Here’s where you can experience Indigenous culture in El Salvador
The traditions of Indigenous Salvadorans persist today, even
after the people themselves largely disappeared. Now the country wants to reclaim its heritage…
El Salvador’s rolling volcanic hills are peppered with ancient pyramids, ceremonial centres, Palaeolithic cave paintings and enigmatic statuary depicting the gods of rain, maize and fertility. But its present-day Indigenous Peoples are far more elusive.
The 2007 national census found that just 0.2% of the population – around 13,000 people – identify as Indigenous, suggesting a culture on the brink of extinction. That said, there are reasons to doubt that statistic, with the real number maybe 40 to 50 times higher. As the Salvadoran linguist Jorge Lemus once observed: it is a difficult task to define a people that ‘have been made invisible’.
Long before the arrival of Europeans in the 1500s, El Salvador was a thriving cultural crossroads met by soaring Mesoamerican civilisations to the west and formidable Isthmo-Colombian cultures to the east. At the Gruta del Espíritu Santo (Holy Spirit Grotto), hundreds of pictographs offer evidence of 10,000 years of human occupation.
Far from living in isolation, El Salvador’s peoples formed complex political ecologies that spanned vast distances. A visit to the Maya metropolis of Tazumal – founded in 200 BC and abandoned mysteriously 14 centuries later – reveals temples incorporating motifs from foreign cities as far flung as Teotihuacán in central Mexico, 1,600km away.
On the eve of Spanish conquest in the early 16th century, El Salvador was populated by two main ethnic groups: the nation of Cuzcatlán, homeland of the Nahuat-speaking Pipil, and the matriarchal Lenca kingdom. Both resisted Spanish domination but eventually succumbed to European weapons and waves of ‘Old World’ diseases.
Nonetheless, their cultures survived this conquest and remained visible in El Salvador until 1932, when they were first driven underground by La Matanza (‘The Massacre’) – a military crackdown on a Communist uprising that led to the ethnocide of the Pipil – and then by the Civil War (1979–1992). Generations were forced to abandon their Indigenous heritage.
Today, more than 30 years after the Peace Accords, these cultures are enjoying a revival. Dozens of grassroots organisations have sprung to life to revitalise ancestral traditions. Innovative language programmes are rescuing the Nahuat Pipil tongue. And in 2014, El Salvador’s constitution was amended to officially recognise the nation’s Indigenous Peoples – a first step in an overdue reconciliation.
One could even argue that Indigenous cultures have always been at the heart of El Salvador. They can be seen by visitors in the crafts that sustain entire villages, felt in the religious festivals that permeate rural life and tasted in the tortillas cooked up in kitchens since the time of the Maya.
Six places to experience Indigenous El Salvador
1. Panchimalco
The cobblestone lanes of Panchimalco are a world away from the smoke and bustle of San Salva-dor, just 15km to the north. The town traces its heritage to Pipil refugees who fled the Spanish invasion in the 16th century, and many of its women (known aspanchas) continue to wear vivid traditional headscarves. Several local initiatives are currently stimulating Pipil artistic output, including the Casa Taller Encuentros art workshop, the ACOPANCHI weavers’ cooperative and the Kaltunal art gallery. Incurably soporific for most of the year, Panchimalco comes alive with folkloric dancing during the Feria de las Flores y Palmas (Flower and Palm Festival) on the first Sunday of May.
2. Cacaopera
The Cacaopera people (also known as the Kakawira) occupy an isolated eponymous enclave in the misty mountains of Morazán department. Their original language is now extinct, but many other facets of their culture have survived, including traditional dress and religious rites, earning their community a place on the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list. In honour of the goddess Xochi quetzal, the Dance of the Empluma dos (Feathered Ones) is performed to lilting violins and guitars in January (15–17). The Winakirika Museum, founded by community leader Miguel Angel Amaya, can organise trips to cave paintings and archaeological sites on the Torola River.
3. Guatajiagua
The town of Guatajiagua is home to Mario Salvador Hernández, the last known speaker of Lenca Potón. Hernández is actively revitalising Lenca culture and restoring its spiritual connection to the pre-Columbian site of Quelepa, which has become a place of Lenca pilgrimage. Guatajiagua is famous for its black pottery, and there are busy workshops all over town. Traditionally, Lenca women work the clay while men maintain the kiln fires with wood. The dye for the distinctive pottery comes from the seeds of the nacascol tree.
4. Santo Domingo de Guzmán (Witzapan)
The quiet Pipil community of SantoDomingo de Guzmán is working to regenerate its ancestral Nahuat language, which is closely related to Aztec Nahuatl, the pre-Columbian ‘lingua franca’ of central Mexico.Run by Pipil Elder Women, the town’s Cuna Nahuat (Nahuat Cradle) school provides free language classes to infants. Santo Domingo de Guzmánis home to artisan families who work with red clay. The thunderous, 80m-high El Escuco waterfall is also within easy striking distance.
5. Nahuizalco
The Pipil town of Nahuizalco is the southern gateway to the fabled Ruta de las Flores – a bucolic high-land highway that takes in flowering villages and aromatic coffee fincas. The town is popular with weekenders from San Salvador, who come to experience its candlelit night market and flavourful gastronomic fair. In 2011, the Council of Indigenous Communities of Nahuizalco made history by publishing the nation’s first ordinance of Indigenous rights. Like Santo Domingo de Guzmán, the town is striving to revitalise the Nahuat language – visit the Nahuat-Pipil community museum to learn more.
6. Joya de Cerén
Described by UNESCO as a ‘time capsule of unprecedented scientific value’, Joya de Cerén is El Salvador’s only World Heritage site. Unique among Mesoamerican archaeological attractions, it contains an immaculately preserved Maya village that was frozen in time after a nearby volcanic eruption covered it with layers of ash around 650 AD. Joya de Cerén contains built structures and artefacts that offer not only an intimate glimpse of lifestyles at the time, but a historical reference point for contemporary rural culture.