Word: salvadors
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Marcelo Guerrero devotes part of each day to hustling lottery tickets in San Salvador. The rest of his time he whiles away in the sprawling shanty village of Zacamil on the edge of the capital, waiting for the government to build him a new house from a nearby pile of concrete blocks. While his two children splash through streams of urine and dirty water, Guerrero reflects on the prospects for his -- and his country's -- future. "Peace would be nice," he murmurs, "but it won't change my life much...
Many in El Salvador share Guerrero's gloomy assessment. People are delighted that for the first time since 1980, and after the loss of 75,000 lives, the government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) are at war no more. But they also realize that the long-term outlook for the country is dismal. The peace treaty signed last week in Mexico City, which goes into effect Feb. 1, is no guarantee that El Salvador's 5.4 million people can prevail in the other battle that they have been steadily losing -- the one against poverty and hopelessness...
...Salvador faces similar perils. The pain and injustice etched by a dozen years of war, and the estimated $1.3 billion in related material damage, will not be erased by the stroke of a pen. The army, which bears responsibility for the majority of wartime human-rights abuses, and the F.M.L.N., which prolonged the fighting during the lengthy peace talks, cannot abandon innate suspicions of each other. As a result, though Salvadorans will be technically at peace, they will face tension and fear, if not outright hostility, for the foreseeable future...
...will the economic dislocation that has made life miserable for generations be altered overnight. The Center for Economic and Social Investigations, a private liberal think tank in San Salvador, estimates that one-fifth of the population controls two-thirds of the nation's wealth; the poor face meager prospects for finding jobs or improving their share. The government has earmarked $100 million to retrain ex-combatants, and foreign donors have pledged up to $1 billion in aid. But with unemployment at 50%, widespread illiteracy and a legacy of violence, El Salvador is unlikely to attract the kind of foreign investors...
...unalterable figure is the amount of land -- 8,124 sq. mi. -- that makes El Salvador the most densely populated country in Central America. Disputes over property have often led to bloodshed. A military coup in 1979 was sparked in part by a plan to redistribute farmland, most of which is still owned by a tightly knit oligarchy. Since then, land reform has come to signify justice to those without property and communist conspiracy to those who stand to lose theirs...