geopolitical goals
and changing political structures in E1 Salvador, helping
replicate but sometimes subverting U.S. goals and influ-
ence. Salvadorans linked with the U.S. reforms invoked
progressiveness not only through an international lan-
guage of political liberalism and development but also by
exhibiting tastes and lifestyles associated with the United
States a historically particular process conditioned by
preexistingties with and dependence on that country. Not
simply a case of Salvadorans manipulating appearances
to impress U.S. officials, identification with the United
States was one aspect of the acquisition of a "progressive"
identity by a segment of the Salvadoranruling class. As a
result, the U.S. government exerted power in E1Salvador
not just through money and weapons, or even institutions
and political ideals, but also by legitimizing certain prac-
tices, styles, and predispositions:from tastes in consumer
goods to views on political dissent and social stratifica-
tion. Legitimizingcertain views excluded numerous other
perspectives such as that of right-wing extremists and
leftist claims for the redistribution of wealth and, thus,
had clear political stakes.
A disjuncturearose, however, between the clear bene-
fits to some Salvadoranelites associated with U.S. power
and the perceived threat to Salvadoransovereignty posed
by U.S. influence. Salvadorannotions of the United States
serve as a looking glass through which one can explore
ambivalence among Salvadoranelites about IJ.S.influence
and their own role in a newly restructured E1 Salvador.
Salvadoransworking with USAID expressed this ambiva-
lence in numerous areas, referring to the loss of Salva-
doran pride and identity, to the inflexibility of USAID
bureaucracy,and to inappropriatelifestyles and manners
associated with the United States. Miriam, a Salvadoran
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Throughthe lookingglass * American Ethnologist
project manager in the USAID Private Enterprise Office
expressed the first concern: "USAIDhas become a center
of power and domination, so that many people including
government agencies take their disputes to the AID di-
rector. We should have more pride.... I'm a little worried
about this trend."4 The latter two concerns are summa-
rized in the following statement by the Salvadoranman-
ager of a labor-organizingproject funded by USAIDvia the
American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD),
an organization affiliated with the U.S. labor union con-
federation AFL-CIO and meant to develop politically
"moderate"labor unions in LatinAmerica:
Americans are somewhat imposing; their regulations
regarding the use of funds are too strict; this affects
projects a lot, and often regulationsdon't acknowledge
our reality.They should loosen up their regulations;it
doesn't matter how you use the money as long as the
goal is achieved.Also, the relationshould be a two-way
relation with dialogue and negotiation. They should
also improve their command of Spanish and be more
communicative. The U.S. will go on dominating E1
Salvador,since we are in their sphere of influence, but
they should try to negotiate this domination or there
will be resistance.... I'm quitting my job this after-
noon, as a matter of fact, because the gringo at AIFLD
is too pushy, and I'm not going to put up with that.
This disjuncture was not clearly visible to me when I
began my research. I often summarized my research topic
to my informants as the impact of differing Salvadoran-
U.S. perspectives on these aid projects. Many of my in-
formants, mostly U.S. and Salvadoran aid managers,
responded by listing the traits of each nationality, empha-
sizing the existence and differing natures of Salvadoran
and U.S. national charactersbut then stressing that what
they defined as culture really did not affect their work.
One U.S.-government official argued that as an anthro-
pologist I might not have very much to study because the
organizationaland contractualaspects of Salvadoran-U.S.
relationships overshadowed any perceived national differ-
ences. Another embassy official questioned my interest in
national traits,which he relegatedto the level of "cocktail-
party chatter." This discourse privileging universal, tech-
nocratic solutions to E1 Salvador's problems distanced
Salvadoranaid managers from local politics and U.S. offi-
cials from U.S. imperial power. And yet, observations on
national differences and idiosyncrasies were a favorite
topic of my informants both subverting and supporting
USAID-sponsoredreforms.
Allowable Otherness
Focusing on foreign aid as a social process expands cri-
tiques (Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1990; Mitchell 1991^2002;
277
American Ethnologist * VoLume32 Number2 May2005
Pigg 1992; Wedel 1998) that examine how development
agencies exert power not only through dollars and projects
but also through discourses and institutional frameworks.5
I elaborate these critiques of development by connecting
them with recent literatureon modernity and globalization
in LatinAmerica.Modernizingprojects, of which develop-
ment aid is a subset, will not necessarily lead to one single
form of modernity (Featherstone et al. 1995; Ong 1999);
modernity, instead, has been theorized as a condition
of hybridity (Canclini 1995), in which external cultural
influences are adapted into locally and historicallyspecific
forms of modernity. I also seek to integrate discussions
about the power of imaginaries created by transnational
media flows (Appadurai1996), thus, connecting two sig-
nificant global flows: media and consumer goods and
neoliberal development discourses. My analysis of Salva-
doran elites working with U.S. aid relies on research on
transnationalidentity politics (Canclini2001;Featherstone
1995; Mato 1997; Wilk 1999) that clarifies the complex
dynamics involved in the local appropriationof transna-
tional resources and on works examining the complex
intersections of class politics and international flows of
media and consumer goods (Liechty 2003; Mankekar
1999).Identities such as those of "progressive"Salvadoran
elites may be viewed as a joint production involving mul-
tiple local and transnational forces (Canclini 2001:95).6
Local appropriationof global forces is sometimes seen as
liberating,as in Terence Turner's(1992) descriptions of the
Kayapo use of video technology to defend their lands in
the Amazon rain forest; Nestor Garcia Canclini's (1995)
descriptions of Mexican peasant artisans incorporating
local, national, and transnationalinfluences in their crafts;
or Diane Nelson's (1996) nuanced view of Maya computer
hackers. But, as in the case of modernizing elites in E1
Salvador, this phenomenon also facilitates the con-
tinuation of a society's ruling class even as it opens up
spaces for less privilegedgroups. In E1Salvador,the incor-
poration of U.S.-imposed reforms into a ruling structurein
crisis resulted in a recombinant form of Salvadoranmo-
dernity manipulated to the advantage of selected Sal-
vadoran elites. Political scientists capture this process
in analyses of newly liberalized political systems the
"authoritarianelectoral regimes" described by James Pet-
ras and Steve Vieux (1994),the "hybridregimes" described
by Terry Karl (1995), and the emerging "polyarchies"
described by William Robinson (2000). My contribution is
to bring a cultural analysis of this process to the front. By
focusing on everydayinteractions and observations of the
aid managers in El Salvador,I highlight the fissured con-
nections in the rapidly expanding frontier zones in which
local elites negotiate with international agents to reform
nation-states under international standardsof governance
and economic policy, reshaping both local power struc-
tures and transnationalideals and programs.
278
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Even as grassroots organizations benefit from inter-
national aid and human rights "regimes" (see, e.g., Finne-
more and Sikkink 1998; Haugaard 1997), selected elites
remain significant brokers and beneficiaries of these
flows. Whereas the political economy of elites who benefit
from global flows of capital and culture has been studied
in depth (see, e.g., Castells 1996; Sassen 2000), the com-
plex cultural dynamics involved in the elite appropria-
tion of these flows remains underexamined. Adoption of
a neoliberal economic regime, progressive values (such
as democratization), and U.S.-oriented consumer tastes,
combined with the juxtaposition of core Salvadoran and
U.S. identities, served as the integral yet uneasily coexist-
ing components of the expansion of neoliberal governance
in E1Salvador.The USAIDreformpackage legitimized both
inherently inequitable neoliberal economic policies and
progressive values such as democratization and eclectic
and cosmopolitan consumer lifestyles.
Despite their critiques of the United States and their
distance from an old-guard elite associated with death
squads and military regimes, many Salvadoransworking
with USAID were firmly committed to the free-market
neoliberal economic policies championed by the agency.
A Salvadoranemployed by USAID to manage a Program
to educate Salvadoranyouths about the virtues of a free-
market economy said, "Seeing businesses grow is in-
credible, and the [USAID-funded]Youth Entrepreneurial
Development program is great because I can see young
professionals develop: It's impressive to see 14-19-year-
olds able to talk about accounting and business. I like to
see their personalities develop; they've become success
oriented." Embodied in this program for future entrepre-
neurs, one sees an effort to create a new Salvadoransub-
ject by molding the minds of the young, introducinga sense
of the individual as a free, autonomous economic agent.
The statement just quoted, made by a member of a wealthy
family, reveals in particularhow efforts to create an entre-
preneurial generation are one way in which E1Salvador's
elite mediated pressure by the mass of the population to
share in the country'spoliticalpower and economic wealth.
The creation of an entrepreneurialsociety in which every-
body had the same chance to succeed or fail became a
key image of reform. The manager of an economic think
tank sponsored by USAIDexplained to me the benefits of
the planned firing of workers in the Institute to Regulate
Staples (IRA),the government agency that regulated the
prices of staples like beans and rice and sold these com-
modities at subsidized prices to the public:
They [the fired employees] get a large compensation
package for being fired, and there is training to make
sure they don't spend it all at once. This kind of thing
is a shakeup that will help move us into a healthier
mindset. Sitting around the IRA offices must have

been bad for their self-image; we must let creativity
enter their minds. To not let them go would be to
not trust a person's creativity, we must have equal
opportunitiesto fail or succeed and some will fail, that
cannot be helped.
