El Salvador

An earthquake registering 5.4 on the Richter scale and aftershocks jolted San Salvador on Friday, knocking tall buildings off their foundations, shaking adobe and brick buildings apart, sending terrified residents swarming into the streets and knocking out power and communications. More than 240 deaths and hundreds of injuries were reported. The death toll was expected to rise.

Under cloudless skies and a radiant sun, a couple of hundred Salvadorans dressed in white gathered early Saturday to name an intersection near downtown Los Angeles in honor of Msgr. Oscar A. Romero, a Catholic archbishop who was slain in 1980 during El Salvador's civil war and whom many consider a martyr. White doves were released; a tree was planted. Speakers recounted Romero's struggle on behalf of the poor and his assassination. His words - "If they kill me, I will be reborn in the Salvadoran people" - were invoked throughout the morning.

Joe Sanderson left his Midwestern hometown in his 20s with a backpack, a notepad and a dream of being a writer. Starting in the mid-1960s, he crossed the Pacific on a freighter, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and kept going, for two decades in all, traipsing across more than 60 countries. Everywhere he went, he kept a diary and wrote to Mom and Dad back home in Urbana, Ill. Shortly after arriving in this Central American country in 1979, Sanderson pulled off his most audacious feat yet: He joined a guerrilla army.

Jesse Linares, a journalist who helped launch the Spanish-language newspaper Hoy Los Angeles, died Saturday at Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center. He was 49 and had cancer. Linares worked at Hoy Los Angeles since its founding in 2004 and helped shape its coverage as he rose to the position of deputy editor. "Jesse was a fundamental part of Hoy. His love of journalism not only impacted our coverage, but the work of his co-workers," said Reynaldo Mena, Hoy's editor.

Like many other spouses of undocumented immigrants, Gina Pope constantly worries that her husband suddenly could be deported and that she would be left to raise their two children by herself. Pope, a U.S. citizen, wants to apply for him to get a green card but knows that would mean his traveling to his native Peru, with the risk of not returning for months or years. Now, after more than a decade of waiting for the immigration rules to change, Pope is cautiously optimistic that her husband, who owns a residential construction business and has a temporary work permit, may finally be able to become a legal resident.

WHEN I FIRST met Duke, he was ironing his shirt. "You gotta look clean, man! You can't go 'round with a creased shirt!" Like many homies, Duke was great at ironing. As I was to find out later, he also was handy with an AK-47. Duke was 30, handsome and charismatic, with a couple of lovely kids. He spoke his English straight out of the streets of Latino L.A.; he loved to rap, and he talked sentimentally about his homeboys, part of the Hollywood Locos section of the 18th Street gang.

"Political pilgrims" is a term coined to describe leftist intellectuals who credulously praised various Marxist dictators, while ignoring their abuses of power. But in the 1980s, it was an ultra-right-wing strongman, Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador, who benefited most from idealistic American apologists blind to grotesque abuses of human rights. D'Aubuisson's political pilgrims contributed to a reign of terror that claimed the lives of thousands of people.

Robert "Roberto" Rotherham stepped onto the black-sand beach before 6 a.m., cradling his well-worn surfboard. Gone are the times when he would tackle El Salvador's majestic waves alone. There were at least 30 other people out before dawn on this warm weekday morning. It was late March and the swells were the season's biggest yet. "Blessed by the good Lord," Rotherham said. El Salvador's surf has long been an open secret among the wave-wise aficionados who journey here from California, Europe and the rest of Latin America.

Eliseo Quintanilla scored on a penalty kick in the 85th minute to lift El Salvador to a crucial 2-1 victory over Mexico on Saturday in a World Cup qualifier. The result gives El Salvador some hope of reaching next year's World Cup finals in South Africa, while plunging Mexico into a deeper hole. Julio Martinez gave El Salvador the lead in the 11th minute, but Mexico's Cuauhtemoc Blanco scored on a penalty kick in the 71st.

