Business El Salvador

For nearly two decades, Salvadorans in Southern California have sent dollars and goods home to relatives by wire, mail and courier, shoring up the economy of the war-torn country they fled and feeding a consumer boom there. Now, six years after peace accords ended the civil war, Salvadoran officials are eyeing the $1.2 billion in yearly remittances with discomfort. The money has distorted the country's economy.

A love of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, wanderlust and solid contacts with the Hells Angels are qualifications that might stump a career counselor. But Guillermo Alegria knows how to combine them to make a living. For the last 33 years, he has driven a 1957 panel truck sporting the Harley-Davidson logo through Central America and Mexico buying junked antique motorcycles. He sells them for parts in the United States and to customers who visit his home in this mountain village.

Businessmen on the extreme right have launched an aggressive radio and newspaper campaign calling for the resignation of President Jose Napoleon Duarte over a new tax package put into effect this month to pay for the country's continuing civil war.