My analysis of these observations is framed not just by
local politics, in which the coexistence of images of pro-
gress with continued poverty is mediated by the neoliberal
discourses described above, but also by what SaskiaSassen
labels the "frontierzones" createdby globalization:"When
global actors, whether firms or markets,overlap and inter-
act with the national, they produce a frontier zone in the
territoryof the nation. Not merely a dividing line between
the national and the global, this is a zone of politico-
economic interaction where new institutional forms take
shape and old forms are altered"(2000:227).Extendingthis
concept to include cultural interactions and state inter-
ventions, I argue that aid to E1Salvadorwas administered
in such a zone, in which both sides negotiated with
each other and both U.S. intentions and Salvadoranelites
were transformed.
To better understand the role of national identity
politics in the U.S.-sponsored reform of E1Salvador,I use
the concept of "allowableOtherness"to highlight the role
of notions of cultural difference and national sovereignty
in mediating rapidlyexpanding global norms and technol-
ogies of governance. Despite official characterization of
USAID projects as purely technocratic and driven by
foreign policy concerns, negotiating a domain of allowable
Othernesswas crucial to the administrationof these proj-
ects: To what extent could asserting a particularform of
Salvadoranidentity permit divergence from USAIDgoals?
How much sovereignty could be ceded to USAID?How
much local autonomy and respect for the "local culture"
did USAID provide, and what were the functions of
USAID's acknowledgment of cultural difference? I ap-
proach these issues by examining the micropolitics of
U.S. aid in E1 Salvador. By micropolitics, I refer to the
political consequences of everyday behaviors and seem-
ingly mundane matters such as office jokes, health ail-
ments, and consumer tastes.7 Attention to these issues
provides three key insights into recent changes in E1
Salvador.First, representations of E1Salvadorhelped U.S.
officials exert power by constructing an object of interven-
tion amenable to reform by U.S. money and ideas while
depoliticizing the role of the United States in the Salva-
doran civil war. Second, efforts to change what USAID
defined as undesirable aspects of Salvadoranculture be-
came one development strategy. Projects such as reform-
ing a Salvadoran "culture of violence" and encouraging
democratic values figured in the arsenal to control E1
Salvadoras much as infrastructure,food aid, and resettle-
ment schemes. Third,attention to this form of identity poli-
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Throughthe lookingglass * American Ethnologist
tics clarifies how global processes become, to paraphrase
Aihwa Ong (1999:4),embedded in local regimes of power.
Neoliberal governance, although strongly facilitated by
USAID,ultimately manifested itself through the agency of
local classes, institutions, and culturalforces.
Although I rely on ethnographic data gathered in
E1Salvadorfrom U.S. and Salvadoranindividuals,the sub-
ject of my study is more accuratelydescribed as a process
and a contact zone the intersection between U.S. devel-
opment aid and restructured relations of domination in
E1Salvador.I collected most of my data through unstruc-
tured interviews at a critical transition point in that coun-
try'shistory, over a period of ten months of researchin San
Salvadorin 1991, the last year of the civil war. I sought the
views of a diverse group of Salvadorantechnocrats man-
aging USAID-fundedprojects (either working directly for
the agency or for governmentoffices or institutions running
these programs)and the views of Americans employed by
USAID.I interviewedapproximately60 individualsin these
categories. I initially identified likely informants through
interviews with individuals in each of the various USAID
units, but subsequently I relied extensively on snowball
sampling as many informants as were introduced or re-
ferred to me by previous informants. Most Salvadoran
informantswere referredto me by U.S. officials, as my pur-
pose was to elicit the views of individuals identified by
those officials as allies of their efforts in E1Salvador,but
Salvadorans I interviewed also introduced me to other
informants. Most of the people I interviewed worked
with projects in USAID'sOffice for Democratic Initiatives,
PrivateSector Office, and Infrastructureand Regional De-
velopment Office. The first two offices represented areas
of growinginterest to USAID,whereas the latter office was
concerned largely with projects related to the civil war-
refugees, electrical power, and provision of government
services to guerrilla-controlledzones. Rather than focus
on any one project or office, however, I gathereddata from
individuals associated with a broad spectrum of USAID
efforts in my attempt to analyze the wider, underlying
cultural politics of development aid in E1 Salvador. Be-
cause of E1Salvador'sdependence on U.S. aid, my loose
affiliation with the embassy was invaluable in my secur-
ing interviewswith high-rankingSalvadoranofficials, who
quickly agreed to meet me afterlearning a U.S. official had
referred me to them. Other data came from participant-
observation at the USAID and U.S. embassy offices in E1
Salvador,Salvadorangovernment offices, and social events
and from U.S.-government documents and Salvadoran
media accounts.
My focus was, therefore, on individuals largely sym-
pathetic to U.S.-government goals and who occupied a
privileged space in Salvadoransociety. A desire by USAID
to implement institutional reforms (i.e., to reform domi-
nant classes and institutions), combined with a crisis of
279
American Ethnologist * Volume32 Number2 May2005
rule in such a small country, led to a very close operating
relationship between the agency and the host country's
elites. My own positionality shaped this research. As a
Salvadoran-U.S. citizen who grew up in E1 Salvador, I
was perpetually a subject of this Salvadoran-U.S. en-
counter. Informantsof each nationality perceived me dur-
ing my research as a "native,"which led to their providing
candid comments about the "other"nationality.My status
as a Fulbright-fundedresearcher, sponsored by the U.S.
InformationAgency (USIA),also facilitated access to U.S.
and Salvadoranofficials; although I did not work for the
embassy, USIA provided me with a staff pass, which
allowed easy access to USAIDoffices and also helped build
trust with informants wary of the fierce debates about
and U.S. and local press coverage of U.S. involvement in
E1Salvador.
U.S. aid and the transformationof structures
of domination in El Salvador
The Salvadorancivil war involved an unprecedented chal-
lenge by the FMLNguerrillasto a well-entrenched system
of military-baseddomination and exploitation by an eco-
nomic elite.8 Motivated by fears of a victory by the leftist
guerrillas,the U.S. government supported the Salvadoran
government with over $6 billion of militaryand economic
aid from 1980 to 1992 to fight the guerrillasand eliminate
what were perceived as the causes of the insurgency.9
Extensive U.S. aid, however, could not undo a military
stalemate, and government and guerrilla forces started
negotiations in 1986. Because of the waning Cold War
and increasing domestic opposition to U.S. involvement
in E1 Salvador, after 1989 the United States intensified
pressures for a negotiated end to the war while continuing
aid to the Salvadorangovernment. In late 1991, the Salva-
dorangovernmentand rebels negotiated a cease-fire agree-
ment that entailed significantconcessions from both sides,
and hostilities ceased in early 1992. U.S. aid had helped
prevent an FMLNvictory and promoted the recomposition
of E1 Salvador's ruling classes and governance. These
events led to a more open political system but did not alter
a highly unequal economic structure, and high levels of
crime and poverty have marked the postwar period. The
extent to which counterinsurgency concerns motivated
U.S. economic aid became readily apparent after the civil
war ended, when levels of aid to E1Salvadordeclined, even
though many USAIDgoals remained unfulfilled.
E1Salvadorbecame highly dependent on the billions of
dollars it received through USAID during the war; at its
peak, official development aid accounted for ten percent of
the SalvadoranGross National Product (Griffin1991). This
aid createda parallelSalvadoranstate with its own agencies
and a separate "extraordinary" government budget in
which large amounts of U.S. aid money were deposited
280
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(Solis and Friedmann 1990:41),to be spent under condi-
tions dictated by the United States. Although the specific
projects funded by this money varied over time (for a
periodization of USAIDpolicies, see Rosa 1993; Solis and
Friedmann 1990), in the late 1980s and early 1990s aid
programs were structuredby four principal goals deemed
essential for modernizing E1Salvador:achieving economic
and social stabilization;promoting economic recoveryand
growth;broadeningthe benefits of growth;and strengthen-
ing democratic institutions (U.S. Agency for International
Development 1988:7).These goals led to a portfolio of pro-
grams that covered almost every sector of Salvadoran
society, from judicial and legislative reforms to police
reform to programs to promote entrepreneurial skills
among teenagers. To implement these projects, USAID
worked closely with a variety of Salvadoranadministrators
employed either by USAIDor by the numerous government
agencies and NGOsreceiving USAIDfunding.l
One of the most significant changes USAID projects
facilitated in E1Salvador throughout the 1980s was what
Mario Lungo Ucles terms the "political recomposition of
the dominant classes" (1996:209).In the early 1980s, as E1
Salvadorspiraled into a cycle of state-sponsored violence
and guerrillaand civic opposition to the state, U.S. officials
and some Salvadoran elites realized that the illegitimate
system of rulingthrough the militaryhad to be replaced by
a U.S.-sponsored system of political parties and elections.
