El Salvador

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Marcelo Guerrero devotes part of each day to hustling lottery tickets in San Salvador. The rest of his time he whiles away in the sprawling shanty village of Zacamil on the edge of the capital, waiting for the government to build him a new house from a nearby pile of concrete blocks. While his two children splash through streams of urine and dirty water, Guerrero reflects on the prospects for his -- and his country's -- future. "Peace would be nice," he murmurs, "but it won't change my life much."

Many in El Salvador share Guerrero's gloomy assessment. People are delighted that for the first time since 1980, and after the loss of 75,000 lives, the government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) are at war no more. But they also realize that the long-term outlook for the country is dismal. The peace treaty signed last week in Mexico City, which goes into effect Feb. 1, is no guarantee that El Salvador's 5.4 million people can prevail in the other battle that they have been steadily losing -- the one against poverty and hopelessness.

Politicians and diplomats have already coined a phrase, "the crisis of peace," for the postwar dilemma. Aside from the obstacles posed by unrepentant zealots on both sides in the protracted political struggle, there is a legitimate question about whether the country will function any better united than it does when bloodily riven. Poverty, social inequality, overreliance on U.S. financial handouts, simmering disputes over land and ideology, and a choking residue of hatred from the war all conspire against success in rebuilding the shattered land. Says National Assembly Vice President Ruben Zamora, who is close to the insurgents: "Peace generates huge expectations among the people that cannot possibly be met. The war was always the excuse for everything: no water, no electricity, no jobs. But the fact is, peace won't fix these problems."

Salvadorans need look no further than Nicaragua. The 1990 election of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was greeted with widespread relief for ending nearly 11 years of incompetent rule by the Sandinista National Liberation Front and almost a decade of warfare with the U.S.-backed contras. Chamorro's government moved quickly to end the fighting and rekindle relations with the U.S.

Yet the transition has had only mixed success. American aid is again flowing, but the country has a long way to go toward reconciliation. Discharged troops from the Sandinista army and the contras roam the country robbing civilians to feed themselves. The Sandinistas have caused trouble ; whenever they can, organizing public strikes and threatening violence and disorder in the streets. Chamorro has shown an unhealthy tendency to concentrate power among her inner circle of friends and relatives.

El Salvador faces similar perils. The pain and injustice etched by a dozen years of war, and the estimated $1.3 billion in related material damage, will not be erased by the stroke of a pen. The army, which bears responsibility for the majority of wartime human-rights abuses, and the F.M.L.N., which prolonged the fighting during the lengthy peace talks, cannot abandon innate suspicions of each other. As a result, though Salvadorans will be technically at peace, they will face tension and fear, if not outright hostility, for the foreseeable future.