Collective memory in El Salvador has long been a fragile commodity. An infamous 1932 government massacre of mainly Indian peasants was officially purged from history books for decades afterward. The country's brutal 12-year civil war of 1980-92 not only claimed tens of thousands of lives and razed entire villages. It also ravaged the country's heritage, fostering widespread amnesia about Salvadoran literature, music, indigenous culture and the performing arts. Over the next week, an ambitious multimedia happening with the umbrella title "Preservación de la Memoria Histórica Salvadoreña" (Salvadoran Preservation of Historic Memory)

The U.S. entered the CONCACAF Olympic qualifying tournament with high expectations. But it's going home empty-handed after Jaime Alas' goal in stoppage time lifted El Salvador to a 3-3 tie in the final game of group play Monday in Nashville, ending the Americans' Olympic soccer dreams. The U.S. was about a minute shy of the victory it needed to advance to the tournament semifinals as the winner of its group when Alas charged up the center of the American defense and uncorked a blast from 25 yards out that bounced once before eluding backup U.S. keeper Sean Johnson, who got a hand on the shot but couldn't stop it. That not only knocked the U.S. out of the tournament, but also it changed El Salvador's fortunes, with the Central Americans leaping from elimination to the top of the Group A standings ahead of Canada, which tied Cuba, 1-1, in Monday's first game and advances as the group runner-up.

There might be more at stake than simply a summer trip to London when the U.S. team opens play in the CONCACAF men's Olympic qualifying tournament Thursday in Nashville. Because with 14 of the 20 players on the American soccer squad coming from Major League Soccer teams, the eight-nation tournament can rightly be seen as a referendum on the progress of MLS as well. "It's a strong statement about our league and the development of young players that the Olympic tournament — a reflection of the strongest young players in each country — includes so many that are on our clubs," MLS spokesman Will Kuhn said.

My mother, reacting to the recent spate of alarmist headlines about "raging" violence and increased security measures affecting Peace Corps volunteers in Central America, has taken to calling me on a near-nightly basis. "Just needed to hear your voice," she says to explain the call. "I'm fine, Mom," I respond. Frankly, it's getting annoying. It's not that I don't appreciate the chance to speak with my mother. What bothers me is knowing that she is seriously worried.

Last weekend, leaders from around the Western Hemisphere gathered in Venezuela to inaugurate the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, a regional trade and security organization composed of 33 nations, including Cuba. The United States was noticeably excluded. In fact, in recent years it has been left out of a growing number of such groups. Now Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are threatening to further isolate the United States. They complain that President Obama's policies have alienated our allies in the region and want the administration to take a tougher stance on Cuba.

Los Angeles and Berlin became sister cities at the height of the Cold War in 1967. Now AirBerlin will link the two in a more direct way. The airline plans to begin nonstop flights between the German capital and Los Angeles in May. Germany's second-largest airline after Lufthansa says in a statement that the new service will run three times a week. A random search in May (May 19-26) showed an LAX-Berlin round trip for about 700 euros, about $960. The airline also is increasing Berlin-New York flights to daily service.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was touring Latin America this week, his second visit to the region in less than a year as part of a worldwide lobbying effort to gain recognition for a Palestinian state. Abbas met officials in the Colombian capital of Bogota on Monday, a day after announcing with President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador plans to establish diplomatic ties there. Until recently, El Salvador was one of Israel's closest allies in Latin America. "We are very interested in developing our relations with all the countries of the American continent," Abbas said in San Salvador, according to a Spanish translation of his remarks.

For anyone who witnessed the horror show of El Salvador's 12-year civil war, the ballot-box victory of former leftist guerrillas there on Sunday was a stunning development. Though it took another 17 years after the war ended, the country now joins Northern Ireland in demonstrating that it is possible for a rebel group to effect political change and assume power through peaceful means. That's a gratifying development.

Nine former Salvadoran soldiers and military officials were in custody Monday at an army base while fighting extradition to Spain in the killings of six Jesuit priests and two others during El Salvador's civil war. The Salvadoran government said in a statement that the men, among 20 ex-soldiers indicted by a Spanish judge in May, were in the custody of a civilian court that handles extradition cases. The suspects turned themselves in at the military installation Sunday afternoon, as Salvadoran police were preparing to arrest them on an extradition order from Interpol.

During El Salvador's civil war in the 1980s, this town was at the heart of a perilous battle zone, washed over by government soldiers one day, leftist guerrillas the next. The upheaval made Suchitoto an unhappy emblem of the conflict and heightened its isolation in the countryside, where economic progress has been elusive. The war is long over, but not the languor. Yet a project is afoot to invigorate Suchitoto, pushed by an unlikely crowd: theater aficionados. These boosters see theater as a spark for growth and desperately needed jobs — altering the face of their town with a little more "Our Town.