[PULSE.NG] Gang-plagued El Salvador and neighboring Honduras and Guatemala form the "Northern Triangle", the world's most violent region outside of a conflict zone.
Its murder rate has halved since 2015, but remains among the world's highest. In 2018 it stood at 51 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to government figures.
Most murders are committed by gangs such as the ultra-violent Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, involved in drug trafficking, extortion and turf wars.
The country has around 70,000 gang members, 17,000 in prison.
Violence and poverty have generated a wave of illegal immigration towards the United States.
US-DEPENDENT ECONOMY
El Salvador sent more than 44 percent of its exports to the United States in 2017, according to the World Bank.
It produces textiles, coffee, plastics and medicine, among other items.
Remittances from the three million Salvadorians living abroad -- 2.5 million in the United States -- account for roughly 16 percent of GDP, according to the country's central bank.
The World Bank says around 29 percent of the population of 6.37 million (2017) lives under the poverty line, down from nearly 32 percent in 2014.
Over 2010-2016 real GDP growth averaged 2.6 percent, one of the weakest rates in Central America, the Bank says, forecasting 2.8 percent for 2018.
NATURE'S CURSE
The smallest country in Central America, El Salvador is situated on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" that makes it vulnerable to earthquakes and cyclones.
A quake in 1986 killed 1,500 people and two in 2001 each claimed several hundred more lives.
The site of Joya de Ceren, buried under a volcanic eruption in AD 600 as Pompeii was, is on UNESCO's World Heritage List. 
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