US Ambassador Mari Carmen Aponte is once again leveraging development aid to impose US interests in El Salvador. This time, the funds at stake total $1 billion, Obama’s proposed contribution to the controversial Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle of Central America.

When US President Barack Obama signed a decree declaring the democratically elected government of Venezuela a “national security threat”, El Salvador’s leftist governing party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), joined a hemisphere-wide solidarity campaign calling for its termination. In widely published remarks, Aponte responded by claiming that the party’s position could undermine proposed funding for the Alliance. Her statements were eagerly taken up by El Salvador’s conservative commercial media to attack the sitting FMLN administration of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén.

For more on Aponte’s remarks, click here.