El Salvador Perspectives

El Salvador now has a gleaming new national library in the center of San Salvador, courtesy of a donation by China.   The modern structure is located on Plaza Barrios in the historic center of the capital city, next to the old National Palace and directly across from the Metropolitan Cathedral.  President Nayib Bukele holds the building up as a symbol of the new El Salvador under his rule.    I had a tour of the library during the second week of January.  Although seven weeks had passed since the opening of the library to the general public, visitors still needed to wait outside on a weekday morning in a long queue to gain admittance through a guided tour.  Tours were given by smiling young people with internships, including tours given in English to foreign tourists who might want to see Bukele's library.   The first floors you encounter in the library are dedicated to children's books and learning from the earliest ages.  In addition t...

This week is Semana Santa (Holy Week) in El Salvador.   A week of religious celebrations commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and of vacations and time spent with family.  Although recent polling shows that fewer than 40% of Salvadorans now describe themselves as members of the Roman Catholic church, the cultural flavor of Semana Santa is deeply rooted in centuries of Roman Catholicism.  Here is a collection of videos to share some of the week's events in different parts of the country.  Palm Sunday procession in San Salvador: El #CentroHistóricoSS es la ruta de la fe. La procesión recorre: la iglesia El Rosario, Catedral y puntos emblemáticos. El corazón de El Salvador recibe a miles de feligreses en la primera actividad de la Semana Santa. ✝️⛪️ ¡Sin duda alguna, un día histórico!🌿 pic.twitter.com/xw1QcXwqGo — Alcaldía de San Salvador (@alcaldia_ss) April 2, 2023 Monday of Semana Santa in Sonsonate:   In Texistepeque, los Talcigui...

There is a wealth of coverage of El Salvador available in English this week on a potpourri of topics: Why is this Chicago cop training police in El Salvador? (Chicago Reader) --  "ITTA is a small police training company founded in Chicago that has trained more than 600 officers in El Salvador. That's problematic given the behavior of some of the U.S. officers running the program." El Salvador president gains most from prosecution of rivals  (InsightCrime) -- "The evidence used to indict several high-ranking politicians in El Salvador for negotiating with gangs has been around for years, raising questions about why prosecutors are bringing the cases now, and what President Nayib Bukele stands to gain." Challenges after an Attempted Self-coup in El Salvador  (El Faro English) -- "Bukele sees himself above the norms of his job, as well as free of legal formalities. He was set on demonstrating that his political experiment isn’t tied down to any rules. H...

Call me crazy, but I am completely annoyed by the arrival of "Black Friday" in El Salvador.   Starting a few years ago and exploding this year, Black Friday (or Black November or Black weekend) is all over the retail shopping space in El Salvador. After all, this shopping day originated in the US as the day after Thanksgiving, a holiday which does not exist in El Salvador.   Only the English word "black" is used to describe the sales.  In El Salvador Black Friday is purely a copycat marketing event of an equally annoying US marketing event.   There is a Wikipedia article on Black Friday which offers more information than anyone would care to know about this marketing event.   According to Wikipedia, Black Friday has increasingly been adopted by retailers across the world since 2010, with the shopping date recognized from Romania and Latvia to New Zealand.  Just an example of the growing homogenization of global consumer culture.   ...

The beginning of November in El Salvador is filled with tradition. Every November 1 is the Calabiuza celebration in the town of Tonacatapeque, northeast of San Salvador.  The celebration includes a parade through the town of characters from Salvadoran folklore, especially those tales of the dangers of the night.   From Linda's El  Salvador blog : The legends of Tonacatepeque ... come to life as they do every year for the November 1st Fiesta de la Calabiuza. (Calabiuza is a word which is like the Spanish word calabaza which means "pumpkin" - but in the local vernacular means "skull.") Characters from imagination and legend wandered the cobbled streets and posed for photos....As the evening light grew dim, the characters gathered around their hand-drawn carts - some with metal bases, some constructed of wood and bamboo, most with big wooden wheels. Adorned with skulls, coffins, large paper-maché characters, and carved calabiuza skulls, the carts were design...

A real estate developer in El Salvador has spent almost nine months bulldozing and erecting houses on top of an important archaeological site in the department of Sonsonate.   The builder ignored multiple orders by government authorities to stop its work, and the construction ceased only two weeks ago when a court order was finally being enforced . The archaeological site is called Tacuscalco, in the municipality of Nahuilingo in southwestern El Salvador.  Tacuscalco was the location of a pre-Colombian population of the Maya, Nahuat and Pipil people.  There is evidence of inhabitants at the site for more than 2500 years, giving the site significance for understanding the history of the original peoples of the region.  The site features in the history of the Spanish conquest of El Salvador, and is mentioned in the letters of conquistador Pedro Alvarado as the place where he met the Pipil in a bloody battle.  His defeat of the Pipil there resulted in the c...

