The Indigenous History of El Salvador

The Banishment of the Quiche from Coatepeque to Mexico

The first 3,000 years of the civilizing people of Mesoamerica were full of dramatic events: the escape from the ruthless rulers of the cave of Xibalba (Xibahkha in Ch’orti’); surviving the ravages of the wild with the help of three critical gifts from nature; the formation of a religion while on Isla Tigre in the Golfo de Fonseca; the dramatic death of One Hunahpu which led to their later liberation from Xibahkha; and the flood of 6400 BC which swept away one of the four island garden-villages.

But the second most important geo-political event of the last 5,000 years in Mesoamerica – second only to the arrival of the Spanish – was the banishment of the Quiche Maya in about 2200 BC. The Quiche Maya were always considered the lead among the four first civilizing nations. This is shown by their founder being called Manix, or worker of the earth – the first to embrace the vision of an agricultural way of life. In addition, the Quiches lived in the most beautiful of the four island homes – Coatepeque, or what they called Tammakchan.

By 2500 BC corn was getting much closer to it current size, from its start of just a few kernels. The leader of the Quiche was the most reliant on corn in his diet. Now we know that reliance on untreated corn can lead to pellagra and this is exactly what happened. Pellegra causes lesions on the skin, gauntness, mental illness, and death. But the other Mayan and Mesoamerican leaders didn’t know about pellagra.

Instead they remembered a story from their past, from their creation story, the Popol Vuh, that the famous Quiche leader, One Hunahpu, married an outsider, a Xibahkha woman. Her name was Xib’akiyalo. Surely it was this mixing of blood – the blood of the Xibahkhans, represented by the tapir, and the blood of the Quiches, represented by the serpent, that caused the disease – the lesions, the bleeding, the mental illness and the death.

Because they were considered a people of mixed race, which led to disease, the others decided that the Quiches must be sent away before any more inter-marrying happened. And the message of not inter-marrying must go out to all neighboring peoples. The Quiches were sent on balsa rafts as far as they could make it with their provisions of food and water. The Ch'ortis quickly moved into their Lago Coatepeque home and assumed role among the civilizing peoples.

The Quiches made it as far as an island along the coast of present-day Sinaloa, Mexico. [Click to enlarge map.] They named the island, Teocapan (now called Teacapan) for the island home they left, Teopan. The ka in the middle of Teacapan means 'to remember'. Thus, Teocapan means “remembering Teopan”. The made a spectacular home on this island and its memory survived in the stories of the Toltecs and the Aztecs.

The Quiches named the region after their totem, Maza (Deer), which is also the name of many early Quiche leaders. The present-day city of Mazatlán gets its name for the Quiche name of this region.

The Quiches were in Sinoloa before they split into lineage groups, so all those with Quiche lineage - the Kekchis, Uspantecs, Pokomams, Sacapultecs, Sipacapas, Tzutuhils, and Cakchiquels - share the Mexican experience.

The Quiche continued to hybridize corn at their new island home of Teocapan. They found a new location for Balsas teosinte grass in the mountains about 50 miles south. They named the place Teosinte and also named a place just off the coast Teosinte, so that they and the locals would remember how to get up to the highland teosinte.

They often visited a place to the south, Matanchén, where they harvested mollusks. They quickly became great sailors, living along the coast. They formed new villages to south near Tecomán, in present day Colima, at a site called El Opeño, in Michoacán, and up high on the plateau in the Valley of Mexico at a site now called Tlatilco. At some of these sites they reunited with their old cousins, the Olmec/Lencas, and the Tehuacanos/Zapotecs. The Olmecs introduced them to their allies from West Africa who had joined them on the Gulf Coast. Some of them joined the Quiches to live at Tlatilco. The Tehuacanos taught the Quiche how to sail to Ecuador and Perú.

By about 1500 BC, one portion of the Quiche community moved back toward their homeland. They settled at present day Guatemala City at the site known as Kaminaljuyu. This probably became the Uspantec – Pokomam lineage. Remembering the bad blood between them, the Ch’orti’s at Lago Güija, Lago Coatepeque, Chalchuapa, and San Andrés were threatened by the Quiche presence so close by. To outflank the Quiches, they moved a significant portion of their elite and population to the north to northern Belice and to northern Petén and began to build the site of El Mirador.

The competition and the tension between the Ch’orti’ and the Quiche was only just beginning and hundreds of years later became outright warfare. All this happened because of a lack of understand about mental illness and a misunderstanding over the cause of that mental illness. And the message of needing to maintain pure blood was also based on false information and therefore a false message.

What are the clues that early Mayan leaders suffered from pellagra, that the Quiche suffered the first and most, and that the Quiche were banished to northwest Mexico?

• The Quiches have an oral tradition of having spent at least several hundred years in Mexico and of all the Mayan languages Quiche has the most Nahuat influences. The Toltec and Aztec traditions also speak of having come from an island city on the northwest coast of Mexico.

• As I have already discussed, the first chapter of the Popol Vuh appears to have been written in order to explain how so many people, including the leaders suffered from disease: it was the fault of the gods. The gods failed when creating humans three times, creating humans that were gaunt (stick figures), spoke to animals, or were mentally ill. This is an attempt to change the theology to account for widespread disease and mental illness. This chapter explains that it is the fault of the gods that people became ill, sick, and died. The gods goofed up three times in their creation of humans; it is not the fault of your grandmother and your grandfather that they were mentally ill.

