Word: guazapa
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...crackle of gunfire from the Guazapa volcano in El Salvador's heartland cut through the din of New Year's Eve revelry. But the bursts were not the usual barrage of death. Instead, rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front were sending up a celebratory salvo on learning that their negotiators had at last arrived at a peace accord with the conservative government of President Alfredo Cristiani...
...guerrillas have strengthened their grip mainly in the eastern provinces. They control a strategic 62-mile stretch of Pacific beach and can roam freely through most of the countryside. To the north, the insurgents have streamed down from Chalatenango and the mountain redoubt of Guazapa to infiltrate the province of Cabañas and the fertile strip of northern Cuscatlán (see map). Though command of the villages seesaws between rebel and government forces, the guerrillas have held on to about 50 towns. For the first time in the four-year civil war, the forces of the Farabundo Marti...
...major stretch of the country's Pan American Highway and destroyed a key bridge, effectively isolating a third of the northeastern Morazán department and putting it virtually under guerrilla control. Displaying the same tenacity that they had shown a week earlier in heavy fighting around the Guazapa volcano, the guerrillas were able to surprise and tie down army forces with smoothly coordinated assaults within the provincial capitals of San Vicente and San Miguel, the country's third largest city...
...fighting around the Guazapa volcano was observed firsthand by TIME Photographer Harry Mattison, the only journalist permitted to accompany the Salvadoran troops for three days during the fiercest combat. Mattison's account begins as he boards a helicopter gunship...
...call comes in on the radio of a command post on Guazapa. A wounded officer is at the village of Palo Grande. The chopper pilots discuss strategy with the commanding colonel over the luncheon table. Can they get a small chopper in to pick him up? No way, say the pilots, the area is too hot. One pilot took eleven holes through the floor on the last pass. They decide to send in two gunships...