This new political environment led to the creation of the
oligarchy's own political party, ARENA(the National Re-
publican Alliance), which became a vehicle for the direct
involvement of this elite in Salvadoranpolitics. Established
in the early 1980s as an extreme-right, militaristic party,
ARENAeventually became the political base of E1Salva-
dor's progressive capitalist sector. Concerned that the
stalemated civil war was hurting their business interests
and aware of the need to project an image of a progressive
E1Salvadorabroad (to attractinternational loans, aid, and
investment), reformist members of the dominant classes,
represented by such individuals as former Salvadoran
president Alfredo Cristiani (1989-94), entered politics
through ARENA.Their goal was to find a negotiated solu-
tion to the civil war and to modernize Salvadoransociety
along neoliberal lines advocated by such institutions as
USAIDand the World Bank.Although ARENA'semphasis
on anticommunism and on the sanctity of private enter-
prise has remained constant, this party now shows a
willingness to operate within a parliamentarydemocracy.
The modernized sector of the elite that gained as-
cendancy in the 1980s was more diverse politically and
economically in comparison with the small class of con-
servative elites that dominated E1Salvadorfor most of the
20th century. Historically,elites based in the coffee-grow-
ing sector have wielded enormous power, ruling since 1932
through the Salvadoranmilitary and opposed to any type

of social or political reform.ll Several factors led to
changes in this model of domination. In the 1960s, the
coffee elite had expanded into coffee processing, banking,
and industry, forestalling any significant rise of a rival
urban-industrial elite. In the 1980s, though, merchant
and industrial capital not associated with these coffee
families gained increased influence. Additionally, some
among the younger generations of the Salvadoran elite
who came of age during the civil war and were educated
abroad have exhibited a greater interest in reforming E1
Salvador'ssystem of domination.l2The complex and over-
lapping structure of Salvadoranelites defies easy catego-
rization;some families have interests in more than one of
the country's economic sectors and, thus, cannot be easily
labeled coffee processors or coffee producers. Neverthe-
less, the idea of a basic split into two ideological camps is
correct and is mirroredby political infighting within ARE-
NA.In any case, a dominant "progressive"capitalist sector
acquired prominence in the 1980s, aware of the need for
social change and yet holding a very circumscribedview of
democracy. Under these circumstances, identification
with the United States and its package of reforms without
seeming too beholden became a critical piece of this
reconfigurationof El Salvador'sdominant classes.
Both U.S. and Salvadoranofficialsinvolvedwith USAID
drewa sharpdividingline between the "old"and the "new"
El Salvadorand between the reactionaryand the progres-
sive elites. One U.S. embassy official labeled the old Salva-
doran elites "troglodytes,"and a U.S. manager at USAID
offered to introduce me to a Salvadoranrepresenting the
"old" mindset presumably to balance the views of the
various progressive Salvadoran elites to whom he had
previously introduced me. One common set of metaphors
invoked the dirt and decay from previous times. A Salva-
doranworkingat USAIDnoted, "Weneed to do a lot in the
medium term to improve things, since society is decom-
posed. The symbol of our problems is the poor ruralfamily.
We need educationalprojectsand to providejobs and small
loans to the poor." The Salvadorandirector of a USAID-
funded legislative reform project noted that "things have
changed a lot since 1979;society has become more awareof
its problems, and politics is now OK,not just a dirty game.
Even the rightwing has become involved, throughARENA,
and no longer relies on fronts or proxies."Afterstartingour
interview by slapping a revolver on his desk, a military
officer in the USAID-funded special police investigative
unit noted, "Everybodycloses their doors when they hear
we are coming. Because unfortunately,whereverwe enter,
we find rotten things, because the country has been con-
vulsed for such a long time." Decay and dirt were euphe-
misms for the pre- civilwarpolitical model of death squads,
militaryrule, and stifled political discourse.
Reluctant to work with Salvadoransfrom the left or
with Salvadoranelites linked with the extreme right wing,
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glass * American Ethnologist
Throughthe Looking
USAID sought and helped shape a sector of Salvadoran
brokers sympathetic to the agency's goals of political
liberalism and free markets in E1 Salvador. Many Salva-
doran project managers (both staff at USAID and at
government offices and NGOs) came from upper-middle-
class or higher backgrounds. Although some came from
wealthy backgrounds,they were not necessarily members
of the elites who derivetheir wealth from coffee planting or
processing, the traditional Salvadoranoligarchy, or of the
increasingly powerful elites concentrated in financial or
merchant capital. The economic class position of this
emerging managerialelite facilitated the necessary educa-
tion (includingfluency in Englishand, often, a degree from
a U.S. university),social skills, and connections to acquire
aid-related jobs. Thus, more than just sharing a class
position based exclusively on roles in the productive
process, the position of Salvadoran aid managers was
based also on social status, indicated by various forms of
social and cultural capital.13 These individuals can be
located in a class Manuel Castells (1996:415)describes as
the globallyconnected managerialelite, whose local power
derives in part from its access to global flows of capital and
information.l4A crucial aspect of this connection involves
knowledge of and access to lifestyles that link these indi-
viduals to elites from other locales most crucially,in this
particularcase, to USAIDofficials.At the same time, such
globally connected elites cannot afford to become too
disconnected from local politics and culture for multiple
reasons: to preserve political legitimacy, to avoid accusa-
tions of having "sold out" to foreigners,to preservea sense
of Salvadoranidentity, and to maintain a sense of cohesion
as a local group. Thus, although beneficiaries of USAID,
these Salvadorans often maintained a critical attitude
toward USAIDprojects and personnel and defined them-
selves as upholding what they defined as Salvadoran
culture, contrasting themselves to U.S. officials and to
what they saw as U.S. culture.
Windsurfingcounterinsurgencyand Buddhist
drug prevention
One of these exemplary Salvadorans was Rodolfo, who
helped manage aid to the National Commission to Rebuild
Areas, a government agency that ran a counterinsurgency
program meant to win the support of civilians for the
Salvadorangovernment. A U.S. manager of this program
had encouraged me to interview Rodolfo so that I could
see how E1 Salvador's ruling class was changing for the
better. Just over 30 years old, Rodolfo had attended college
in the United States in the early 1980s, and he said that he
initially was disgusted with the vocal U.S. leftists who
sympathized with the FMLN guerrillas. Slowly, though,
he became aware of the Salvadoransocial reality, and he
became a political moderate.He decided when he returned
American Ethnologist * VoLume32 Number2 May2005
home in 1984 to become a part of the solution to his coun-
try's problems. Through his family connections, he ob-
tained a job at USAID.Salvadoranscoveted such jobs for
many reasons: prestige, good pay and working conditions,
and the influence acquired through access to the heart
of the powerful U.S. aid machine. Rodolfo's initial work at
USAIDfurtherheightened his awareness of social realityin
E1Salvador.Workingat first in health programs,he said his
exposureto the health problems faced by poor Salvadorans
explained why so many doctors became leftists.
Rodolfo presented himself as a modern Salvadoran
not only through his career choice and social analysis
but also through his predilection for leisure activities and
brandsfamiliarto most USAIDofficials.Rodolfowas a para-
gon of the avid consumer of U.S. goods and lifestyles-
particularly of outdoor experiences mediated through a
taste for expensive equipment. His hobbies included scuba
diving, windsurfing, and mountain bicycling. In fact, his
U.S. colleague had introduced him to me as the current
windsurfing champion of E1 Salvador (Rodolfo laughed
when I mentioned this and joked that several younger
up-and-coming athletes threatened to unseat him as num-
ber one), and his U.S. supervisorsallowed him to take time
off from work to participate in an international wind-
surfing competition in the San Francisco Bay. Rodolfo's
experience in the United States and his lifestyle helped
consolidate his position within a Salvadoranmanagerial
elite; economic class background alone, although neces-
sary, was not sufficient.
Perhaps most telling about the connection between
progressiveness and a local concept of Americanization
was Rodolfo's remark that whenever he got into political
arguments with his mother, she would accuse him of
having become too Americanized.Nevertheless, a tension
underlay his familiarity and sympathy with the United
States, as he disliked what he described as the bad man-
ners and lack of social graces of U.S. officials, describing
the USAID mission as a zoo in which one could see the
entire spectrum of human behavior.And despite having a
much-coveted job at USAID, Rodolfo had complaints
about his position there, many of which summarized a
common feeling that Americans discriminated against
Salvadorans.The parkinglot for Salvadorans,for example,
was furtherfrom the offices than the lot for U.S. employ-
ees. Rodolfo felt that Americans were inhumane bosses,
citing a case in which he lost an agency vehicle in a
carjacking;ratherthan showing concern for his well-being,
his U.S. supervisorsseemed more concerned with making
him pay for the loss (he ended up not having to pay). He
also complained about the opposition his U.S. superiors
had shown to his new business, selling windsurfingequip-
ment, and he regarded as ridiculous one supervisor's
concern that it might entail a conflict of interest with his
duties at USAID.
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Juliawas another Salvadoranwhose experience in the
United States provided a basis for rapport with USAID
officials. Again, several U.S. officials recommended her to
me as a valuable informantwho could serve as an example
of how elite attitudes had changed in E1Salvador.I suspect
she impressed USAIDofficials because she was young, she
spoke flawless English, and, ratherthan sit back and enjoy
her family fortune, she headed a foundation for drug abuse
prevention that was set up by her family and that received
substantial USAID funding. She had grown up and gone
to college in the United States and belonged to one of E1
Salvador'swealthier coffee-growing families (symbolic of
the shift in E1 Salvador's economy, her father was an
investor in a major export-processing-zoneproject funded
by USAID).Her goal, she admitted to me, was to use her
foundation to try to inculcate Salvadoranswith some of the
Eastern philosophies that she had learned about in
the United States and India. She felt that the answer to E1
Salvador'sproblems lay with those Asian philosophies, not
with the U.S. social scientists that she had studied in college,
whose ideas she felt were inappropriatefor E1Salvador.
