El Salvador Perspectives

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...

Embed from Getty Images August 9 is declared by the UN to be the International Day for Indigenous Peoples.   The online periodical ContraPunto provided a photogallery of members of El Salvador's indigenous peoples commemorating the date. During the 20th century, El Salvador's indigenous communities were almost completely wiped out through massacres and repression.   In 2010, Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes made an act of public apology for the country's treatment of indigenous peoples.

A fascinating blog which I go back to time and again is The Indigenous History of El Salvador by Tim Lohrentz.   His most recent post, titled Thor Heyerdahl and the Production of Balsam Rafts in El Salvador ,  looks at how the Mayans found that the balsam trees growing in the mountains of El Salvador provided great logs for ocean going rafts.   Here is an excerpt: What is most noticeable about the balsam is the sap. They most likely tried to light it to use as an incense or charcoal, as well as to rub onto canoes and rafts. At some point the Maya were able to get a balsam log into standing water - not so easy from the steep [Balsam mountain range in El Salvador]. They noticed four things about the balsam that make it the best tree in the Americas for ocean-going rafts and perhaps the best in the world: The size of the logs both in terms of width and length - the trees grow 40 meters tall; The straightness of the trunk; The resin-laden wood which makes it ext...

A new article on the website Intercontinental Cry contains an  interview with Salvadoran Indigenous leader Shandur Kuátzin Makwilkali . Shandur is President of the National Federation of Indigenous Peoples of El Salvador, which works to resuscitate the vitality of indigenous cultures in a part of Central America where they have been systematically and brutally suppressed. The challenge is significant:  "We don't have enough unity, solidarity", he laments, before returning to the positive: "But now we have a federation, present in 14 departments, with 10,000 members."  The Federation celebrated its first anniversary on 21 January this year. In addition to its remarkable growth, the indigenous movement has established a small University of the Indigenous Peoples of El Salvador, teaching four courses lasting for three and four years. Students can study courses in indigenous medicine, the Nahuat language, indigenous administration, and biculturalism.  Anothe...

Archaeologists working at Joya de Cerén in El Salvador have uncovered an ancient road in that Mayan village. An article in Science Daily describes the discovery : A University of Colorado Boulder-led team excavating a Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago has unexpectedly hit an ancient white road that appears to lead to and from the town, which was frozen in time by a blanket of ash. The road, known as a "sacbe," is roughly 6 feet across and is made from white volcanic ash from a previous eruption that was packed down and shored up along its edges by residents living there in roughly A.D. 600, said CU-Boulder Professor Payson Sheets, who discovered the buried village known as Ceren near the city of San Salvador in 1978. In Yucatan Maya, the word "sacbe" (SOCK'-bay) literally means "white way" or "white road" and is used to describe elevated ancient roads typically lined with stone and paved with whi...

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.  

An article at Travelio.net describes new archaeological finds in El Salvador . These discoveries were made by French archeologists: One of the most remarkable findings was in Morazan, where they found a site with Maya motifs, when it had been previously believed that the Maya civilisation hadn’t extended beyond the Lempa River. In the same site, they found the remains of a fortress which probably predated the arrival of the Spanish, and had only been briefly mentioned in documents in the 1940s. At La Union, they found a rock carving of a snake which had great similarities with the Jaguar Disc at the Maya site of Cara Sucia in Ahuachapan (El Salvador), found at the end of the 20th century. This illustrates the movement and possible commercial routes followed by the pre-hispanic peoples, and may indicate that the Lempa River wasn’t a static border and may have shifted through the times. The investigators were also particularly interested in pottery found as this will help them dat...

On Columbus Day, president Mauricio Funes apologized to indigenous peoples for the injuries done to them by the conquest by European nations: “The government that I lead wishes to be the first government that in the name of the Salvadoran state...makes an act of contrition and begs pardon of the indigenous communities for the persecution, for the extermination of which they were victims for so many years,” Funes said on the 518th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the Americas. “From this day forward we officially terminate our historical denial of the diversity of our peoples and acknowledges El Salvador to be a multiethnic and multicultural society,” he said in inaugurating the First National Indigenous Congress. Funes recalled episodes of national history such as the first uprising of native peoples in the country, which took place in 1832, as a result, he said, of the “reigning model of oppression.” He recalled that it was “suffocated by repression and force” and that 100 years l...

January 22 was the 78 year anniverary of an event in El Salvador known simply as "la Matanza" -- the Massacre. Following an armed uprising of campesinos in January 1932, many of whom were indigenous, the Salvadoran armed forces massacred as man as 30,000 in reprisal. This week, indigenous communities remembered the slaughter, as reported in Upside Down World : The killing, led by former President General Maximiliano, left almost thirty thousand dead, "the majority of whom were indigenous -who probably did not know [that the government considered them] communists- thus destroying much of a culture that now demands justice and recognition," says Montoya. "After this massacre, the Indian community was greatly reduced in the country, many of them changed their habits for fear of being killed and many customs gradually waned into oblivion" recounted the spiritual guide "Tata" Juan. 78 years later, in a place known as "El Llanito" where ma...

