Salvadoran

WASHINGTON -- An inquiry by a special panel of House Democrats into the killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989 has concluded that there is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that the crime was plotted by senior Salvadoran army officers, including the current defense minister, according to an internal report.A six-page internal memo concludes that Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce, now defense minister and then army chief of staff, and other officers planned the attack at a meeting at the Salvadoran military academy the day before the killings, which caused an international outcry and hardened the resistance of El Salvador's leftist guerrillas to negotiations with the government.

SAN JOSE LAS FLORES, El Salvador -- For 11 years, An Ayala was a guerrilla fighter for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) during this country's civil war.Now, the war has been over for nearly a year. She has exchanged her M16 for a cooking pot and the other trappings of a housewife in the Latin American mode.And like many of the other women who risked their lives with the FMLN, she has rediscovered a more intransigent enemy."I'm bored of living in the same place all the time without being with lots of people," says the 28-year-old Mrs. Ayala.

One of the joys of living in a city is the abundance of restaurants that offer authentically prepared ethnic food at bargain prices. Baltimore's growing Salvadoran population has recently added to this wealth of urban epicurean diversity. It's helped Charm City achieve a milestone: When it comes to Latin cooking, we are now a community with more than just Tex-Mex.Open up the menu at Restaurante San Luis in Fells Point and you will see this is not your parents' Chi-Chi's. Expect to find fried plantains, marinated cabbage and pupusas.

El Salvador's long-awaited peace accord puts extraordinary pressure on the United States to put extraordinary pressure on the militants who have brought 12 years of death and destruction to that poor little country. While the collapse of Marxist-Leninist mythology has already isolated leftist extremists and forced them to the negotiating table, right-wing ultras in the Salvadoran military remain a potent obstacle to peace. They must now be isolated and cut off from money and armaments -- a task only Washington can fulfill.

Baltimore's first Salvadoran-Chinese restaurant might sound like a gastronomical oddity, but nothing could have come more naturally to proprietor and chef Miguel Angel Rivera.Mr. Rivera, 41, a Salvadoran immigrant, spent a decade as a dishwasher, busboy, waiter and cook in Chinese restaurants before launching his own enterprise this month.Restaurante San Luis, his fledgling business at 246 S. Broadway in Upper Fells Point, is a blend of his culinary experiences. It serves up tamales and spring rolls, sopa de mondongo (tripe soup)

MEXICO CITY -- The Salvadoran government and leftist rebels are to meet here April 4 through April 23 in what is being billed as the final diplomatic "endgame" to halt the 11-year-old civil war, a senior Nicaraguan government official said yesterday.The official, interviewed by telephone, refused to be identified but said, "I think everyone is anxious for an agreement. I have never been more optimistic."Salvador Samayoa, a member of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front's diplomatic commission here, refused to confirm the dates in an interview yesterday.

The connection was forged during the Salvadoran civil war and nurtured through times of poverty and upheaval.This week, members of St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Columbia met with their brethren at the parish of San Roque in San Salvador, the Columbia church's sister parish since 1987.The Rev. Richard Henry Tillman and three church members, who return Friday, made the week-long trip to deliver $5,000 in medical supplies and 33 pairs of prescription eye glasses to needy Salvadorans.

WASHINGTON -- The Reagan administration knew more tha it publicly disclosed about some of the worst human rights abuses in El Salvador's civil war and withheld the information from Congress, declassified cables and interviews with former government officials indicate.Charges that the Reagan administration, and to a lesser extent the Carter and Bush administrations, may have covered up evidence of abuses to win congressional approval of about $6 billion in aid were revived with the release last week of a United Nations-sponsored report documenting widespread human rights violations by the Salvadoran military.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- A confidential list o Salvadoran officers to be purged from their military posts next month for reasons including human rights violations includes the defense minister, his deputy minister and more than 110 officers, according to people familiar with the list.The purge orders, seen as one of the most serious tests of civilian authority over the armed forces, have raised tensions to a new level here as a series of important deadlines, established in the peace accord reached last year, slip by."

San Salvador OVER ALL the signs of progress here, one stunning historic event hangs like a cloud that could shadow the future. Its color is black, the color of the robes of the Jesuit priests murdered two years ago.Beyond the horror of the murders, the case now invokes the question whose answer will determine whether El Salvador passes into the new era of peace, reconciliation and respect. Has the Salvadoran military really reformed, or does it remain at heart the bloodthirsty corps it has been for so long?