Preparing live iguanas for dinner on a cooking competition show has generated controversy on social media in El Salvador.  From ReMezcla.com : Viewers were scandalized when Top Chef El Salvador, their local version of the American reality series, prepared live iguanas during primetime television. The show’s four finalists were tasked with slicing the reptiles into original dishes for the judges. While iguanas are a traditional food in El Salvador, it was the graphic nature of the program and the fact that the reptiles are a protected and endangered species that sparked outrage...On top of the broadcast, Top Chef El Salvador took to social media to share photos of the contestants cutting off the tails and skinning the creatures. All of these images have now been deleted. You can watch some of this culinary exhibition here: Top Chef pensó que cocinar especies amenazadas era algo que su público iba a disfrutar. pic.twitter.com/gx5TP6a6AF — AJ+ Español (@ajplusespanol) October...

Sunday was Palm Sunday or Día de los Ramos , and in El Salvador the Catholic faithful filled the  streets and churches with colorful celebrations of the start to Holy Week. Salvadoran media captured images from the day: ElSalvador.com:   images of Palm Sunday celebrations ElSalvador.com: photo gallery of Catholic youth presenting reenactment of passion of Christ ElSalvador.com: photo gallery of vendors who harvest palms to sell on Palm Sunday ContraPunto:   photo gallery from festivities in Nahuizalco Diario1.com:   images from different parts of the country SFTV:   images from Zacatecoluca ElSalvador.com:   video of Palm Sunday celebrations LaPrensa Grafica: video of Palm Sunday celebrations

The gang violence which continues to bedevil El Salvador has forced a suspension to archaeological investigations at Joya De Ceren.  According to an article published in El Faro, the archaeological team from the University of Colorado, which has been working at the site for almost 40 years, retired from the country in 2016.  El Faro published an article from Dr. Payton Sheets, the original discover of the ancient Mayan village now classified as a World Heritage Site. The scholars from Colorado had hoped to be working on important new excavations funded by a National Science Foundation grant during 2016-18.    Dr. Sheets, however,  pointed to two events in early 2016 which led his team to suspend their work.   The first was the murder of two close friends and collaborators who lived in the community Joya de Ceren.    The second was the massacre of eight electrical workers and three witnesses in a zone close to the archaeological site.   T...

In El Salvador, with its culture deeply rooted in Roman Catholicism, each Good Friday sees processions and religious events commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ.    Here are a collection of images and links to media galleries sharing sights from around the country. As Good Friday approaches, streets in many towns are covered with alfombras, colorful carpets of colored salt showing religious and artistic scenes: Photo - ElSalvador.com Gallery of alfombras at ElSalvador.com Those carpets would be walked across during Good Friday processions.  One of the most traditional and colorful is the Via Crucis procession in Nahizalco: Photo-Diario1.com Gallery of images from Nahuizalco at Diario1.com . Photo - ContraPunto.com Gallery from Nahuizalco at ContraPunto.com A procession through San Salvador: Photo - LaPrensaGrafica Gallery of images from San Salvador at LaPrensaGrafica Good Friday ends with processions of the...

Tens of thousands of Salvadorans dressed in white took to the streets today in a March for Life, Peace and Justice. The march had been called by the government and its National Council on Citizen Security and Social Peace.    It was supported by churches throughout the country who called for the faithful to join this demonstration for a more peaceful El Salvador.   The government numbered the marchers at half a million. Participating in a branch of the march which left from the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador to the Plaza Salvador del Mundo, auxiliary archbishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez stated  “We are happy with the response of the people and the atmosphere the reigns in this demonstration of hope, of joy, and also of commitment." President Salvador Sanchez Ceren used the occasion to announce that his government would soon introduce a law for reinsertion of gang members into society and for prevention efforts aimed at those at risk. El Salvador's need...

The online news site LaPagina has a photogallery of images from the historic center of San Salvador where vendors set up extra stalls during this time of the year to sell Christmas gifts and decorations.   See the whole gallery  here .   It's quite a contrast to the sterile luxury shopping malls like the Gran Via or the Galerias .

