El Salvador, officially known as the Republic of El Salvador, is a small country in Central America. It borders Honduras to the north, Guatemala to the west, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. El Salvador has a rich and complex history that has shaped its identity and society.
Indigenous Population
Historians debate the origins of El Salvador’s first inhabitants. Some say they were Mayan, and others say they were Aztec. However, it has been established that the Olmecs lived and traded in the western provinces in about 2000 B.C., as evidenced by the archaeological sites, which include stepped pyramid temples, ball courts, and paved plazas.
In the eleventh century A.D., the nomadic Pipils migrated to El Salvador from Mexico. They began an agrarian lifestyle similar to the Mayans. They called their new home “Cuscatlan” or “Land of the Jewels.” The Pipils were eclectic people who learned to use both Aztec and Mayan calendars for agriculture and rituals and performed complex mathematical computations in a base 20 number system, which included the concept of “zero,” a concept unknown to ancient Greeks and Romans. The Pipils were exceptionally skilled at crafts such as pottery, weaving, stone carving, and working with gold and silver. They farmed the land cooperatively, growing beans, pumpkins, chiles, avocados, elderberries, guavas, papayas, tomatoes, cocoa, cotton, tobacco, henequen, indigo, maguey, and corn.
The Maya influenced the Pipil culture. The Mayans developed a highly advanced culture that was organized around their rural way of life. They deeply respected nature and sought to live harmoniously with their surroundings. Their gods embodied natural forces and phenomena, most notably the life-giving Maize God.
The Pipils had laws to protect agriculture, social divisions, religion, and the family. The Pipils imposed the death penalty on those who did not respect the gods, men who cheated on their wives, and thieves.
To help them in their farming and religious practice, the Mayans invented a highly accurate calendar with a year of 365 days, broken down into 18 months of 20 days each, with five “hollow” or ill-omened days left over. The Mayans were also accomplished mathematicians and astronomers who tracked planetary motion with superb precision despite having no telescopes or docks. Mayans also communicated and traded with many other cultures, and their merchants traveled to South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and even Florida to exchange goods.
The Mayans’ most apparent mark on the region is their grand pyramids and planned cities.
The Pipils divided the territory into “cacicazgos,” or kingdoms such as Izako, Apanecatl, Apastepl, Ixtepetl, and Guacotecti.
The Invasion
The Pipils had lived in Cuzcatlan for over four hundred years when the Spanish invaded in 1524, close to the area now called La Hachadura. The Spanish invasion brought a fundamental change to the Indians’ life. Shortly after their arrival, the Spanish began taking the land. They massacred the Pipils, destroyed their temples and gods, forced many into slavery, and raped many women to provide pleasure and children for the invaders.
As the Spanish intentions became apparent, the Pipils quickly adjusted from openly welcoming these strange and mysterious white people to actively trying to drive them away. Though they lacked the guns, cannons, and horses of the Spaniards, the Pipils resisted the conquistadors for fifteen years. Historians estimate that in the first fifty years of the Spanish conquest, the Indian population of El Salvador declined considerably. In addition to the massacres during the conquest, many died as a result of an illness that resulted from indigo cultivation.
Las Catorce
By the late 1800s, Las Catorce (fourteen families) controlled half the land in El Salvador. This was when the “privatization” of the communal land of the Indians occurred. This was the basis of the coffee-growing “oligarchy.” In search of greater profits by exporting goods rather than growing food for their fellow Salvadorans, the landowners focused production almost exclusively on coffee, sugar cane, and cotton. Where the Pipils had once harvested over 15 different crops to feed and clothe their people, most of the land in El Salvador was now producing goods for people in other countries and for the profit of the oligarchy.
The intensive labor needed to grow and harvest these crops was supplied by peasants who no longer had enough land to support themselves. Thus, they required the minuscule wage paid by large farms to help feed their families.
Conclusion
This brief history of El Salvador led to the twelve-year civil war from 1979 to 1992. I will write about the Civil War at a later date; as with any civil war in any country, this history is very controversial and complicated. It requires much research.
I have added a slideshow of our visit to the Tazumal Ruins and pictures of our collection of Reproduction Artifacts found at sites here in El Salvador.
CREDITS
Armstrong, Robert, and Janet Shenk, El: The Face of Revolution. Boston: South End Press, 1982.
Barry, Tom, El Salvador: A Country Guide. Albuquerque: Interhemispheric Education Resource Center, 1990.
Burgos, Alfredo, Historia de El Salvador. San Salvador: Equipo Maiz, 1990.
Miles, Sara and Bob Ostertag, The U.S. and El Salvador: A Decade of Disaster. San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1989.
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