Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Jane Chambers and in this

edition of Assignment I'm in El Salvador, the Central American country once known as one of the most dangerous places in the world

due to widespread gang violence.

I'll be taking a look at how a government crackdown has turned things around. It's Sunday morning and a group of teenagers are

busy playing football on a pitch which I have to say hasn't got much grass on it it's

mostly dirt. We're surrounded by palm trees, it's

extremely hot. They look very happy racing about. They've got various spectators

sitting in the shade. I'm dangerously near the ball now. It just went out onto the street

they had to go and collect it and they look very very happy and this is something that

would not have been possible a few years ago.

I'm here with Miguel Ankel who's just been playing in the match.

He looks pretty sweaty and hot but happy.

The good news is that there were no injuries and we won the

match. What's it like have you been always able to play football here?

Around three years ago we couldn't have come here for a match.

We could only play where we lived.

If someone arrived from another neighborhood, we were scared that the gangs would do something, even if the players didn't belong to a gang.

It was all about where you came from and what gang oversaw that area, and this was a hot spot for violence but now

things are much better and people come from different places it's more

competitive now and we can have a proper tournament.

Coach Jaime standing nearby tells me that once the gangs saw a teenager from another town carrying

a football and shot him on site. Daily episodes of violence were commonplace

...