CENTRAL AMERICA WAITS FOR DIVIDENDS OF PEACE

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

When President Bush arrives here on Sunday for a Central American summit
meeting on free trade, security and migration, he will encounter a region
transformed yet stubbornly familiar. During the last 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 Mr. Jimenez, who thought life after
war would be safe and prosperous, is also part of the American 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 Mr. Bush, whose administration includes several officials who guided
United States policy in Central America in the 1980's, 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 President 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.

"The 80's 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 M. 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. American troops have
returned to assist in counternarcotics efforts, even in Nicaragua, where
reservists have run training exercises and provided aid.

"There is genuine peace," said a senior United States 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.

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 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
directive requires local police commanders to submit daily reports to
military officers.

Mr. Portillo faces mounting criticism over the recent disclosure that he
and several close associates opened bank accounts in Panama.

Efforts to carry out the peace accords have "stalled because the government
has had no will since they were signed," said Jaime Reina, a college
student. "It was all a show."

A different hurdle faces Nicaragua, where the United States backed an army
of contra rebels that fought the Sandinista government until it ultimately
called free elections in 1990. The divisions of the past, while peaceful,
nonetheless continue to be the defining political framework.

Memories of economic free fall, confiscation of property and forced
military service under the Sandinistas are fresh in the minds of opponents
and their backers. Those recollections were encouraged by American
officials during last year's presidential election, when Daniel Ortega, the
former Sandinista president, lost to a longtime nemesis, Enrique Bolanos,
the Liberal Party candidate.

Mr. Bolanos has vowed to root out corruption, and he may already have a
target in former President Arnoldo Aleman, who has been tainted by
accusations of cozy land deals and a recent scandal involving the theft of
hundreds of millions of dollars from a television station.

El Salvador comes out looking like the region's postwar success story. The
peace accords there, brokered by the United Nations, led to essential
reforms that included reducing the size of the army, demobilizing the
guerrillas and establishing a civilian police force.

For a while they also propelled the country into a period of robust
economic growth, with businesses competing to meet long pent-up consumer
demands. Foreign-owned apparel factories came with thousands of jobs for a
people famed throughout the region as hard workers.

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 United Nations 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 United States policy of deporting
criminals, including many street gang members.

Security has become crucial for democracy, Ms. 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."

United States 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.

President Bush has also 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
Mr. Portillo who is suspected of drug trafficking.

"I have always believed that the source of instability in Central America
was not poverty, but the lack of democracy," said Robert A. Pastor, a
former National Security Council official and a professor of political
science at Emory University. "Now that the countries are democratic, but of
a very fragile nature, this is the moment we could have the most decisive
impact on their long-term security."