Word: tenancingo
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...agreed to the kidnapers' demand that 22 political prisoners be freed. The government also granted safe conduct out of El Salvador to 101 wounded guerrillas in need of medical treatment. In return, the F.M.L.N. handed over Duarte Durán and Villeda to intermediaries in the bombed-out town of Tenancingo, north of San Salvador. The rebels also began releasing 33 mayors and municipal officials abducted during the past six months...
...families that have trickled back into Tenancingo over the past three months fled their homes in 1983 following an air force bombardment aimed at routing leftist guerrillas. Like many of the other 500,000 Salvadorans who have been displaced by the war, the returnees had subsisted in urban slums or overcrowded refugee camps. By returning home, the people of Tenancingo have become the first refugees to resettle in a war zone without government supervision. Under a plan developed by Roman Catholic Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas, Tenancingo has become inerme, a place without weapons, where government troops and leftist rebels...
Indeed, only weeks after the first residents returned home in late January, the fragile peace was shattered. Army troops tangled with a guerrilla unit on the outskirts of town, leaving three rebels dead. The troops then advanced into Tenancingo firing M-16 rifles and grenade launchers. The soldiers searched homes, detained and interrogated inhabitants, and killed at least one unarmed civilian. A postmortem by directors of the Tenancingo project and human rights officials blamed both sides for the breakdown: the guerrillas for breaching the agreement by maintaining a near constant presence in the town, the army for treating the civilians...
President Jose Napoleon Duarte labeled the episode "lamentable," and has called on both sides to respect the agreement. General Adolfo Blandon, the chief of staff, has reaffirmed military support for the project. Tenancingo has long been a rebel-controlled zone and is thus a prime candidate for the army's newest counterinsurgency campaign, "United to Reconstruct," which calls for repopulating evacuated war zones with civilians who will be organized into "patriotic self-defense militias." Some people connected with the Tenancingo project predict it is only a matter of time before their town is made a part of the army...
After the February fighting, several families left Tenancingo. Within days, however, all had returned and a few new families had even joined the effort. "We are fine," says Demetrio Archila, 45. "The planes come by, they look at us, but they let us keep working. Now they don't bomb in the town, only outside it." That may be a small achievement, but it presents a ray of hope for many Salvadorans. "We don't need bombs or projectiles," says one townsman."We just want to be left alone. We hate this damned...