Much about Julia seemed contradictory,starting with
her critique of what she defined as U.S. culture; after all,
the United States was where she had studied the Eastern
philosophies that formed a basis for her critique of the
United States. Ratherthan contradictory,though, she epi-
tomized to me the construction and self-definition of a
progressive Salvadoranelite, in whom liberal ideas (or at
least their signifiers) coexisted with older structures that
these ideas might critique. The importance of symbolizing
change and receptivity to new ideas was partly a tactical
move to impress outsiders (mainly, U.S. officials) but also
expressed a gradualtransformationin social thinking.Julia
illustrated this complex layering process: She was a vege-
tarian who smoked. In her office was a framed poem by
the guerrilla-poet Roque Dalton (who criticized efforts by
the Salvadoranbourgeoisie to help the Salvadoranpoor) as
well as the English-language autobiography of former
Salvadoranpresident Duarte, despised by most members
of her class. Next to it were several volumes on Asian
religions from a variety of U.S. publishers. This layering
process symbolizes the wider transformationof E1Salva-
dor's dominant classes, in the sense that, although not
entirely a matter of deceiving foreign observers, it did in-
volve the adoption, whether strategic or wholehearted, of
numerous signifiers of change without compromising
class position or sense of national identity.
Julia and Rodolfo illustrate how economic class posi-
tion combined with tastes and experiences that U.S. offi-
cials recognized as American to favor certain Salvadorans
in their dealings with USAID,contributing to the presen-
tation of a progressive self. USAID officials viewed these
individuals as "the best and the brightest" of the Salva-
doran elites, members of a class that could lead E1Salvador

into a new era of democracy and free-marketrule. These
favorableimpressions helped create a set of informal net-
works, which had an intangible and yet vital bearing on
decisions by U.S. officials on how to manage the flows of
aid to E1 Salvador. Deirdre Boden and Harvey Molotch
(1994) note that high-level decision making frequently
requires "co-presence" (i.e., face-to-face interaction),
which is facilitated by shared cultural codes and spatial
proximityin residential and workplacesettings. In a trans-
national setting, familiaritywith certain goods and ideas
associated with U.S. culture facilitates non-Americans'
entry into a restricted space of informal interactions in
which important decisions can be made or concluded
(Castells 1996:416). Many Salvadorans associated with
USAID (either as direct employees or as administrators
of USAID-fundedprojects) served as brokerswho provided
informal commentary on requests by Salvadorangroups
for funding on the basis of their knowledge of the person-
alities involved in those groups. Americans' perception of
and reliance on an emerging, reformed ruling class may
help explain why organizations such as Julia's, with ad-
ministrators familiar with the culture of USAID officials,
were likely to receive funding.l5 Michael Foley (1996) has
noted that many SalvadoranNGOs did not receive USAID
funds, although other international donors such as the
European Community did assist them. Although anybody
could petition to meet USAID administrators and seek
funds and after the civil war ended, some leftist organi-
zations did receive USAIDfunds Salvadoranswhose fund
of cultural capital (playing golf or talking about windsurf-
ing or about Boston) facilitated informal ties with USAID
officials had an advantage.When the United States exerts
political and economic power, as in E1 Salvador, tastes
recognized by U.S. officials become a badge of modernity
in the eyes of those officials and of Salvadorans;these
tastes run to "American" products such as fast-food
brands, but also to the consumption or adoption of other
foreign products and lifestyles, such as Julia's adoption
of Buddhism.l6
The question of how much one can characterize the
cosmopolitan lifestyles of a transnational elite as "Ameri-
canized" is problematic, given the rise of regional cultural
producers such as Japan (Iwabuchi 2002), the power of
consuming publics to resignify imported cultural goods
(Ang 1985;Appadurai 1996; Canclini 2001; Watson 1997),
and the sociocultural diversity of the United States.l7 As
Appadurai(1993)has theorized, the United States serves as
a source of symbols that can be used to negotiate globali-
zation without necessarily fosteringAmericanization.Con-
sumption of specific goods associated with the United
States, such as fast food, blue jeans, movies, and rock
music, has symbolized the modern, or an abstract set of
ideals associated with the United States (e.g., see Zolov
1999).Content and forms associated with the United States
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Throughthe lookingglass * American Ethnologist
also stand in for modernity, even if the United States is no
longer the sole provider of consumer goods, media, or
lifestyles for other markets,and the notion of "U.S. cultural
imperialism" now seems simplistic (Tomlinson 1993).
Francis Rocca (2000) describes "America's multicultural
imperialism" as a situation in which many non-U.S. pro-
ducts are widely consumed and Americanization refers
more accurately not to content but to a logic of branding
and consumption. U.S. officials in E1Salvadorresponded
to a pattern of taste and consumption common to trans-
national elites, even if the products consumed by Salva-
dorans working with USAIDwere not all from the United
States. Consumption of U.S. goods is more accurately
described as polysemic, having many potential meanings
that are realized in specific social situations. The "cultural
odor" (Iwabuchi2002:27) of these goods and images may
vary to the degree that they are associated with the United
States;they may be linked to the country or to a concept of
U.S. lifestyle, or they may be relatively "odorless," with
links to characteristicsnot solely the province of the United
States. Windsurfingitself is not necessarily an indication of
progressive attitudes or of "Americanization,"but in the
USAIDzone it became a charged marker.By contrast, the
U.S.-inspiredurbanyouth styles of street gang members in
E1Salvador,some of whom grewup in LosAngeles but were
deported by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(formerly the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Ser-
vices) after a brush with the law, represent a form of U.S.
influence very differentfrom that envisioned by USAID.l8I
myself had marked a Salvadoranfriend who worked at the
U.S. embassy as "progressive"because of what I inter-
preted as her liberated views on gender, because of her
years spent in the United States, and because she liked
the television series The Simpsons and one of my favorite
U.S. alternativerock groups, the Pixies. Not until she made
fun of some children begging for money in an upscale
entertainment district did I realize how conservative her
views on social inequality were and how markers of a
certain outlook in the United States can acquire a different
meaning in another setting. I had erroneously categorized
my friend on the basis of a shared set of referents,which in
her case formed part of a localized modernity that incor-
poratedalternativerockgroups and insensitivityto extreme
social inequality.
This is not to say that USAIDofficials were naive bu-
reaucrats constantly deceived by savvy Salvadoran ope-
rators or that they sought association with flawlessly
Americanized local elites (again, understanding "Ameri-
canized" and "U.S. culture"as constructs of U.S. officials).
Several U.S. officials observed that many of the Salva-
dorans they dealt with were only superficiallyAmericani-
zed. Other officials insisted that Salvadorans were very
nationalistic and proud and not at all Americanized. As
Fanny Colonna (1997) notes in the case of Algeria,French
283
American Ethnologist * Volume32 Number2 May2005
colonial authoritiesdefined the ideal local indigenous elite
as neither too far from nor too close to Westernculture.At
the same time, though, USAID officials never failed to
marvelat what they interpretedas the grasp of U.S. culture
possessed by certain Salvadorans. USAID officials corre-
lated what they saw as the Americanizationof their Salva-
doran colleagues with sympathy toward U.S. visions of a
dollar-funded modernity. Embassy officials would speak
admiringly of high government officials who had in the
officials' eyes mastered the U.S. way of life; one USAID
official describedwith fascination how a government min-
ister had spent so much time in the United States that he
actually spoke Spanish with an "American"accent.l9
Bourdieu argues that ruling classes use taste in such
items as food and clothing to distinguish themselves from
lower classes; "taste" is naturalizedas something intrinsic
to the elite and used to keep lower orders from contami-
nating or emulating the elites (Bourdieu 1984:41).Taste,
though, is not impartial or natural but is contingent on
diverse political and economic interests, which remain
hidden in normal practice. Bourdieu's argument clarifies
how combinations of consumer tastes for foreign goods
and experiences abroad may serve as cultural capital that
facilitates personal relationships among transnational
elites and serves to markinternationalizedand progressive
sectors of a local society.20Consumertastes alone were not
the sole criterion for gaining the confidence of USAID
officials because a wide variety of Salvadoransconsumed
various forms of goods and fashions connected to the
United States. at was crucial at USAID was an array
of discriminating consumer tastes (e.g., watching U.S.
movies but not liking all of them) associated with cre-
dentials, experiences, and economic class position. Be-
cause in E1Salvadorcultivating such taste often required
money to travel, be educated, and have access to U.S.
goods and culture, it reinforced these links between Sal-
vadoran elites and USAID.
Looking a gift horse in the mouth?
