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At age 18, Edgar Bolaños, known as Shy Boy, lives in fear of death. “There are lots of people who want to kill me.” he says. “I don’t mean homeboys. I mean really bad people from the organized crime rings and other people who just hate us. They think because I used to live in Los Angeles that I am the leader here. They are wrong, but they have lots of guns, big guns and we don’t have much of anything.”

How Edgar Bolaños Became Shy Boy in El Salvador

Text and photos by Donna DeCesare Soyapango, El Salvador — During pre-dusk hours when school children in crumpled uniforms race home, past the maquila factory workers wearily descending from buses, Shy Boy and his friends emerge alert and ready for business. They scatter

Donna DeCesare April 24, 1998
Ida Tarbell

The Lessons of Ida Tarbell 1

It does not look like anything especially impressive today. It sits on an out-of-the-way shelf, one of millions of volumes in a cavernous university research library. Its green cover has faded after 93 years of heavy use, occasional abuse and, ultimately, lack of

Steve Weinberg January 5, 1998
Russian peacekeepers line up for lunch at the Transdnestria border. Since the 1992 conflict subsided, in addition to Russia's reconstituted 14th Army based in Tiraspol, Russian and Moldovan soldiers have kept a joint watch on the border zone.

Independence Free Fall: The Collapse of Moldova’s Industrial Engine

Story by Andrew Meier with photographs by Mia Foster Tiraspol may be the bleakest of cities in the former Soviet Union. A gray town of some 50,000 beleaguered souls, it has not witnessed the destruction visited upon the Chechen capital, Crozny, nor the

Andrew Meier November 18, 1997
Newly-cut stone will be used to replace damaged sections of the Temple at Luxor.

Is Modern Egypt Obliterating its Past?

Built along the Nile in Southern Egypt, the town of Luxor is near the ancient city of Thebes, which served as the capital of Egypt during the period known as The New Kingdom (1,539-1070 BC). In just a few square miles, it contains

Alexander Stille November 14, 1997
Bruce C. Vladeck, the outgoing administrator of the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration.

The Medical Gold Rush for Poor Patients

Just a few short months ago, a New York medical insurance plan called AssureCare, Inc. hoped to reap hearty profits caring for thousands of society’s poorest people. Bankrolled by a Florida entrepreneur with a $480 million personal fortune, the HMO seemed likely to

Fred Schulte November 14, 1997
Miguel Tejada, of the Class A Modesto Athletics, stretches before a game, his teammates in the background. An amazing defensive shortstop, Tejada also shows great power at the plate. It is early in the 1996 season and he is showing the confidence of a player on the way up.

The Prospect

By Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas CERES, CA. – Ninety acres of Stanislaus County alfalfa swayed in the late summer breeze as four shirtless young Dominican men walked in bare feet to the field’s edge. With three carrying kitchen chairs

José Luis Villegas and Marcos Breton October 27, 1997
A Dutch member of the International Police Task Force in Bosnia talks to Muslim villagers at a NATO barricade erected to keep villagers out of the zone-of-separation and from the Serb territory, where their prewar homes are located.

The City of Brcko: The Key to Bosnia’s Future

The billboard signs along the roadways of northeastern Bosnia say it all. Superimposed on a map of the country is the outline of a key with “Brcko” on it. The old river city, historically a crossroads between Europe and the East, holds the

Maud Beelman October 27, 1997
Two Azeri girls are displaced persons following the war.

The Spoils of War: Report From Nagorno-Karabakh

Story by Andrew Meier with photos by Jacqueline Mia Foster You’ve won the war, now win the peace.” The words come to me from an old hand in the tangled politics of the Caucasus. We are sitting in a well-appointed foreign embassy in

Andrew Meier February 27, 1997
Though rusty from not playing daily, Santana still shows signs of brilliance as a smooth-fielding shortstop. His knee injury plagues him when he jogs. Young Latin players with injuries are replaced quickly in the American minor league system with other, even younger, recruits.

Lost in New York: Baseball’s Latin Ghetto

By Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas NEW YORK – They are discards and runaways, lost souls and drug dealers, day laborers and illegal immigrants, and to a man, old before their time. José Santana, 24, waits for a snack at

José Luis Villegas and Marcos Breton February 22, 1997
A schoolgirl photograph of Shirley Ann Davidson at age 15, in 1967.

Integration’s Victims: When Virginia Slammed the School Doors Shut

Six-year-old Shirley Ann Davidson had looked forward to starting school for a long time. Her mother had prepared her well, giving her the basics of arithmetic and reading from a Dick-and-Jane book to teach her the alphabet. During the summer before Shirley was

Don Baker February 7, 1997
Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru, has agreed to work with the president of Bolivia to remove coca from a United Nations blacklist. Photo by AP/Wide World

The Dialogue of the Deaf Over Coca

Quillabamba, Peru – The decrepit old theater, filled with hand-lettered signs and women in bowler hats passing out coca leaves, seemed worlds away from the high living associated with the illegal drug trade. So did the calls for all-out war on “el narcotráfico.”

Corinne Schmidt February 7, 1997
If there is no more army, who needs the military boots? They are for sale on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

Does Haitian Justice Have to be an Oxymoron?

It was in a US military helicopter going from Port-au-Prince to Hinche that I first met a representative of the Haitian justice after the return of the exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was made possible by the soft-entry invasion of US troops in Haiti

Anna Husarska February 4, 1997
An aerial view of part of Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley shows ravaged patches of jungle which have been cleared by peasants for the illegal cultivation of coca bushes. Use of the pesticide Spike over the area, which is at the experimental stage, could further damage the ecosystem, according to environmental advocates. Photo by AP/Wide World Photos.

The Lure of a Criminal Cash Crop

TINGO MARIA, Peru. – On her farm in a hollow in Peru’s high jungle, one woman’s pride are her tropical fruit trees. But she acknowledges that fruit doesn’t bring in money in. Nor does the coffee and cacao she and her husband grow.

Corinne Schmidt February 4, 1997
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Is the Government Losing its Memory?

Note: This article contained pictures that were copyrighted and could not be published on this Web page. Captions for those pictures appear in italics. Scholars of antiquity and the Middle Ages often complain of insufficient information with which to piece together the historical

Alexander Stille January 26, 1997
American-born, but of Dominican ancestry, Alex Rodriguez is a shortstop for the Seattle Mariners. He signed right out of high school with the team for $1.3 million in 1993.

The Imports

By Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas There was a time when America’s game was played by only three kinds of people: White Americans, black Americans and Latins. American-born, but of Dominican ancestry, Alex Rodriguez is a shortstop for the Seattle

José Luis Villegas and Marcos Breton October 26, 1996
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Hear No Evil, See No Evil: Early U.S. Policy in Yugoslavia

Note: This article contained pictures that were copyrighted and could not be published on this Web page. The small group of American diplomats were gathered in the secure room of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, debating what was holding Yugoslavia together and what

Maud Beelman October 26, 1996