El Salvador Revolt Under the Coconut Palms

F.M.L.N. rebels prepare for their boldest assault since1981

El Salvador's Santa Ana volcano juts majestically over a verdant carpet of coffee bushes, coconut palms and banana trees, and the occasional clump of peasant shacks. Nine years of civil war have racked vast portions of the country, but Santa Ana and the rest of western El Salvador have hardly been touched.

Now all that is changing.

Hidden beneath the foliage, several hundred guerrillas of the People's Revolutionary Army (E.R.P.), the strongest of five factions that make up the 10,000-member Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, have begun battling government forces for control of the economically vital region. "Cirilo," the western regional...

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