Last week I pointed out Tim Lohrentz' blog The Indigenous History of El Salvador , with information about El Salvador's early indigenous peoples. We are learning more about these ancient inhabitants of El Salvador through archeological excavations, such as the one at Cihuatán. There is a website for those excavations which describes what archeologists are finding there: A thousand years ago a giant metropolis flourished in what is now El Salvador, rising from the ruins of Maya civilization. The city of Cihuatán has long remained Central America's least known and most spectacular treasure. Now an archaeological project will attempt to unlock its secrets. This web site will document what we find, as we find it. Whether you hope to visit Cihuatán yourself, or only to follow our progress on-line, join us as the project unfolds. The project at Cihuatán is a joint project of El Salvador's National Foundation for Archeology and San Francisco State University. At the Founda...

Blogger Tim Lohrentz has begun writing a blog titled The Indigenous History of El Salvador , which is described as "A look at the Chorti, Poton Lenca, and Pipil peoples of El Salvador, perhaps the birthplace of the Mayans, as well as recognizing the indigenous spirit in the struggle for social justice today." Lohrentz' post from New Years Day describes the legends of ancient Mayan religion: Transforming the Gods The beginnings of the Mayan religion were tumultuous. As the Chortis, the Mayans along the Pacific Coast, became more adept at agriculture - hybridizing corn, beans, and squash, and introducing yuca (manioc), peanuts, and cacao from areas to the south - adoration was given to Mother Earth, ix , who provided all good things. The Chortis named corn, ixim , which means something similar to 'fruit of Mother Earth'. Corn came from teosinte, ixim ka , 'wild fruit of Mother Earth'. But as people ate more corn, a disease appeared (pellegra - a niacin defi...

An interesting article from IPS describes attempts to preserve Nahuat as a living language in El Salvador. Indigenous people are almost invisible in El Salvador following a centuries long history of oppression. Nahuat is the language of the Nahua/Pipiles people. From the IPS article: ”Yek shiajfikan” reads a sign hanging above the gate of the ”Dr. Mario Calvo Marroquín” elementary school in the Salvadoran town of Izalco, welcoming pupils in Nawat, the language that was spoken by the area’s native communities. A small group of no more than twelve boys and girls are gathered in a small classroom in the southwest province of Sonsonate, singing the national anthem, in a scene that could be set in any other school in the country – except here they’re not singing it in Spanish, but in Nawat, the language of their ancestors. In 2002, teachers at this school took it upon themselves to begin teaching their pupils the language that was spoken by the Nahua-Pipil communities when the Spanish...

The Washington Post has the obituary of Adrián Esquino Lisco, a spiritual leader of Salvadoran indigenous peoples who died earlier this month: Adrián Esquino Lisco, 68, who rose to prominence in El Salvador as a spiritual leader of the indigenous community and who called attention to atrocities committed during the 1980-92 civil war, died Sept. 8 at a hospital in San Salvador. He had kidney failure and other complications of diabetes. El Salvador's small indigenous population, about 1 percent of the 7 million who live there, long endured bloody conflicts with the government, which has been led mostly by army officers or oligarchs. A farmer and artisan, Mr. Esquino Lisco made international news by publicizing the Feb. 23, 1983, army-led attack on an indigenous farm cooperative in Las Hojas, a village in the western end of the country. He said the soldiers rounded up 74 men, tied their thumbs behind their backs and shot them in their skulls. A federal judge reported 18 deaths. Mr. E...

Archaeologists from the University of Colorado recently made findings at the village of Ceren archaeological site in El Salvador that the ancient Mayas cultivated manioc (also known as cassava): A University of Colorado at Boulder team excavating an ancient Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago has discovered an ancient field of manioc, the first evidence for cultivation of the calorie-rich tuber in the New World. The manioc field was discovered under roughly 10 feet of ash, said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Payson Sheets, who has been directing the excavation of the ancient village of Ceren since its discovery in 1978. Considered the best-preserved ancient village in Latin America, Ceren's buildings, artifacts and landscape were frozen in time by the sudden eruption of the nearby Loma Caldera volcano about 600 A.D., providing a unique window on the everyday lives of prehistoric Mayan farmers. The discovery marks the first time manioc cu...

Indigenous people are almost invisible in El Salvador. This comes from a history of repression throughout the 20th century. From a World Bank report : Salvadoran Indigenous People are descendants of the Pupils, a nomadic tribe of the Nahua of Central Mexico, the Mesoamerican Lenca and the South-American Chibcha. From the beginning of the Spanish conquest in El Salvador, the Indigenous and the Spaniards lived in the same areas. Racial mixing known as mestizaje began in the XVI century. With the development of the indigo plantations in the early XVII century, many indigenous villages were destroyed, and many were forced to farm and work on these plantations. In the infamous la matanza, masacre of 1932, 50,000 indigenous were killed in retaliation of an indigenous upheavel to protest government policies. After this event, the indigenous began to hide their traditions and to assimilate to the dominant ladino society quietly. The World Bank performed a " social assessment " in E...