Business El Salvador

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.

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.