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Sounders playing in Santa Tecla, El Salvador — a town once devastated by a landslide that killed 585 but is now brightened by soccer

“Every sports team around the area has helped the community to get together,’’ says Santa Tecla midfielder Fernando Quintanilla.

SANTA TECLA, El Salvador — Local legend has it a “pact with the Devil’’ by its wealthy, much-despised original owner was what spared the century-old colonial mansion partway up the hillside from the worst natural disaster this city has ever known.

Emilio Flores, 64, a machete-wielding former soldier now paid to guard the abandoned “La Casa de Los Guirola,’’ swears he still hears screams of the dead when spending the night on its isolated grounds. Back on Jan.