The Río Lempa flows just a mile from Jorge Rodríguez’s small farm, but few cool breezes stir along its denuded banks to ease the afternoon heat. As Rodríguez tends his eight cattle these days, the heat is what he notices most. Trees once abounded here—this is, after all, the basin of the longest river in Central America—but shade is now scarce in the fields around the hamlet of El Empalme. “Before, you used to be able to work until four in the afternoon,” recalls Rodríguez. “Now you cannot stand it past one o’clock.” Similar situations exist all over El Salvador, the country Rodríguez recently returned to after fleeing its bloody civil war. Some 70,000 died in that brutal, 12-year confrontation, which ended... [Log in to read more]