When TIME Correspondent James Willwerth went to Mexico City in the fall of 1980, he anticipated a fairly quiet tour of duty. Says he: "I foresaw a few stories about the Mexican oil boom, an occasional look at Nicaragua's revolution, and a side trip or two to report on Mayan ruins." He was wrong. "I had been in the region a few weeks," he recalls, "when death squads in El Salvador wiped out the entire leadership of the only center-left group trying to work within that country's system. A few days later, Salvadoran national guardsmen murdered three American nuns and a lay missionary. The past 15 months in Central America have all too often been as dramatic, painful and fast-moving as those first weeks."

For Willwerth, who served 14 months as a correspondent in Viet Nam, covering the Salvadoran insurgency has revived old and unwanted memories. "The countryside is strikingly similar to Viet Nam's," he says. "One afternoon, another reporter, also a Saigon press veteran, and I were sitting on a porch in northern Morazan province, looking out over a garden filled with tropical flowers. Just then a U.S.-made 'Huey' helicopter flapped overhead. We looked at each other, startled. Both of us had flashed back ten years to Viet Nam." Caribbean Bureau Chief William McWhirter, on his third extended reporting trip to El Salvador last week, also compares his experiences with Viet Nam. "In some ways," he says, "the risks here are greater, but that is because there are still chances to see and report on both sides in this conflict." Longtime Caribbean Correspondent Bernard Diederich, reporting from Nicaragua, draws a different parallel: to the 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic. "Some say the invasion restored democracy," says Diederich; "others say it slowed its return. But it was costly to all."

Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott just completed a tour through Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala to learn how U.S. policy looks from Central America. "Arriving in Guatemala in the violent aftermath of last week's elections," he reports, "and meeting with defense officials, I found an embattled, suspense-charged atmosphere that reminded me of western films, in which the gunslingers are getting ready for high noon." On a different front, Washington Correspondent Johanna McGeary has also been covering the Salvadoran conflict, but long-distance at the State Department. She has been reporting what she calls "the war of the words--sorting out fact from fiction, explaining the Reagan Administration's controversial policy, and recognizing that on this subject, no sources are wholly credible."

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