The tension embodied in digesting U.S. influence to fortify
the besieged Salvadoransystem of domination and nation-
state appears in Salvadoranaid managers' critiques of U.S.
colleagues and policies and more broadly of what they
called "U.S. character."These critiques devalued attitudes
and projects that did not acknowledge or that challenged
the Salvadoran managers' class status or values; their
reassertion and reformulation of Salvadoranidentity was
vitally linked with efforts to moderate U.S.-sponsored
changes. Critiquescame from people such as Rodrigo,an
executive of the Foundation for Economic and Social
Development (FUSADES), a policy think tank and one of
the many highly visible projects funded by the United
States during the civil war. Advocating a variety of eco-
284
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nomic reforms to liberalize the Salvadoran economy,
FUSADESrepresenteda sector of the Salvadoranelite open
to neoliberal policies promoted by USAIDand the World
Bank and to limited forms of democratization seen as
beneficial to economic growth. Elites with interests in
the urban, industrialsector made up its board of directors
in 1991. FUSADESwas the perfect embodiment of USAID's
influence in E1Salvador,an interpretationbolstered by the
1991 inauguration of its modernistic six-story headquar-
ters a block away from the site of a new, enlarged U.S.
embassy.2l Many Salvadorans dealing with U.S. officials
characterized them as lacking in social graces and as
prepotentes (a word connoting bossy, meddlesome, and
arrogant).Rodrigo,who was educated in the United States
and enthusiastically supported USAIDprojects, noted:
Many people I know have the impression that AIDhas
a hidden agenda, and people are told to be carefulwith
AID as if dealing with it would force them to do things
they may not want to do.... They [AID]are paying the
bills, so they have some right to tell us things, but
many of my acquaintances complain, "This is what
weXve been reduced to." Some people get very
bothered and continue to see this ghost in AID and
some say we should try what Guatemala did, where
they said they would not accept U.S. help with so
many conditions, and they were able to get by.... AID
should be concerned only with whether we meet the
project goals, and not in how we go about it, for
example, who we hire to do the work. Their bureau-
cracy is very bothersome.... Also, there is the image
that the gringo is boss. I've been forced off the road
several times by the consul's [sic, U.S. ambassador's]
car, and one time when I didn't pull off the road to let
them pass, they pointed a gun at me. I've got a lot of
Americanfriends,but this is always in the background.
Salvadoransdon't criticize openly, because we are too
courteous, but the resentment is there. Americans
should worry more about their image ... they don't
take the initiative to invite us to social events.
Salvadoran administratorsof USAID-fundedprojects
represented diverse backgroundsand political viewpoints,
but many like Rodrigo, who viewed U.S.-sponsored re-
forms as a necessary solution to the country's social
conflict, remained ambivalent about the extent of U.S.
influence in their country. Besides defining and criticizing
a U.S. style of personal interaction and management as
incompatible with or hostile to what they defined as Sal-
vadoran character,Salvadoransalso criticized the content
of certain projects as an attack on Salvadoransovereignty
or as inappropriatefor what they defined as E1Salvador's
needs and culture.22Many Salvadoranofficials saw U.S.-
funded food aid and resettlement programs for displaced
civilians from war zones, which was part of an established
U.S. counterinsurgencytactic rather than a humanitarian

gesture, as inappropriatewelfare interventions that ruined
the "hard-work"ethic of Salvadoranpeasants. One mili-
tary official working with a U.S.-funded police reform
programobserved that laborers on his family's sugar cane
plantation seemed less willing to work than they had been
and attributedthis to USAIDprogramsto aid Salvadorans
displaced by the civil war. Similarly, USAID efforts to
strengthen "moderate" (as opposed to leftist) rural and
urban labor unions and thereby to co-opt organized labor
were also seen as inappropriate.One wealthy member of
the conservativeARENAparty,a coffee growerand an offi-
cial in a government agricultureagency receiving USAID
funding, expressed uneasiness about the threat to social
barriersposed by U.S. aid to moderate peasant activists:
ARENAdoes not want to politicize the campesino
[peasant];we only want him to worklike we do. USAID
has created a class of campesino leaders that the
embassy looks upon approvingly.Once I was invited
to the ambassador'shouse for coffee and to meet with
the previous president of my political party, and they
had invited a campesino leader there. You could see
that this campesino was on good terms with the
ambassador.People who used to walk aroundbarefoot
are now hanging out with the U.S. ambassador!
Throughout most of the 20th century, Salvadoranswith
access to the U.S. ambassador's residence were either the
wealthy or the ambassador's servants. The image of a
peasant invited to the ambassador's residence threatened
a well-established and rigidhierarchyof social classes. The
ARENAmember's rhetoricalmove, which made campesi-
nos unsuitable for contact with U.S. authorities, masked
differences in class interests under issues of cultural com-
petency and social decorum. Although even the most
repressive systems of domination involve some degree of
negotiation (Scott 1990), the political liberalization spon-
sored by USAID implied a historically unprecedented set
of negotiations between the upper and lower classes in E1
Salvador.Salvadoransexpressed ambivalence about a re-
formed system involving previously excluded social actors
by questioning this new regime of political liberalism
indirectly. Critiques appeared in numerous other areas.
As a study based on focus groups of various Salvadoran
elites found, elites expressed a "schizophrenic"view that
favored democratic processes and institutions that
brought previously excluded actors into the political pro-
cess but was skeptical about the motivations of actors in
this democratic process (Ramos and Briones 1999).
When you get all in a tizzy over a Hershey bar
Even within the bureaucraticUSAIDenvironment, staffed
by cosmopolitan employees, a sense of national differ-
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Throughthe lookingglass * American Ethnologist
ences between workersremained distinct sometimes the
source of interpersonalfriction and animosity but also the
basis for a discourse on cultural difference integral to
USAID operations. Although most officials I spoke with
were quick to warn against generalization,most were still
eager to share with me, the anthropologist, their analysis
of the traits distinguishing Salvadorans and Americans.
Perceived as a Salvadoran by Salvadorans, and as an
American by U.S. informants, I heard numerous com-
plaints and observations from each group about the
"other" nationality. Certain traits kept coming up. Salva-
dorans perceived Americans as pushy, efficient, not very
good at affective relationships, not aware enough of Sal-
vadoran needs, and arrogant. Americans frequently de-
scribed Salvadorans as friendly, hard working, not
punctual, overly concerned with the affective side of
relationships, and not sufficiently rule bound. Beyond
what officials identified as the "inherent" attributes of
each nationality, many official and unofficial practices
reinforced the distinction between Salvadoranand Amer-
ican at USAID, from employee grades and privileges to
limits on extracurricularsocial relations. Many Americans
prided themselves on having acquired what they inter-
preted as Salvadoran traits even as they upheld this
environment of distinction. Several U.S. workers wore
the cool and roomy guayabera shirt rather than the U.S.
dress shirt, whereas most Salvadoran workers avoided
wearing guayaberas in the workplace; other U.S. officials
spoke of enjoying meals of beans and tortillas.23In an
equally ironic twist, Salvadoransworking at USAID were
familiarwith and sympathetic to what they interpreted as
U.S. culture,yet they were also astute observersand critics
of the foibles of their U.S. coworkers.
As I discussed the issue of national differences with
one Salvadoranemployee at USAID,she mentioned that a
few years earlierU.S. staff had written and circulated a list
of criteria by which Americans could tell if they had
"become Salvadoranized."She gave the list to me a few
visits later along with a list written by several Salvadoran
staff in reaction to it in English and obviously meant to
be seen by their U.S. colleagues. These were unofficial
documents, manifestations of the thriving subculture
found in many large offices and institutions. Like the
"corridor talk" of academic departments described by
Paul Rabinow (1986:253), these subterranean aspects of
institutions are powerful shapers and indicators of peo-
ple's attitudes and behaviors. The list authored by the
Americans ("When Do You Know You Have Been Salva-
doranized?") included comments related to such per-
ceived characteristics as disorder and rule breaking
("When you double park and block traffic while talking
to friends in the middle of the street") and lack of
development ("When swatting flies becomes a pleasant
pastime"; "When you get all in a tizzy over a Hershey
285
American Ethnologist * VoLume32 Number2 May2005
bar"). The list reflected a view of E1Salvadoras a chaotic
country filled with rule breakersand correspondswith the
personal observations of many of my U.S. informants and
with the USAIDmission of encouraging the "rule of law"
to bring economic and political stability to E1 Salvador.
The tone of the list was less one of superiority and
disdain than of amusement and was combined with an
evolutionist perspective that saw Salvadoran society as
comparable to an earlier stage of U.S. society. One USAID
staff person said change in E1 Salvador would take de-
cades, just as it had taken U.S. society years to modernize,
from the 1850s to the 1930s. San Salvador'schaotic traffic
was frequently a topic of conversation and joking tales of
bravado. Some Americans adapted by going through the
red lights just as local drivers did Adapting to the
difficulties of life in E1 Salvador was a source of pride
for many USAIDworkers, even as they carried out their
day-to-day activities designed to ameliorate or diminish
these difficulties.
