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- A Violent Past
Since achieving independence from Spain in 1821, El Salvador has endured a succession of dictators and military leaders, numerous violent rebellions, and interference from neighboring countries. Salvadoran troops point their guns towards Honduras in July 1969, when a border dispute between the two nations led to a four-day war. In the 1970s, overpopulation, poverty, and social unrest resulted in terrorism and murder carried out by left-wing guerrilla soldiers and -- especially -- right-wing "death squads." In 1979, a military junta yielded to full-scale civil war between government troops and the guerrillas of the Farabundo Martà National Liberation Front or FMLN, a revolutionary and socialist political party. Credit: AP Photo
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- Civil War and the Civilians
Members of the Salvadoran emergency rescue units during combat in one of the areas of the capital that were heavily hit during a major guerrilla offensive that was launched by the FMLN in November 1989. The intensity of the guerrillas' fighting led the military to often not distinguish between armed combatants and unarmed civilians, contributing to the war's tremendous death toll -- an estimated 75,000, most at the hands of the military regime. During this period, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid was used to fight the war. Credit: Reuters/Str MA
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- End of Civil War
A resolution to El Salvador's civil war began in 1989, with the election of President Alfredo Cristiani, who, with the help of the United Nations, negotiated a settlement with the FMLN in the form of the 1992 Chapultepec Accords. The army was reined in and violence on both sides came to a halt. Here, military school cadets guard the monument CHRIST FOR PEACE on January 16, 1998 -- the sixth anniversary of the signing of the accords. Credit: AP Photo/Luis Romero
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- Paramilitaries
Members of a riot squad subdue a protestor during a 1995 clash between police and former paramilitaries. Such encounters have taken place numerous times since the signing of the 1992 Chapultepec Accords as former soldiers, who fought for the government and helped overwhelm the leftist guerrillas during the war, demand what they feel is long-overdue compensation for their work. In 2001 their cries turned to violence as they overtook San Salvador's city center, forcing the government to temporarily shut down. Credit: AP Photo/Douglas Engle
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- Gangs
El Salvador is struggling to cope with growing gang violence. The violence is exacerbated by ongoing social unrest, economic devastation from the civil war, the breakdown of families and social structures, and the presence of refugees turned gang members from the United States -- who came home or were deported after 1996. One of the biggest social problems in postwar El Salvador has been rural unemployment. This has caused increased migration to the cities and to other countries, especially the United States. Unofficial estimates say that the United States is home to some two million Salvadorans. Credit: Neil Harvey
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- Natural Disasters
El Salvador has been devastated by a series of natural disasters while trying to recover from its 12-year civil war. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch ravaged the country, leaving 200 dead and more than 30,000 homeless. A tremendous landslide wiped out a portion of the town of Santa Tecla, near San Salvador, in the wake of a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that hit on January 13, 2001. The earthquake killed 844 people, left nearly 5,000 injured, and damaged roughly 20 percent of the country's viable housing. Later that year, a drought destroyed 80 percent of El Salvador's crops and brought famine to its poorer, non-urban populations. In response, the United States extended refugee status to nearly 300,000 Salvadorans affected by the earthquake. Another, smaller earthquake hit the nation in October 2005. Credit: AP Photo/La Prensa Grafica
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- Human Rights
An employee of the Human Rights Committee of El Salvador shows a photo album of alleged torture victims from the country's civil war. In July 2002, a U.S. jury ordered two former Salvadoran generals to pay $54.6 million in damages to torture victims. The generals, both of whom live in the United States, were tried under the auspices of the Torture Victim Protection Act, which permits civil lawsuits against those accused of committing torture or murder "under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation" and the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which states that U.S. federal courts "shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Credit: AP Photo/Luis Romero
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- President Saca
In San Salvador on Wednesday, March 29, 2006, El Salvador's President Tony Saca decorated soldiers of contingent five of the Cuscatlan Battalion, who recently returned from Iraq. Unlike a number of other countries in the region (Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia), El Salvador has not made a hard turn to the left, politically; its ties with the United States remain strong. Since 2003, El Salvador has stationed nearly 400 troops in Iraq -- a move that has been widely and vehemently protested at home. In April 2004, one Salvadoran soldier was killed and several were injured during a gun battle with insurgents near Najaf. Credit: AP Photo/Luis Romero
