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El Salvador Indians
In contrast to most other Central American countries, El
Salvador in the late 1980s did not contain an ethnically distinct
Indian population. Native communities of Pipil and also Lenca,
located mainly in the western departments, constituted perhaps 60
percent of the population throughout the colonial era and into
the early decades of independence. But the development of coffee
estates saw the dissolution of the communal lands of native
villages and the slow but continual incorporation of Indians into
the general cash economy, where they became peasants and wage
laborers. By the late nineteenth century, this assimilation
process was essentially complete. The 1930 census, the last
census containing the category of "Indian," designated only 5.6
percent of the population, or some 80,000 persons, as Indian,
although it is not clear what criteria were used in this
determination. Other, possibly more accurate, independent
estimates, however, placed the mid-twentieth-century Indian
population at 20 percent, or close to 400,000 persons. The
criteria used in these estimates to identify individuals as
Indian included religious activities, distinctive women's dress,
language, and involvement in various handicrafts. Still, the
life-style of the majority of these people was no longer
completely Indian. Most were ladinoized, Hispanic acculturated,
monolingual Spanish speakers who did not wear distinctive Indian
dress. The remaining Indian population was found primarily in
southwestern El Salvador.
The abandonment of Indian language and customs was hastened
by political repression after an abortive peasant/Indian uprising
in 1932. The revolt centered in the western part of the country,
around the former Indian towns of Ahuachapan, Santa Ana, and
Sonsonate, where the growth of coffee estates since the late
nineteenth century had absorbed subsistence lands of Indians and
mestizos alike. The revolt was supported by a number of Indian
community leaders (caciques). Even though most Indian
communal lands had been lost, traditional community-centered
religious-political organizations (cofradias) and their
leaders remained sufficiently influential to organize and direct
popular unrest. The harsh and bloody reprisal (la matanza)
by government forces that ensued fell on the entire population of
the region whether they had been combatants or not, and most had
not. Perhaps as many as 30,000 were killed, including many who
were culturally designated as Indian or who were deemed by
government forces to have an Indian-like physical appearance. In
the face of such racially motivated repression, most natives
stopped wearing traditional dress, abandoned the Pipil language,
and adopted ladino customs. In 1975 it was estimated that no more
than 1 percent of the population wore distinctive Indian clothing
or followed Indian customs.
Even though visible signs of ethnic identity were all but
lost, many persons retained an interest in Salvadoran Indian
heritage and worked to preserve it as best they could. During the
1970s, the Central American University Jose Simeon Canas
(Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Canas--UCA) in San
Salvador began a systematic study of the surviving elements of
the Pipil language; researchers found that about one-tenth of
households in Sonsonate, Ahuachapan, and La Libertad contained at
least one Pipil speaker. Various aspects of Indian tradition,
including dance ceremonies that had been held in private for
thirty years, were also rediscovered. As political tensions grew
in the 1980s, however, access to Indian households became more
difficult, and the Pipil language study was stopped.
In short, although observers have estimated that much of the
Salvadoran population in the 1980s could be said to possess an
Indian racial background, culturally there was no significant
Indian ethnic sector in the country. Nonetheless, the concept of
Indian ethnicity was still a rallying point. In the mid-1980s,
thousands of persons nationwide supported a popular organization
known as the National Association of Salvadoran Indians
(Asociacion Nacional Indigena Salvadorena--ANIS) headquartered in
Sonsonate.
Data as of November 1988
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