EL SALVADOR REJOICES AT WAR'S END

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 17, 1992                   TAG: 9201170266
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR                                LENGTH: Medium
EL SALVADOR REJOICES AT WAR'S END
With ringing church bells and fireworks, religion and rock 'n' roll, thousands of Farabundo Marti National Liberation front guerrillas and their supporters celebrated the end of a 12-year civil war Thursday under a searing midday sun in the downtown here.
Rebel banners draped the Metropolitan Cathedral, where two rebel radio stations - Venceremos and Farabundo Marti - broadcast live to combatants in the mountains.
Emboldened by the signing of the peace accords in Mexico, many in the crowd waved red "FMLN" flags and wore T-shirts emblazoned with the guerrilla insignia - as if the letters stood for a university team rather than a clandestine army.
"This is beautiful. We're tired of so much war," said Amilcar Aguirre, 23, a bricklayer waving a flag. "Before, if you carried a flag like this, they killed you. But it's different now."
For the first time since the war began, the Farabundo Marti front appeared with paid advertisements on mainstream radio and television and in the right-wing Prensa Grafica newspaper.
Throughout the day, Salvadoran television showed scenes from more than a decade of violence: guerrillas in training, government soldiers spilling out of a helicopter, civilians fleeing combat and the U.S. Border Patrol nabbing illegal immigrants. It recalled the rebel kidnapping of then-President Jose Napoleon Duarte's daughter in 1985 and her return 44 days later in exchange for 37 guerrilla prisoners.
Leftist and right-wing politicians assassinated during the conflict were shown alive in interviews, then dead at their gruesome murder scenes.
Viewers saw Msgr. Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, gunned down by a right-wing death squad while saying Mass in March 1980. "I beg you, I plead with you, in the name of God . . . stop the repression," Romero said in a recording of one of his most famous sermons.
Jaime Molino, 35, recalled the horror of Romero's funeral, which erupted in bloody chaos when explosions went off among the mourners and unidentified gunmen shot from the National Palace.
"I was here when they buried Romero and at first I was afraid to come back," Molino said as he stood on the second floor of the now-abandoned palace. "But then I felt we had sufficient guarantees [with the accords]. I am happy that we have symbolically taken the palace."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB