News stories by Edgardo Ayala, page 8

EL MOZOTE, El Salvador, May 23 (IPS) - Except for a house with its walls riddled with holes made by bursts of machine gun fire, nobody would say that the quiet Salvadoran village of El Mozote was the scene of one of the worst massacres in Latin America, just 35 years ago.

ISLA DE MÉNDEZ, El Salvador, Mar 20 (IPS) - After an exhausting morning digging clams out of the mud of the mangroves, Rosa Herrera, her face tanned by the sun, arrives at this beach in southeastern El Salvador on board the motorboat Topacio, carrying her yield on her shoulders.

Feb 27 (IPS) - The Izcanal Radio and Television set is simple and austere, but this TV station made history in El Salvador, being the first, and until now the only one, to make the leap from community radio to community TV channel, in 2006.

CALUCO, El Salvador, Oct 07 (IPS) - A basketball court in this small town in western El Salvador was turned overnight into a shelter for some two dozen families forced to flee their homes after a recent escalation of gang violence.

SAN ISIDRO, El Salvador, Aug 09 (IPS) - Juana Morales is cooking one of the most popular dishes in El Salvador: pupusas, corn tortillas with different fillings. But hers are unique: they are not made with the traditional corn tortillas, but use Maya nuts, a highly nutritional seed that has fallen out of use but whose consumption is being encouraged in rural communities.

SAN SALVADOR, Jul 23 (IPS) - The ruling of the highest court to repeal the amnesty law places El Salvador in the dilemma of deciding whether the country should prosecute those who committed serious violations to human rights during the civil war.

SAN SALVADOR, Feb 17 (IPS) - El Salvador is debating reforms of the country's privatised pension system, which could introduce changes so that it will no longer discriminate against women.

IZALCO, El Salvador, Dec 29 (IPS) - Doris Zabala squats down in the field to pull up radishes. She is working on a prison farm in El Salvador, where more and more penitentiaries are incorporating agricultural work and other activities to keep prisoners busy.

EL CONGO, El Salvador, Dec 18 (IPS) - Sitting in front of a pile of coffee beans that she has just picked, Ilsy Membreño separates the green cherries from the ripe red ones with a worried look on her face, lamenting the bad harvest on the farm where she works in western El Salvador and the low daily wages she is earning.