The list by the Salvadorans("WhenDo You KnowYou
Have Been Americanized?")focused on social incompe-
tence and arrogance ("When you go to a fiesta [party]
completely underdressed";"Whenyou speak only English
to fellow Salvadorans") and the transgression of social
boundaries ("en your maid eats breakfastwith you at
the table"). Also mentioned was a disdain for Salvadoran
lifestyles ("When you don't like tortillas anymore") and
taking work too seriously ("Whenthe position of a fellow
worker means more than their friendship"). Describing
traitsthey defined as American,Salvadoransfocused large-
ly on social skills and interpersonalrelationships,portray-
ing their compatriots as more concerned with affective
relationships. The "AmericanizedSalvadoran"is charac-
terized by rudeness, a prevalence of instrumental over
affective relationships, a lack of awareness of what
the authors of the list defined as Salvadoranculture and
social niceties, and an overly sheltered or delicate sensi-
bility toward the realities of life in E1Salvador.The notion
of "Americanization"reflects both a critique of inappro-
priate forms of U.S. influence and concern among Salva-
dorans closely connected with USAID for maintaining
boundaries between the United States and E1 Salvador.
These Salvadoranswere aware of critiques that they were
too close to the United States; as Rodrigo, the FUSADES
manager, commented, "Andthe worst thing is some of the
Salvadoranswho work for USAID.One of them is my good
friend, but a lot of people say, who does she think she is,
it's not her money but she acts as if it were, bossing
everybody around." The political identity of the list's
authors as members of a transnational modernizing elite
becomes evident, however, in their lack of criticism of key
aspects of USAIDinfluence, such the inflow of U.S. con-
sumer goods encouraged in part by trade policy reformsor
what was seen as the U.S. obsession with following written
28S
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rules thus, selectively naturalizing USAID goals and ac-
tivities by putting them outside the realm of the "U.S.
culture" being criticized.
The Salvadoranlist is an example of what MaryLouise
Prattcalls "autoethnographicexpression,"in which "colo-
nized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways
that engage with the colonizer's own terms" (1992:7).
Although contesting what Salvadorans perceived as U.S.
negative stereotyping of Salvadoran culture, this process
also formulates a grammar of cultural difference shared
with U.S. officials, sanctioning a form of allowable Other-
ness (some of what U.S. officials define as cultural differ-
ence is fine, even expected, but too much difference is not)
to represent a modern E1Salvadorand a modernized (yet
demonstrably Salvadoran) ruling class. An attempt to
assert sovereignty in this situation, without giving up a
connection to USAID,characterizedSalvadorans'observa-
tions about their U.S. colleagues. These comments estab-
lished a boundary between American and Salvadoranin a
setting in which Salvadorans were compelled to make
numerous crossings in their role as progressives. These
crossings produced individual narratives in which aid
officials could elaborate and comment on a "Salvadoran"
sense of modernity, and tensions between what was per-
ceived as U.S. influence and national sovereignty could be
explored and contained.24 At the same time, U.S. and
Salvadoran aid officials dismissed the relevance of what
they saw as cultural difference, as I have indicated above,
leading to the naturalization of the neoliberal ideals and
projects embodied in USAIDprograms;these existed in an
unquestioned professional and technical space.
U.S. aid officials, who admired the transformations
among Salvadoransworking with USAIDand who sought
to reform Salvadoransociety, also constructed a space of
untouched and essentialized Salvadoranidentity. Through
these mechanisms, USAID managers relegated many un-
resolved problems and conflicts to a cultural sphere out-
side the discursive realm (and therefore the responsibility)
of USAID. Explanations for possible subversions and in-
adequacy of USAIDdevelopment projects often relied on
an intractable Salvadoran character an approach that
discounted how USAID's discourses, practices, and local
allies did not always harmonize with its proclaimed goals
of democracy and social welfare for E1 Salvador. For
example, one embassy official, although celebratingFUSA-
DES's efforts to modernize the Salvadoraneconomy, de-
scribed attempts by FUSADESofficials to include brass
railings in the blueprints for their U.S.-financed building,
boasting, "We caught that one before they could sneak it
through."This revelation came in the context of a conver-
sation about the characteristicsof Salvadoranbureaucrats;
to the embassy official the brass railings symbolized a
Salvadorantrait, craftiness, rather than reflecting the ex-
tent to which institutions embodying a new order were

dominated by upper-class Salvadoranswho expected to
work in elegant surroundings.
The embassy official's portrayalalso served to justify
and depoliticize U.S. intervention.The notion of neoliberal
development and reform required a deficient society,
along with the identification of a progressive managerial
elite to carry out reforms. The construction of an autono-
mous and deficient sphere of Salvadoran culture also
obscured the U.S. government's imperial influence and
links to the less attractive aspects of the war, such as
funding a military guilty of numerous human rights abu-
ses, discursively separating such links from the extensive
U.S. investments in modernizing Salvadoran society.25
Stories about modern Salvadoransand premodern Salva-
doran experiences were one way to justify U.S. influence.
These tales and impressions described the problem to be
solved, its solution, and a promising class of Salvadoran
troubleshooters.
Fascination by USAID officials with this space of
Salvadoran"authenticity"and their role in it appeared in
another list. At one USAIDparty,the U.S. hosts handed out
a list of "Salvadoranthings you have done" (thus margin-
alizing the many Salvadoransattending)to initiate a parlor
game in which each player tried to match as many of the
activities-on the list as possible with partygoerswho had
done them. These activities, 50 in all, included riding a
gunboat in the Gulfof Fonseca, sleeping on the floor of the
embassy or USAID building, eating iguana, visiting the
woodcarverin Santa Tecla, cursing at somebody at a stop-
light, and taking a public bus.
One Salvadoranat the party commented, "These are
things that gringos do in E1 Salvador."Like me, he and
other Salvadoranshad not done many of them. Although a
few of the activities on the list, like eating iguana, were
things Salvadoransmight occasionally do, many were not.
For a civilian to ride a gunboat in the Gulf of Fonseca,
located in the then-conflictive eastern zone of the country,
requiredsome influence with the Salvadoranmilitary.The
significance and adventure of taking a public bus derived
from strict embassy security regulationsthat did not allow
U.S. staff to take public transport;for Salvadoransit has
always been a discomfort to be borne or avoided, for
those able to afford a car or taxi. "Whatthe hell, I've lived
here long enough that I don't have to pay attention to
them [embassy security restrictions] anymore; I want to
enjoy this country," said one U.S. official at the party,
boasting that he had taken a bus and broken many other
embassy securityrestrictions.Folklorizingor essentializing
the manifestations of structural inequalities veiled the
power relationships in Salvadoransociety that maintained
those inequalities and put them outside the realm of
USAID'sdevelopment discourse and intervention.
Cross-culturalperceptions and representations are a
core component of U.S. imperial power.26A variety of
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Throughthe lookingglass * American Ethnologist
assumptions and representations as well as fantasies
about E1Salvadorand about the United States and its role
there underlay the U.S. government's counterinsurgency
strategy. Besides economic and military aid, the U.S.
government exerted power in E1Salvadorthrough a vari-
ety of mechanisms of representation, to which Salvador-
ans were acutely sensitive. Just as U.S. officials and
Salvadoranelites demonized the FMLNguerrillasas com-
munists and terrorists, they branded progressive Salva-
doran elites as E1Salvador'sfuture leaders. USAIDofficials
supported this categorization by representing the elites
they favored as a dynamic, globally connected sphere of
Salvadoransociety, which they juxtaposed against a more
static and place-bound element (Gupta and Ferguson
1992). These judgments reduced complex notions of na-
tional identity and modernity to discursive categories
created by USAID.Ironically,these mechanisms of repre-
sentation sometimes blinded U.S. officials to the complex
ways in which Salvadorans mediated U.S. influence. As
U.S. officials sought to implant modern ideas, practices,
and institutions in E1Salvador,they often misread super-
ficial changes as evidence that real change was taking
place on U.S. terms.
Conclusion:Identities, representations, and a
reconfiguredsystem of domination
U.S. influence in E1 Salvador generated various tensions
that shaped local reception of this influence. Salvadoran
managerial elites associated with U.S. aid mediated ten-
sions about national sovereignty and social change by
invoking notions of Salvadoran "identity" and "sover-
eignty," often framed against the notion of "Americaniza-
tion." Tension also appeared as U.S. officials sought to
portrayE1Salvadoras progressingyet in need of aid, as a
successful neoliberal reform case despite contrary evi-
dence, and as receptive to U.S. influence yet a sovereign
state resistant to U.S. imperial power. Aid workersof both
nationalities expressed these tensions in their discourses
about E1Salvadorand the "modern"Salvadoranelite, both
defined by their connection to selected aspects of what
these workers defined as U.S. and Salvadoranculture, in
which they conflated the United States with either desir-
able or culturallyinappropriateforms of "modernity."
The tensions analyzed in this article constitute one
criticalvariablefor understandingthe implementation and
consequences of contemporaryefforts to implement U.S.-
government visions of neoliberalism in other parts of the
world, currently focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. In the
case of E1Salvador, as foreign aid and national political
discourse increasingly demanded values, behaviors, and
projects approved by transnational actors represented
for Salvadoran elites mainly by the United States the
requisite presentation of a national self in a transnational
287
American Ethnologist * Volume32 Number2 May2005
sphere required a complex balancing of cosmopolitanism
and national idiosyncrasy. Linkage with U.S.-sponsored
resources and ideas was a source of legitimacy for an
emergent dominant class but also created ambivalence
as various aspects of U.S. influence destabilized notions
of social order and national identity. Examiningsuch link-
ages and ambivalences in other locales would contribute
to better understandingof the challenges faced by current
nation-building projects.
