News stories by Edgardo Ayala, page 13

A law to protect Salvadoran migrants, who are frequently victims of attacks and abuses on their way to the United States, is nearing entry into force after having been approved over a year ago. All that remains is for a body made up of civil society organisations to be created to implement it.

After decades of struggle, indigenous people in El Salvador will finally be recognised in the constitution — a first step towards recovering their community identity, which they have been denied by the state and by society at large.

María Elena Muñoz industriously weeds a clearing in the forest and then digs several holes, where she and another four dozen women are planting plantain seedlings, to help feed their families in this poor farming area in El Salvador.

A truce negotiated between El Salvador's main gangs has drastically reduced murders and encouraged hope that this country may have found a way out of the labyrinth of violence in which it seemed lost. But the deal is fragile, causing uncertainty.

A choked-up Mercedes Alfaro told the fourth session of the International Restorative Justice Tribunal in El Salvador how she lost seven members of her family in a 1982 massacre.

'You see? That's where they were going to put the antenna,' says Alicia Suncín, pointing to a spot in the middle of a park in the Salvadoran capital where a private company was planning to erect a cell phone tower, 10 metres away from swings and see-saws where children play.

Wilber Geovany Hernández was gunned down as he left his night classes at a school in the capital of El Salvador. He was the 11th murder victim among the country's schoolchildren since the school year began on Jan. 23.

'It’s awful to see people who are criminals treated as heroes,' said Dorila Márquez, one of the survivors of the El Mozote massacre committed by Salvadoran army troops in December 1981.

Sporting an olive green combat jacket and a beret, civil war veteran Carlos Hernández prays at the tomb of slain Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero at the Metropolitan Cathedral of El Salvador, which a score of former guerrillas have occupied to demand assistance to help them out of poverty.

A lack of funds and political will has blocked the setting up of environmental courts in El Salvador, which were approved by law in 1998 with the aim of addressing the serious environmental problems facing this country.