El Salvador

El Salvador is the one Central American country with no Caribbean shore; its coast faces the Pacific, with surf beaches near La Libertad and the mangroves of the Bay of Jiquilisco. Two lines of volcanoes cross the country. Izalco, which rose from a farm in 1770, erupted so often that sailors called it the Lighthouse of the Pacific, and the calderas of Coatepeque and Ilopango hold deep lakes.

At Joya de Cerén, a Maya village buried by volcanic ash around AD 600, archaeologists found houses, kitchens and maize fields as they were left. The Pipil held the land they called Cuzcatlán when Pedro de Alvarado invaded in 1524, and indigo became the colonial export. Independence came in 1821. Coffee replaced indigo, and in 1881–82 communal Indigenous lands were abolished to make room for it. An uprising in 1932 was put down with thousands killed. A civil war from 1980 was settled by peace accords in 1992; Archbishop Óscar Romero, shot at Mass in 1980, was declared a saint in 2018.

Pupusas, thick corn tortillas stuffed with cheese, beans or pork crackling and eaten with pickled cabbage, are the national dish. Every August the people of Nejapa hurl flaming balls of rag at one another, recalling an old eruption. Coffee from the Apaneca range, sugar cane and clothing from free-zone factories leave through Acajutla, geothermal plants at Ahuachapán and Berlín tap volcanic heat, and Salvadorans in the United States send money back to their families.