This set of images is a departure from my usual content, nature photography. It is a photographic journal. Since 1987 I have been to EL Salvador five times. Early trips during the war included time in territory held by the rebels, trips to refugee camps and being rescued from an overturned vehicle by members of a death squad. Later times included monitoring the 2009 Presidential elections which brought to power for the first time a member of the FMLN, the former rebel forces. The election photos are the subject of a second photographic essay available soon.

My experiences in El Salvador have been life changing. Most of the trips were with groups from my church, Central Baptist in Wayne, Pennsylvania. We were a sanctuary church for Salvadorans during the civil war and have had an ongoing relationship with a congregation in El Salvador for many years. This slide show has a variety of images from the most recent trips including the countryside, coast, and several smaller towns. Mountains and ocean, surfing, people living in some of the poorest villages and people in the marketplace, shops, doors, signs and streets, flowers and fruit, beautiful adults and children, and images remembering the bloody past - all present an insight into the beauty and contrast of conditions in this small country that has been through difficult and trying times of war and economic exploitation. Places depicted include Suchitoto, a progressive town overlooking Lake Suchitan; San Salvador; La Ruta de las Flores (the Route of the Flowers); San Bartolo, Lahoya and the Fourth of July (poor villages in the countryside); Nahuizalco, Salcoatitan and Ahuachapan. Images from the wall of the chapel at the University of Central America show the horrors of torture. The rose garden memorial marks the place where six Jesuit scholars from UCA were murdered with their housekeeper and her daughter on November 16, 1989. A painting shows their faces. This massacre by an elite unit of the Salvadoran Army which tried to masquerade it as an act of the FMLN rebel forces, marked a turning point in the civil war. A couple of walls in Suchitoto show Archbishop Romero, brutally assassinated while saying mass. A finger points to the name of Maria Christina Gomez Gonzales, a 41 year old school teacher and women's rights activist kidnapped as she was leaving classes on April 5, 1989, and killed shortly thereafter. She is one of the more than 28000 names on the Monument to Truth and Memory in San Salvador. All were murdered or disappeared during the 12 years of civil war. She is also honored with a room named for her in my church. I could fill a book with images and stories from my times in EL Salvador. This slide show gives a brief look at the beauty, the poverty, the pain and the hopefulness in the countryside and the people.