Nina Glick Schiller (1994) has noted that national
identities are not homogeneous or bounded but, instead,
are historically contingent and bound to power relations.
Individuals enact, perform, and mobilize these categories
of national identity for multiple strategicreasons, although
undoubtedly these labels also have a deeply felt compo-
nent. The notion of "Americanization"in El Salvador in
1991 served to both symbolize change and express ambiva-
lence about change in the system of attitudes and social
domination, which, with the civil war, had undergone
what Lungo Ucles (1996) terms "a crisis of hegemony."
Salvadorans sought to assert their version of Salvadoran
identity, but in the context of associating with a project
underpinned by U.S. dollars, interests, and ideals and
under pressure to discard a past set of practices and ideas
that had led to a destructive conflict. Boundariesbetween
Salvadoran and American blurred and were redefined;
establishing new boundaries expressed ambivalence about
U.S. influence and social change in El Salvador.Although
adopting U.S.-devised solutions represented a path toward
the salvation of their country, Salvadorans essentialized
certain aspects of U.S. culture and critiqued them as in-
appropriatefor their version of a reformed El Salvador.27
The most immediate strategy was to delineate a sphere
of Salvadoranculture that was impervious to any changes
that threatened the social hierarchy,particularlythe privi-
leges of El Salvador's managerial elites. Such a sphere
focused on everyday minutiae considered to define the
Salvadoran character social manners, personal interac-
tions, courtesy, and patterns of friendship that could be
mobilized to critique major reform programs as culturally
inappropriate when, in fact, the critique was based on
potential threats posed by these reforms to Salvadoran
social order.
The construction of this localized modernity in the
USAIDcontact zone was vitallylinked to the adoption in El
Salvador of a less violent postwar system of governance
favoring Salvadoran elites and international investment
capital, a process in which images of a globally connected
yet nativized modernity were a crucial component. Por-
trayingU.S. influence as necessary and manageable helped
a modernizing sector of El Salvador'sruling elites to ben-
efit from this aid without seeming or feeling too beholden
to their benefactors in a context in which both the extreme
left and rightwings were attackingU.S. influence. U.S. aid,
288
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at the same time that Salvadorans critiqued it, provided
not just money but also new institutions, representations,
and cultural capital that helped augment the power of a
modernized sector of Salvadoranelites. By simultaneously
accepting U.S. dollars and conditions while asserting
Salvadorannessin opposition to inappropriateU.S. values,
Salvadorans managing USAID projects constructed a
unique identity in the midst of rapid, dramatic, and
externallyconditioned social change. Serving as a looking
glass, the U.S. aid program acquired both negative and
positive associations that reflected the Salvadorans' am-
bivalence in desiring and needing to emulate ideals and
lifestyles associated with the United States while seeking
to construct their own distinct sense of identity. This
image of a modernized Salvadoran was a necessary but
problematic component of a recomposed hegemonic sys-
tem in E1Salvadorand was linked to the U.S. intervention
in that country.
Both guerrillasand the United States were challenging
the old order-in very different ways and with different
goals, of course. A new faction of the ruling class was able
to establish its preferredmode of domination over Salva-
doran society within the parameters of internatzonally
sanctioned rules of political liberalism. The politics of
national identity surrounding U.S. aid to E1 Salvador as
well as the nature of the reforms promoted by the United
States helped establish this new pattern of domination. In
E1 Salvador, one finds something more complex than a
homogeneous expansion or rejection of these reforms on a
local or national level. USAID collaboration with these
reformed elites did facilitate the reform of E1 Salvador;
opposition to E1Salvador'sunchanged patterns of social
inequality and economic exploitation, for example, are no
longer punished by torture and death. But social prob-
lems such as high levels of poverty and crime continue
unabated as a small, wealthy elite persists. This new model
clearly has not resolved, and may even perpetuate, E1
Salvador'sserious social problems.
Notes
AcknowZedgments. A FulbrightIIEGrantand a travelgrant from
the Department of Anthropologyof the University of California
at Berkeleyfunded the fieldworkon which this article is based. I
am gratefulto the many Salvadoranand U.S. individualsworking
with USAID-fundedprojects who took time out of their busy
schedules to discuss their perspectives with me. Tony Canas,
directorin 1991 of the Centro de Informacion,Documentacion y
Apoyo a la Investigacion at the Universidad Centroamericana
Jose Simeon Canas, provided useful comments during the initial
stages of my project. Bob Dance, the U.S. embassy's cultural af-
fairs officer, facilitated unescorted access to the tightly guarded
USAID offices, necessary for any ethnographic study of this
institution.The MichiganState UniversityCenterfor LatinAmeri-
can and CaribbeanStudies has providedsupport for the writingof
this article. I thank VictorJew,AndreaLouie, LaurieMedina, and

the anonymous American Ethnologist reviewersfor their valuable
comments on drafts of this article.
1. Unless otherwisestated,I discuss U.S.-governmentaid and de-
velopment programs,not nongovernmentalorganizations(NGOs).
2. At the time of this writing, Colombia is receiving an even
largeraid package tied to U.S. concerns about drugs and guerril-
las. Although this aid package provides funding for some of the
same social reforms (e.g., institution building) applied to E1
Salvador, most of it is explicitly categorized as military. U.S.
interventionin Iraq and Afghanistanalso involves strikinglysim-
ilar reform packages.
3. These analyses have produced the now-familiar and well-
documented tales of Cold War-inspired counterinsurgencywar-
fare, human rights abuses, and neoliberaleconomic development
favoring the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Many useful
works cover the Salvadorancivil war (see AmericasWatch 1991;
Barry and Murray 1995; Byrne 1996; Lungo Ucles 1996; Mont-
gomery 1995). Severalworks focus on and critique U.S. interven-
tion in E1Salvador (see Bonner 1984; LaFeber 1993; LeoGrande
1998; McClintock 1985; Rosa 1993). A few studies critique spe-
cific USAIDprogramsin E1Salvador:Conroyet al. 1996 discusses
USAID-imposed reforms in the agriculturalsector, particularly
projects to encourage alternative export crops among small
farmers. Foley 1996 critiques the efforts of the United States to
create its own version of civil society in E1 Salvador. Finally,
Lawyer'sCommittee for Human Rights 1989 critiques efforts to
reformthe Salvadoranjudicial system. Accounts of the motivation
for U.S. interventionin E1Salvadordemonstrate the influence of
U.S. geopolitical concerns (avoiding a communist takeover in E1
Salvador)and economic interests (facilitatingflows of trade and
investment; Barry and Murray 1995; Bonner 1984; LeoGrande
1998). Accounts of the outcomes of this interventionhave focused
on political reformsto defuse social tensions and on the consoli-
dation of neoliberal economic policies. Changes in Salvadoran
power structuresare also approached from this macrolevel per-
spective (Dunkerley1994; Lungo Ucles 1996; Paige 1997; Peceny
and Stanley 2001). Analyses of postwar E1Salvadorhave pointed
out changes catalyzedby USAID,among them the limited democ-
ratization of the country, which includes the transformationof
the FMLNfrom armedguerrillasto political party,and the decline
of coffee wealth and state repression as sources of elite power.
The civil war, U.S. development aid, and growingintegrationinto
a global economy, have fundamentallyaltered relations of domi-
nation in E1Salvador.
4. Throughoutthis article, I use pseudonyms to refer to Salva-
doran individualswith whom I spoke.
5. Some critics (Rutherfordand Nyamuda2000) have noted that
these analyses may give too much attention to the development
discourses and officials, ascribinglittle if any agency to local ac-
tors, who are portrayedas one-dimensional objects of the devel-
opment projects.JanineWedel's (1998)work on the appropriation
of Western aid by Russian elites overcomes these limitations by
focusing on how the relationships between aid donors and re-
cipients allowed recipients to alter aid programs.
6. In similarargumentsmade for other areas of the world,Arjun
Appadurai (1996) discusses the local appropriation of trans-
national flows of meanings to create local modernities, focusing
on the disjuncturesthat coexist with processes of globalization,
and Ulf Hannerz (1996) discusses the local appropriation of
culturalflows. James Watson (1997) examines the particularcase
of the multiple meanings and uses in Asia of McDonald's,an icon
of Westernconsumer modernity.
7. Anthropologists have contributed much to understanding
how relations of domination are expressed and maintained in
part through symbolic means, everyday practices, and the pro-
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Throughthe lookingglass * American Ethnologist
duction and contestation of various forms of identity. See also
Cooper and Stoler 1997, Joseph et al. 1998, Said 1993, and
Scheper-Hughesand Lock 1991. ArturoEscobar argues that ana-
lysts of development programsoften overlook"the ways in which
development operates as an arena of cultural contestation and
identity construction"(1995:15), but in his work he does not focus
on these micropolitics.
8. Lasting from 1980 to 1992, the war profoundly affected
Salvadoran society, causing about 75 thousand deaths in a
country of five million and displacing around a million people.
The U.S.-financed military committed most of the numerous
human rights abuses; for a review of human rights violations
during the Salvadorancivil war, see AmericasWatch 1991.
9. The United States provided military advisors and aid to
implement a military strategy against the guerrillasand civilian
population while at the same time U.S. economic aid financed
a variety of social, economic, and political reforms that ad-
dressed what policy makers perceived as the root causes of the
guerrilla insurgency. A blurring of military and civilian aid
occurred as the United States adopted a refined version of the
counterinsurgency strategy originally applied in Vietnam. The
U.S. government classified only about one-quarter of the aid to
E1 Salvador as military, with the remainder packaged as eco-
nomic aid. See U.S. Congress,Arms Control and Foreign Policy
Caucus 1987 for estimates of how much economic aid might
have served military purposes. U.S.-government assessments of
the root causes of the guerrillainsurgency are described in sev-
eral official publications, including Kissinger Commission on
Central America 1984 and U.S. Agency for International Devel-
opment 1988. Solis and Friedmann 1990 offers a good, general
description of goals and programs of USAID in E1 Salvador in
the 1980s.
10. USAID is a large and diverse institution, so some of its
projects were more beneficial to the popular classes than others.
For example, numerous initiatives in health and education tar-
geted and benefited mainly the poor. These projects, however,
must still be contextualizedwithin the largerprojects of counter-
insurgency and neoliberalism that motivated the sizable role of
USAIDin E1Salvador.
11. This is a simplified history of elites in E1Salvador;space
does not permit tracing the conflicts within the civilian elites and
between civilian and military elites, a topic covered by other
authors (Colindres1977; Dunkerley1988; LungoUcles 1996; Paige
1997; Stanley 1996; Williams and Walter 1997). These conflicts,
however, did not undermine the alliance of coffee growers and
militarythat dominated Salvadoranpolitics from 1932 to 1979.
12. Documenting one aspect of this recomposition of E1Salva-
dor's elites, Jeffrey Paige (1997) describes an emerging split
between two powerful factions, the agroindustrialists (coffee
processors) and the agrarians(coffee producers). He focuses on
how changes in E1Salvador'spolitical economy allowed a mod-
ernizing sector of elites to gain power; as coffee became less
significant in the economy and the commercial, industrialsector
grew, a shift in power occurredwithin elites. Authors from other
fields who discuss the rise of this more liberal faction of the
Salvadoran elite include James Dunkerley (1994), Lungo Ucles
(1996), and Mark Peceny and William Stanley (2001) See Rob-
inson 2000 for a more general discussion of this process in Latin
America and Spalding 1994 for a discussion of changes among
Nicaraguan elites during the Sandinista revolution. Although
these studies explain how reformistelites evolve with the spread
of globalizationand neoliberal policies, most accounts have paid
little attention to the point of view of individualsinvolved, nor do
they allow one to gauge the nature and extent of any such
conversion. They ignore how cultural mechanisms may lead to
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American Ethnologist * Volume32 Number2 May2005
the appropriationand strategic manipulation of externalinfluen-
ces and how this occurs in everyday life. Peceny and Stanley
(2001), for example, discuss 'ssocialization and peer pressure"
through which international actors encourage liberal norms by
praising good behavior and denouncing bad behavior and
norms. This developmental explanation of changes in political
norms, involving an initial stage in which local actors adopt
liberal norms for strategic reasons and later internalize such
norms (Peceny and Stanley2001; see also Finnemoreand Sikkink
1998),does not capturethe complex local appropriationof foreign
aid and influence.
13. My thoughts on issues of class and status among this
emerging Salvadoranelite have been clarified by MarkLiechty's
(2003) analysis of Nepali middle-class culture. Pierre Bourdieu's
(1984)work shows the important role of consumption and tastes
in creatingsymbolic distinctions among differentclasses.
14. Similarly,Robinson refers to a new transnationalelite
comprised of the owners and managers of the lead-
ing transnational corporations and banks, as well as
bureaucratsand technicians who administer the inter-
national financial institutes (IFIs), the upper echelons
of state bureaucraciesin the "North"and the "South"-
developed and underdeveloped countries alike and
transnationalforums including the Groupof Seven, the
TrilateralCommission,and the WorldEconomic Forum.
[2000:43]
15. Severalother researchershave documented the importance
of these personal relationships and cultural markers in trans-
national interactions ostensibly governed by rigid institutional
parameters. Wedel (1998) documents the underlying dynamics
of the relations established between U.S. aid personnel and local
brokersin postcommunist EasternEurope.In her study of trans-
national Chinese elites, Ong has described a process of cultural
accumulation,"with Chinese diasporansubjects as active manip-
ulators of culturalsymbols" (1999:88)used to gain social prestige
in transnationalarenas.
16. The promotion of U.S. culture abroad music, brands, and
values has long been an explicit aim of U.S. foreign policy. See
Joseph et al. 1998 and Zolov 1999.
17. As Ong and Donald Nonini (1997) have made clear, these
flows can lead to multiple modernities,not all with U.S. referents.
HerbertSchillerargues that, "Americannational power no longer
is an exclusive determinantof culturaldomination. The domina-
tion that exists today, though still bearing a marked American
imprint, is better understood as transnationalcorporate cultural
domination" (1991:15).
18. See Banks2000 and DeCesare 1998 for accounts of this un-
anticipated twist in Salvadoran-U.S. relations. The U.S. Citizen-
ship and ImmigrationServices are a part of the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security.
19. Several authors discuss the complex politics of mimicry
involved in colonial or neocolonial relations. Homi Bhabha
(1990) discusses the creation of colonial elites who mimicked
European elites but were not quite like them. Michael Taussig,
describingWesterners'fascinationwith indigenous use of Western
artifacts and themes, writes, "Yet if Western goods excite the
Indians'imagination,how much more does such excitationexcite
the Westernobserver!"(1993:228).TanyaLuhrmann(1994)exam-
ines a community of Parsis, a colonial elite in India, who mim-
icked a set of hypermasculinized British ideals and were very
successful under the Raj. Such markers of group identity, she
argues, are embedded in historicallycontingent power relations;
once the Britishleft India and the Parsis lost power, their males
came to be seen as effeminate.
298
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20. One could also argue that these elites who bought into U.S.
consumer culture were the precursors of a consumer society
envisioned for E1Salvadorunder the USAIDgoal of "broadening
the benefits of growth."
21. Funded entirely by USAID in its early years, FUSADES
promoted numerous projects in the USAID development reper-
toire: alternative export promotion, free enterprise zones, loans
for microentrepreneurs,and courses to educate teenagers in the
fundaments of capitalism. Between 1984 and 1992, USAIDspent
over $100 million on projects run by FUSADES(Rosa 1993:81).
AlthoughFUSADESis nonpartisan,for the past decade its recom-
mendations have corresponded very closely to policies of the
ruling party (since 1989), ARENA.Currently,FUSADESadvocates
and facilitates foreign investment in export-processing zones,
composed largely of clothing factories, where garments are as-
sembled for U.S. clothing companies such as the Gap. E1Salvador
exported over $700 million of apparel to the United States last
year. Human rights activists have critiqued the labor practices in
this significant and growing sector of the Salvadoraneconomy.
22. References to Salvadorancharacterwere often phrased in
terms of la idiosincraciadel salvadoreno,the idiosyncracyof the
Salvadoran,but were also expressed in many other variations in
which a speaker alluded to a generic Salvadoran (e.g., "the
Salvadoranlikes or does not like such a thing").
23. The line from a Tarzanmovie in which Otunda,a local chief,
addresses the AfricanizedTarzan,seems appropriatehere: "I have
heard of you, Tarzan.It is strange;you dress like one of us yet you
are different."
24. Prattlabels these contact zones "social spaces where dispa-
rate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in
highly asymmetricalrelations of domination and subordination"
(1992:4).
25. Pratt describes one possible function of this cultural
contact trope in her analysis of colonial-era European travel
accounts as "anti-conquest"narratives,"strategiesof representa-
tion whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their
innocence in the same moment as they assert European hege-
mony" (1992:7).
26. Edward Said (1993) discusses the role of culture in the
imperialist project. Ricardo Salvatorenotes in his discussion of
earlierU.S. representationsof LatinAmericathat
legitimating the presence of North American capital,
expertise, ideas, and values in the lands to the south
demanded a double and simultaneous textual construc-
tion: describing the other (South America) in terms of
a perennial deficit or vacuum, and ascribing meaning
to "the mission" (the role of North Americans in the
region). Withoutone or the other, the expansion of U.S.
capital and culture would be impaired, its legitimacy
negated. [1998:71]
Gilbert Joseph describes these perceptions as "a critical sub-
strateof imperialismand dependency:the arrangementof ways of
perceiving . . . the other that lies at the core of all these asymmet-
ricalrelationships"(1998:21). Salvatore(1998:70) providesa useful
critique of theories of dependency and imperialism used to
analyze the military, political, and economic aspects of U.S.
domination in Latin America. He argues that scholars need to
look for culturalaspects of influence in other agents of the North
Americaninformalempire. For a compilation of articlesrelatingto
this topic, see Joseph et al. 1998.
27. ArleneDavila's(1998:464) analysis of a commercialTVshow
in PuertoRico sponsored by Budweiserarguesthat what counts as
local identity can be negotiated in relation to, ratherthan against,
foreign forms.

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