Salvadoran

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- A spate of bombings in Cuba this summer was the work of a ring of Salvadoran car thieves and armed robbers directed and financed by Cuban exiles in El Salvador and Miami, a two-month investigation by the Miami Herald shows.The ring's leader is reputed to be Francisco Chavez, son of an arms dealer with close ties to Cuban exiles. Chavez may have been in Havana just hours before the first bomb exploded at the luxury Melia Cohiba Hotel.The Salvadorans were only delivery boys for the bombs, paid and taught to assemble the explosives by a Cuban exile -- a man in his 30s who has participated in several other anti-Castro operations in Central and South America, according to the Herald.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. government allowed a former commander in El Salvador's leftist guerrilla army to settle in the United States and receive thousands of dollars in payments as an informant even though officials at the CIA and the Justice Department were convinced he had been involved in the killing of six Americans in 1985, a new report has concluded.In a summary of a classified report on the matter, the inspectors general of the CIA and the departments of State, Justice and Defense cited contradictory claims about whether U.S. diplomats or intelligence agents were ultimately responsible for allowing the former rebel into the country in 1990 in return for his services as an informant.

ON APRIL 22, 1981, 12 citizens of El Salvador residing in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, along with five of their children, were arrested at their home by agents of the National Investigations Directorate (DNI), a branch of the Honduran police.Most of these people were members of two extended families, Barrillas and Navarro, and they included three generations of the Navarro family. One of those detained, Nora Gomez de Barrillas, had been secretary to Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, earlier slain by an unknown gunman while celebrating Mass.

Serious Problems?When I read of Congress' attempts to find painless ways to cut the budget, increase military spending, continue tobacco and sugar subsidies and, at the same time, reduce taxes, I am reminded of a remark made by a former foreign minister of France who was recently quoted by Time magazine: "It is hard to take seriously a nation which has deep problems if they can be fixed by a 50-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline."Dan LynchBaltimoreViolence and DeathThank you for The Sun's special report on Battalion 316 which operated in Honduras in the early 1980s.

Before the 1992 peace accord, Rene Cajura was a member of a guerrilla army in El Salvador that the United States was spending millions of dollars to help defeat.Yesterday, Mr. Cajura, a member of the political party that evolved from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, was in Baltimore with a delegation of 22 mayors visiting this country to study the nuts and bolts of democracy and bureaucracy.After a day and a half in the United States, Mr. Cajura, who is mayor of Nejapa near San Salvador, said he was taken with the wealth here as compared with El Salvador, which is trying slowly to rebuild after the ravages of more than a decade of civil war. Looking out the window of his hotel near Baltimore-Washington International Airport, for example, he was impressed by the landscaping and the sea of green he saw stretching to the horizon.

Here's a fresh take on trendy East-meets-West cuisine. Salvadoran immigrant Miguel Rivera had worked in Chinese restaurants for years before deciding to open his own place in a storefront on Broadway. He painted the pressed-tin ceiling and walls salmon and peach, kept the crystal chandelier, added an extra-large bottle of Tabasco sauce to each table, and there you go: Baltimore's first Salvadoran- Chinese restaurant.There's no melding of cuisines here; you simply have lots of choices. Tamales or spring rolls?

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)

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.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. -- Grocery bags with a 9-year-old Salvadoran boy's story of how he illegally reached California are headed for a shredder this week, after enraged residents succeeded in getting the bags withdrawn.The incident is the latest evidence of the growing disdain for illegal immigrants in California. Gov. Pete Wilson has blamed the undocumented aliens for the state's laggard economy, saying that the immigrants drain the budget by clogging welfare rolls and medical clinics.Tensions have been particularly high here in Marin County, a wealthy San Francisco suburb that in recent years has become a refuge for thousands of immigrants, including many who work as gardeners and construction laborers.

SONSONATE, El Salvador -- Leftist presidential candidate Ruben Zamora, flanked by former guerrillas who until recently were waging civil war, gazed out yesterday over the smattering of red flags waving in this town's central plaza.The left's opponents "want to look at a past of suffering and explosion . . . a past that must be left behind," he told the small crowd. The leftists, he said, "want to walk to the future . . . a future that we dreamed of, fought for, year after year."In their first foray into civilian politics, El Salvador's former guerrillas have positioned themselves as the country's second major political force going into elections next Sunday, polls show.