Editor's Note — This is the first of a two-part column which will be continued tomorrow.

We spent our first day in El Salvador rolling through enormous valleys surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that towered high into clouds. I was traveling with Karl, a Canadian bicycling his way down to Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina, the southernmost tip of South America.

On our second day we met the Glicks, a Mennonite family from Pennsylvania. During our two days on their farm, they showed us the new school they had built, and a couple of the five churches they've constructed. I even helped gather eggs from under hens which the Glicks sell to help pay for the doctor and medicines at the clinic they started for the poor.

The week prior to our arrival, after 22 years of living in El Salvador, the Glicks experienced a violent encounter on the farm. Two armed men robbed them of $40 one early evening.

After a relaxing stay with the Glicks, Karl and I bicycled into Santa Ana, a beautiful city of intricate architecture. The wealth there takes me by surprise. El Salvador seems to have a higher standard of living in comparison to the other Central American republics (on par with Costa Rica).

The following day Karl and I pedaled up and around the majestic Lake Coatepeque until the mountains let us down into an immense valley and brought us to the huge farm cooperative of San Isidro.

We were warmly invited into the cooperative and put up for the evening in the home of a kind family. It was just after dinner when the reality of El Salvador caught up to us, and knocked on the family's door. Six Salvadoran soldiers, armed with their M-16 assault rifles, came to tell Karl and I their colonel wanted to see us.

Karl and I spent the night locked in a Salvodoran jail, were interrogated four times and finally shipped off to San Salvador, where we were released to our respective embassy representatives. We had biked into the department of a nervous colonel who doesn't like gringos; so he picked us up, put our bicycles on a truck and shipped us out of his sight.

Once at a hotel, a few hours after our release, I meet a Canadian who came to El Salvador to see some Salvadoran refugees who were to return from a refugee camp in Nicaragua. He never saw his friends -- the eight refugees had "disappeared" at the Salvadoran border.

In less than a 24-hour period, I was taught El Salvador's true character. Lawlessness.

In the capital, San Salvador, drivers blatantly ignore traffic signals and signs. The military police can stop you, throw you up against a wall and shake you down because you may look different. And I found out the beautiful Mennonite family was robbed again at gunpoint.

This time, the Glicks know who the men are, where they live and have witnesses that can identify the men. The national police and army refuse to respond to the Glicks' calls for help. Lawless.

The week after my release, I visited the offices of FECMAFAM, the umbrella organization for the families and friends of the disappeared. This organization includes COMRADES, "The Mothers of the Disappeared," a group founded by Monsenor Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who was assassinated in 1980 by a government-tied hitman. Lawlessness.

Margarita, FECMAFAM's public relations director, spoke with me for an hour and a half. In an hour and a half, I was taught El Salvador's true character.

With only a heavy, bulky pile of documentation between us, Margarita described how death squad activity, disappearances and assassinations have picked up considerably this past year. Peasants, labor organizers, church layworkers and students continue to be a majority of the assassinated or disappeared.

Since the late 70's, FECMAFAM estimates there have been 40,000 Salvadorans disappeared and 60,000 killed, due to government-sponsored violence. Repressive.

Throughout the week after my arrest, the students from the University of El Salvador were protesting in front of the Ministry of Treasury, demanding a budget for the school year. The government had allotted funds only through the end of September.

The students were demanding $3.3 million, the 5 percent of the national budget the Constitution of El Salvador requires the government to pay. Or so says the law . . .

The week-long demonstrations would culminate the following Tuesday, September 13th, when all the schools of the university would join and march through the streets of San Salvador.

The U.S. Embassy warned me, Karl warned me and a student who spoke of "disorder" that has a tendency to break out at demonstrations warned me not to go. Did I listen? No. Karl just shook his head reproachfully as I prepared to leave the morning of the march.

I knew if I went to that demonstration and participated in a political event of a foreign country, I could be arrested . . . again. I knew if I were caught, I would be deported. I knew there was a chance of violence breaking out. I arrived at the University of El Salvador at 8 a.m. sharp with camera in hand.

I decided to attend that march with the students, first because I didn't just want to read about the "subversive students" in the right wing press the following day. I wanted to speak with the students, hear their side of the Salvadoran reality.

Second, although I dared not breathe the word while inside El Salvador, I went to the march as a journalist. Third, I went in solidarity with those students demanding their constitutional budget to continue their education. A university is a place where students are made, ideas are presented to students to open new channels of thought and the "intellectuals" of a country are gathered to test and expand these ideas. Is it any wonder the government doesn't want to appropriate funds to the university?

When I arrived that Tuesday morning, as students put on hats and bandanas to cover their faces from government agents, I caught up with Deanne and Edson, two close friends from Guatemala. At 10 a.m., we headed out together, with 3,000 university students and workers, past the gates of the university and onto the streets of San Salvador.

The demonstration must have been three kilometers long because as I stood perched above the students' heads on a sign, I could not see the end of the march. What I did see was an impressive, non-violent demonstration with thousands of flags, dozens of banners, cars with loudspeakers, students with bullhorns and 3,000 students and workers shouting a litany of prepared calls.

This non-violent march seemed very effective and was well received by onlookers. Many people cheered us on and donated what money they could.

The hour-and-a-half march moved down from the university five kilometers into the heart of San Salvador, past the National Assembly, the Cathedral, Central Square and up to the Ministry of Treasury.

It was there, after we turned off the main road to the Treasury, that the demonstration came to a halt. After a half minute, we were signaled to continue on.

Almost immediately though, after that brief stop, students started running from the back of the march up towards Deanne, Edson, myself and the rest of the demonstrators. That's when the gunfire broke out.