El Salvador, the most densely-populated state on the mainland of the Americas, is a small and highly-industrialised country.
In the 1980s, El Salvador was ravaged by a bitter civil war stoked by gross inequality between the overwhelming majority of the population and a small and wealthy elite that left around 70,000 people dead.
A United Nations-brokered peace agreement ended the civil war in 1992, ushering in important political reforms, but the country still suffers from the legacy of a divided society.
Violent "mara" street gangs have left El Salvador with one of the world's highest murder rates.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19401932