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 According to
Countryaah,
El Salvador has been populated by the Chibcha people since
time immemorial, with the Pipil and Lenca constituting the
two largest subgroups. The Mayans also settled in the
country, but had no major influence.
After defeating the Aztecs in Mexico, the Spaniards
continued under the leadership of Pedro de Alvarado the
conquest of Central America. In 1525, Alvarado founded the
city of El Salvador de Cuscatlán. The area was part of the
General Command in Guatemala, which was again subject to the
Spanish Viceroy in Mexico. Central America freed itself from
the Spaniards in 1821 and organized itself as a federal
state.
The rivalry between the "imperialists" and the
"republicans" led to the outbreak of the civil war in 1827.
The president of the Central American Republic, General
Fransisco Morazán, tried to prevent the dissolution of the
Alliance from 1839. He started the fight for the
preservation of the Alliance with El Salvador Native
American population group the nonulcs, under the leadership
of Anastasio Aquino. Morazán's forces suffered defeat in
1840 and he was sent into exile while Anastasio Aquino was
arrested and executed.
When the land was divided, the English gained relatively
easy control of the area. When President Doroteo Vasconcelos
in 1848 refused to bow to the English pressure, the
Salvadoran ports were blocked. In the last third of the
century, English domination was replaced by that of the
United States.
With the invention of artificial dyes at the end of the
century, world market prices of indigo, which until then had
been El Salvador's primary export item, were replaced by
coffee. The Liberalists' revolution of 1880, fueled by the
need for land for the new crop, led to the expulsion of
thousands of peasants from the collective lands - creating a
land-working class, but also laying the ground for a
permanent conflict in the lands. The "coffee goods owners"
became the country's dominant class in the subsequent
period.
As a result of the economic world crisis of 1929, coffee
became a very marketable product; one failed to reap the
coffee and thousands of day laborers and peasants were left
to their own destiny. On January 22, 1932, a popular
uprising began, inspired by the Communist Party led by
Farabundo Marti, who had previously been Secretary of
Augusto Sandino during the resistance campaign against the
North Americans invasion of Nicaragua.
The insurrection was quelled in the birth of General
Maximiliano Hernández Martínez's forces; he had conquered
power in 1931, becoming the first of a series of military
regimes to lead the country for the next 50 years. The fight
against the uprising cost up to 12,000 people.
In late 1960, the industrialization of the country began
within the framework of the Central American Common Market
with the assistance of the "Progress Alliance". Although
high rates of growth could be noted, it was not enough to
alleviate the unemployment that had caused 300,000 landless
peasants to leave the country in the past centuries and
apply for Honduras. These demographic pressures, coupled
with internal competition from the industrial bourgeoisie,
led El Salvador to start the war against Honduras in June
1969. The 100-hour bloody conflict caused the crackdown in
the Central American common market to crack and the
Salvadoran industrial sector smoked into a crisis.
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