BUSH TRIP FINDS CENTRAL AMERICA STILL MIRED

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - The United States lavished money and concern on
El Salvador during its 12-year civil war, and in the decade since the
fighting ended, Jose Jacobo Jimenez has held fast to the idea that this
nation's hard-fought democracy must still matter to Washington.

"Today, El Salvador is united with the United States," said Jimenez, a
security guard. "They should take us into account."

He really wants the United States to take him in. The needs here are deep
and lingering, he said: too much crime and not enough jobs or housing. Like
many Salvadorans, Jimenez has found the rewards of peace and political
loyalty to be elusive. He now hopes the United States will remember the
past by allowing him to move there.

"Everything is difficult here," Jimenez said. "We'd like to go there
because you can work better. The hard part is getting there."

Postwar disillusionment

When President Bush arrives here today for a Central American summit
meeting on free trade, security and migration, he will encounter a region
transformed yet stubbornly familiar. During the past decade, peace accords
ended grisly Cold War conflicts between authoritarian governments and
Marxist guerrillas, and made way for nascent democracies where the former
combatants trade political barbs, not bullets. Human rights are generally
respected, armies have been scaled back, and civilians dominate the
political discourse.

But the disillusionment of people like Jimenez, who thought life after war
would be safe and prosperous, is also part of the U.S. legacy. Violent
crime plagues large cities, and despair afflicts countless peasant farmers
who have suffered drought, official neglect and plummeting prices for their
crops.

Courts and prosecutors struggle to reform justice systems as people clamor
for safer streets and an end to the impunity enjoyed by organized
criminals, corrupt officials and past violators of human rights, including
some who were once allies of Washington in the fight against communism.

For Bush, whose administration includes several officials who guided U.S.
policy in Central America in the 1980s, this trip is intended to send a
clear signal that the region has not drifted into the shadows after Sept.
11 and remains a valued ally. Central American leaders have been buoyed by
the visit, hoping for a trade pact to bolster their economies and
extensions of protected immigrant status for their countrymen in the United
States who send home much-needed dollars.

However, taking a hard look at Bush's political priorities, Central
Americans are coming to realize that this isthmus of small countries is
unlikely to regain the importance it once commanded.

Fruits of U.S. intervention

"The '80s were a strange episode where the United States was concerned
about Soviet advances in the Third World at the same moment that the region
experienced social revolution," said William LeoGrande, a professor of
government at American University. "The U.S. focused intently on the region
for that. There is a feeling that the U.S. put a lot of money and attention
to the region during the war and in some sense helped fuel the war. In a
sense, we owe the region more for reconstruction."

Those who supported the anti-communist policies of the United States see
today's Central America as a vindication of their efforts. In El Salvador,
Nicaragua and Guatemala, wars ended, elections were held and free-market
changes were adopted to attract investment. Political dissent no longer
brings a swift death sentence.

The region's governments value good relations with the United States and
have pledged to help fight terrorism and drugs. U.S. troops have returned
to the region to assist in counternarcotics efforts, even in Nicaragua,
where reservists have run training exercises and provided aid.

"There is genuine peace," said a senior U.S. official. "The three countries
that had wars have had one election after another, clean and in peace, and
the results have been respected. This is a major step forward."

Yet the past continues to haunt the region. The crime wave is fueled by
easy access to weapons left over from war. Political parties born of the
Cold War conflict have been unable to move beyond old divisions to win the
allegiance of an increasingly cynical public.

Oppression in Guatemala

Perhaps nowhere are the challenges as daunting as in Guatemala, where a
36-year war left some 200,000 dead, mostly at the hands of the government.
A peace accord full of bold language and optimism ended the shooting, but
it has hardly brought tranquillity.

Human rights groups have repeatedly been subjected to intimidation,
break-ins and surveillance. Earlier this month 11 forensic anthropologists,
who helped unearth evidence used in cases against present and former
officials accused of genocide, received death threats.

A member of an opposition political party was murdered.

Although President Alfonso Portillo came to office promising to dismantle a
military intelligence group linked to assassinations and human rights
abuses, he has not.

A shadowy alliance of former and present military officers is believed to
be involved in organized crime, including drug trafficking.

In a sign that civilian rule remains tentative, a recent government
directive requires local police commanders to submit daily reports to
military officers.

Lawlessness in El Salvador

El Salvador "is a small place and to the extent it was known in the world,
it was known for its civil war," said a Western diplomat. Now, the diplomat
added, "it is probably the most successful U.N. peacekeeping effort in
history."

Yet even here people fear for their safety in the face of lawlessness, as
the years after the peace accords turned out to be almost as violent as the
civil war. Kidnappings became common, and not just among the rich, with
people sometimes held hostage for a few hundred dollars.

While soldiers were dismissed and rebels demobilized, governments did not
do enough to provide them with land or jobs, said Laura Chinchilla, the
former minister of security for Costa Rica. A culture of violence that
helped many survive in war fostered the growth of organized criminal gangs.
The situation has been complicated by a U.S. policy of deporting criminals,
including many street gang members.

Security has become crucial for democracy, Chinchilla said. "If we do not
see a successful response to that," she said, "there is a temptation on the
part of citizens and government to resort to authoritarian measures."

U.S. officials, criticized for neglecting the region in recent years, have
begun to warn governments that they should not use the fight against
terrorism as a pretext to roll back democratic reforms.

Bush also has emphasized that corruption will not be tolerated in the name
of national security. Last week, to back that up, the State Department
revoked the visa of a retired Guatemalan general and adviser to President
Alfonso Portillo who is suspected of drug trafficking.