The Indigenous History of El Salvador

The Mesoamerican Great Escape of 8800 BC

The Mayan and Chibchan bands, as well as band leaders of other Mesoamerican lineages, were subjugated in La Gruta del Espíritu Santo near Corinto, El Salvador, by the Xibalba (xibahkha) lords. At some point they made an escape or guinda, as Salvadorans would call it. The Popol Vuh doesn't speak much about the actual escape from the cave, so much of what I write is a best guess based on the clues that we have from geography and the Popol Vuh.

In terms of a date, my best guess is 8800 BC, +/- 500 years, using the date 7 Cimin (Kame/Kimi) from the Mars retrograde long count calendar. To me the repeated use of the phrase "1 Cimin 7 Cimin" throughout Part 3 of the Popol Vuh (Tedlock revised edition) is a reference to the date of the escape from the cave, with the second name (7 Cimin) the date reference.

One can imagine that the escape took place at night and the clans escaped to the one spot that they knew the Xibalba lords would not follow them to: the impenetrable jungle, the Baja Profunda, several miles north of the cave and likely home, at that time, to jaguars and other wild creatures of the night. The Bradshaw Foundation describes this jungle as a result of the 2002 visit to the cave and the jungle and notes that there are petroglyphs similar to La Gruta cave there.

As day broke the clans ran as the Xibalbans lords threatened, going northwest, straight to the Torola River. With no other choice, they ran into the water. Those that submerged themselves were saved because the Xibalban lords did not pursue them. We know because xibahkha means, "those who are afraid of water." Where the Torola is met by Rio San Antonio there may be enough water to submerge oneself, at least in the rainy season.

From there the bands likely fled downstream to the west, in the river or along the bank, however they could go. They stopped when they reached the confluence of the Torola with the Rio Lempa. Here they made an encampment and any time that the Xibalban lords came near the whole community, with newly acquired swimming skills, could find safety in the Torola or Lempa River.

This is the location where I believe the Popol Vuh speaks of the Great Hollow (pg 157, Tedlock), which I think should be translated Great Canyon. The Rio Lempa is a Lenca name, for which I have not found a good dictionary. But I believe the base name in Chorti Maya would be Rum-pas, which would be "opening up" or "splitting of" the soil or land. The 'r' in Chorti became an 'l' in Lenca and other Mayan languages. The Rio Lempa certainly splits the land of El Salvador in two. 

The Popol Vuh also refers to this as one of the places of reeds. Here two place names provide evidence: The Rio Torola, where Torola is a type of reed and the Rio Jalala, where hararak is a type of cane grass and the 'r' would change to an 'l' in Lenca. The Rio Jalala starts near San Gerardo in northwest San Miguel department and joins the Torola just before it meets the Lempa. Click to enlarge map.

Finally, the first Spanish settlers to the area where quite aware of the importance of the area as a place of origin for the local indigenous, so much so that they named the municipality of this location, Nuevo Edén de San Juan. Even more to the point is the village of Jardín (Garden), near the confluence of the two rivers and two miles north of the municipality. Perhaps this marks the very spot of the guinda encampment of 8800 BC.

The Popol Vuh describes six clans being together in the escape, three from the jaguar room of the cave and three from the bat room. The three from jaguar room all became part of the larger proto-Mesoamerican people. But only one of the three from the bat room became part of the Mayan nation, the greater Quiche clan. At some point later on, the other two bat clans, the Tams and the Ilocs, according to the Popol Vuh, decided not to become Mayan. They preferred to remain mountain people, i.e. hunters and gatherers, rather than agriculturalists.

I believe that the Tams refer to the Talamanca people and all of the Chibchan language group which now spreads from southern Honduras to Columbia. And the Ilocs refer to the Miskitu, Sumu, Matagalpa, and Cacaopera people. The Popol Vuh refers to the 13 associated tribes of the Tams and the Ilocs.

How else does one explain the presence of the village of Cacaopera in El Salvador? Their nearest linguistic cousins would be over 100 miles away in central Nicaragua. Yet there is one lone village of this language group, five miles from the Corinto cave. All the others migrated east and south but this clan did not want to leave their homeland of 8800 BC. Some have mistakenly identified the Cacaoperans as Ulua, but Uluans, as we shall see, are much more closely related to the Lencas, i.e. part of the proto-Mesoamerican people.

El Salvador in 400 BC to 200 AD

The make-up of El Salvador's indigenous peoples changed many times during the Mayan pre-Classic and Classic periods. But one of the key periods was from 400 BC to 200 AD, when El Salvador was the site of the most advanced Mayan cities at that time, along with the southeast coast of Mexico.

The Chol or Chorti Maya began building the Cozumel site at Chalchuapa by 1500 BC, at roughly the same time as Izapa on the Chiapas coast and the first Olmec cities in Veracruz, Mexico. This makes Chalchuapa one of the three most important archeological sites in El Salvador, along with Joyas de Cerén and Cihuatán, important sites in the much later Classic and Post-Classic periods.

By 400 BC, at least three other Mayan cities were established in El Salvador, Cara Sucia, near the Pacific Coast in far western El Salvador, San Andrés, in west central El Salvador, and Quelepa, in eastern El Salvador. Quelepa was a joint Potón-Chorti city and an important trading link with areas to the south. Potón is another name for the Lenca who live in El Salvador.

There are at least three other sites that may have also been established as Mayan cities by 400 BC: Tehuacán, near the Chichontepec volcano in San Vicente; Santa Leticia, in the west near Apaneca; and Las Matamaras, along the Sumpul River in far northern Chalatenango. None of these three sites are well studied, so it is not known when settlements and temples were first built. However, much of Tehuacán is quite similar to Quelepa, which seems to indicate a Potón Lenca-Chorti city that was contemporaneous to Quelepa.

Aside from Cozumel and Quelepa, and possibly Las Matamaras, none of the names used today of these sites was the original Mayan name. Cara Sucia, Santa Leticia, and San Andrés are all Spanish names. Tehuacán is a nahuat name, most likely brought by the Pipiles from the Puebla region of Mexico sometime between 600 and 900 AD.

The Chorti and Potón Lenca were closely allied people who shared at least two cities along with major trade routes. Certainly there were many bilingual residents of the two areas. Among the trade routes managed by the Potón Lenca were those involving the Cacaopera, the Uluas, and the Mangues. The Cacaopera are a Matagalpa people and had significant trade with inland parts of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The Mangues extended down along the coast of Nicaragua.

To the west of the Chorti were the Xinca people who were more prominently based in eastern Guatemala. Unlike the Lencas, the Xincas don't appear to have adopted the Mayan philosophy and way of life. Later, during the Classic period, the Pocomam Maya moved into this area, followed, later still, by a small migration of Quiche Maya.

Obviously, all of the groups mentioned extended far beyond the borders of present day El Salvador - the Lenca far into central Honduras, for example, and the Chorti into western Honduras and eastern Guatemala. Later, after the eruption of Ilopango volcano, the Chorti moved their primary eastern city from Cozumel-Chalchuapa to Copán, while other Chorti leaders moved to Tikal, Palenque and other Classic-era sites.