On the calendar of the Roman Catholic church, November begins with the holy days of All Saints and All Souls.   In El Salvador, it's time for a spooky parade and to remember one's departed relatives. The website My Tonaca has a  set of images  from this year's November 1 celebration of the  Calabiuza  in Tonacatapeque, with many pictures from the night's parade of people in costume with legendary folk images.   El Diario de Hoy has a video of the parade here . La Prensa Grafica has a photo gallery from November 2, the Day of the Faithful Departed, in which Salvadoran families visit, decorate, and commemorate at the graves of departed family members.

From time to time, I have pointed to the blog of Tim Lohrentz who writes about the indigenous history of El Salvador .    Most recently, Tim writes about a death and resurrection story in Maya-Lenca culture -- the story of One Hunahpu who is killed and then resurrected as a calabash squash.  As  he explains , it is a story with roots in history, agriculture and astronomy.  

Earlier this week, there were celebrations in El Salvador of the Day of the Cross.   It is a tradition which blends a celebration of the Christian cross with thankfulness for the start of the rainy season and the rains which will make the ground fertile once again.   Blogger Alisha, who lives in Berlin, El Salvador, has a great post this week describing the celebration in her community.  Here's an excerpt: When we arrived in Alejandría we first visited Blanca and Cecilia’s houses. Their families had both put out crosses of their own and decorated them. It was fun to see when other people’s crosses looked like. Blanca’s family had two crosses, both with mangos and real and paper flowers. We also saw Cecilia’s neighbor’s cross. She said there weren’t a lot of decorations on it but I thought it was beautiful. I loved the bougainvillea and green mangos that adorned the cross. The cross as Cecilia’s house, which I was told is Idalia’s cross, was very ornate. It had a plate o...

Linda of  Linda's El Salvador Blog  gave me permission to republish her recent post on popular Christmas culture in modern El Salvador. Holly Jolly Christmas We were driving through a holiday lights display, laughing at the animated images of Santa in his workshop and the bears in the bakery. With the fresh blanket of snow all around us, the lights were especially pretty. "When you were a little girl, did you celebrate Christmas with the story of Santa Claus?" I asked my friend from El Salvador. It was her second visit to the US - her first time in the snow. "Yes," she said. "The parents told the children about Santa Claus, but really, the parents made little gifts for their children. We had Christmas trees. The big stores had trees and decorations and you could visit Santa. Now, with electricity in the communities, people put lights on their Christmas trees. Some houses in the community have lights, but not as much as this," she said, pointing ...

El Salvador does not have Halloween, but there is La Calabiuza. On the evening of November 1, the residents of the Salvadoran town of Tonacatapeque, northeast of San Salvador, celebrate the Día de la Calabiuza with a parade and street festival. During the celebration, the costumed revelers recall the mythological characters of El Salvador and their dead relatives. The night ended with music and a dance in the central square. To see some images from this year's celebration, you can watch this video from La Prensa: or this video from MyTonaca.com: The following day, November 2, is the "Día de los fieles difuntos" -- the Day of the Faithful Souls or the Day of the Dead. Families go to visit the graves of their loved ones with flowers and picnicking. You can see a photo gallery of images from this celebration in and around the cemetery in Tonacatapeque at this link .

The informal economy of the streets of San Salvador has a little of everything. This video from the digital media site ContraPunto highlights the street performers of El Salvador's capital city. Watching this video prompted Linda to write about her encounters with these street corner entertainers in this post .

If you have spent any time driving through the countryside of El Salvador you have seen them -- remittance houses -- those houses with a certain ostentation and a pastel paint job built using remittances from Salvadorans working in the US. It's an identifiable architectural style (or lack of style?) in El Salvador. Now the country's leading art museum, the Museum of Art of El Salvador, is running an exhibition devoted to the architecture of remittances . The show is titled Architecture of Remittances: Dreams of Return, Symbols of Success and runs through October 17. If you cannot visit the museum before the show ends, the exhibition has a website here with many photos of remittance architecture and narrative about the cultural forces that these houses represent.

Anniversaries of Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton's birth and execution have been the occasion in the last week for calls for his killers to face justice. This article from IPS describes the issue: As well as being one of El Salvador’s most celebrated poets, Roque Dalton was also a committed political activist and a member of the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), a leftist guerrilla organisation, in the 1970s. On May 10, 1975, Dalton was gunned down by his own ERP comrades-in-arms, four days before his 40th birthday. His execution was ordered by the ERP leadership, which accused him of insubordination and of working for the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It was subsequently determined that the accusation that he was a CIA collaborator was false. The whereabouts of his remains are still unknown. Friday, May 14, was the 75th anniversary of the birth of El Salvador's revolutionary poet. His two sons chose that day to file a complaint with El Salvador's att...