• The Quiche seem to have become confused over key points and names in their history. This may be a result of leaders who suffered from mental illness due to pellagra and became confused in the retelling of the Popol Vuh. Another possibility is that the Quiche leaders had forgotten and when they asked the Ch’ol / Ch’orti’ Maya for clarification, they were deliberately misled. The best example of this is the name of the Quiche leader among the first four civilizing leaders. The Popol Vuh says that his name is Majukutaj, which means ‘Not Right Now’ in Quiche. This is an unusual name given that the other three are Night Jaguar, Ik Jaguar, and Kitze Jaguar.
  
  If it were a different name, the tzolkin day-sign calendar offers us a clue what it might have been. The day sign Manik in Yucatec has a symbol of a grasping hand or a working hand. In Ch’orti’, this would be Manix or worker of the earth. The fact that it refers to the Quiche is shown by the Aztec name for this day sign, which is Mazatl or Deer. Many early Quiche leaders were called Deer and it appears to be their totem animal, most likely since very early they followed the deer and tried out various plants to see if they were useful or edible. Thus this sign might have been Masa Manix or Deer Worker-of-the-Earth. Somehow, in their confusion, this morphed into Majukutaj for the Quiche. Another clue that this happened comes from the Ch’orti’ where maix means ‘not right now’. This would suggest that the first step in the confusion was to change the name from Manix to Maix, retaining the meaning of maix.

• One of the more curious anomalies in the tzolkin, the 260-day calendar of 20 13-day weeks, is that the Quiche version has a different starting day than the more commonly used Yucatec version. The Yucatec version begins with the day Imix (Imox in Quiche) and ends with day Ahaw, also spelled Ahau (Junajpu in Quiche). The end day is all important since it is the last day of the year that gives its name to that year. The Quiche version starts six days later with Kej (Manik’ in Yucatec and Manix in Ch’orti’) and ends with Kame (Kimi in Yucatec and Cimin in Ch’orti’). I believe that this is also a legacy from the banishment of the Quiches. Manix was the first Quiche leader while Ahaw (chief) was the title used by the Ch’orti’ leader after the Quiches left.

• Another change in the day sign appears with the sign known as Hunahpu in Quiche and Ahau in Yucatec. Both of these mean ‘lord’. The original name for this day sign was probably Sutz’ or ‘bat’ since the Quiche lord came out of the bat room of the cave. The other three leaders came out of the jaguar room and there is a sign associated with jaguars. When the Quiches were banished from their homeland, the Ch’ol’-Ch’orti’ changed this day sign to Ahau or Ahaw. The best clue that this happened comes from the Aztez name for this day sign, Xochitl. From their base in northwest Mexico, the Quiche provided many root words or sounds for the Nahuat language. In this case Sutz’ (bat) morphed into Xochitl (flower). In addition the Mayan glyph for this day sign appears to the be face of a bat.

• The Popol Vuh discusses how the Mayan leaders of the previous age, One Monkey and One Artisan are overturned and the new leaders, Hunahpu and Ixbalamque take over. While some interpret this as a transition from a non-Mayan time with non-Mayan leaders to the Mayan age, I believe that it really is one set of Mayan leaders overturning another set. In this case One Monkey and One Artisan represent the Quiches who were overturned and Hunahpu and Ixbalamque represent the Ch’ortis who took over leadership. One Monkey and One Artisan appear to become mentally ill: they are called monkeys, they run around naked, and roam the woods. Even their grandmother cannot keep from laughing at them.

• As I already described in a previous post, the meaning of ix seems to have changed from ‘Mother Earth’ to ‘the disease’ with the advent of pellagra. Likewise, after this, imix described untreated – diseased – corn, while a new word for corn – nar – described the good, treated, corn that did not have the disease. The curing of corn is called nixtamalization – ridding the corn of ix.

• Finally, we have the clue of the names along the northwest coast of Mexico, as already discussed above, including Teacapán, Mazatlán, and Matanchén. There are also only two occurrences of the place name ‘Teosinte’, or some variants of that, in Mexico, and both are close to their Teacapán home.

Return of the Mayans, the Repopulation of El Salvador in 400 AD

Soon I hope to discuss the Joya de Cerén, one of the most important archeological sites in El Salvador and sometimes referred to as the 'Pompeii of Mesoamerica'. But to set the stage, first it is necessary to talk about the repopulation of western and central El Salvador in about 400 AD. Remember that this region was depopulated after the Ilopango volcanic eruption of about 210 AD, which caused the decline of the entire Pacific coast region and the subsequent rise of cultures to the north, such as Petén, in part due to the immigration of Chorti Maya elites from western El Salvador following the eruption.

With the power vacuum in the southern Maya area following the Chorti movement north, the Mayan city of Kaminaljuyu, near present-day Guatemala City, became the predominant power. Perhaps this role of Kaminaljuyu/Guatemala City remained in the collective memory of Central Americans when Guatemala City was chosen as the capital of the Federal Republic of Central America in the first years of this short-lived republic following independence from Spain in 1821.

By 400 AD, the thick Ilopango ash in western El Salvador was transformed back into soil and the area could be re-inhabited. Pocomam Mayas moved into the extreme western part of the country around Itiquizaya, most likely from western Guatemala. In addition, many Chorti Maya moved back, probably from Copán, but possibly from the Petén.

Copán itself received an influx of elites from the Petén between 300 and 400 AD, its start date as a ceremonial center. Perhaps Copán was chosen as a halfway point between the Petén and the old Pacific Coast centers, like Chalchuapa. Or Copán may have given the Tikal Chorti access to the jade along the Motagua River Valley and allowed them to challenge the supremacy of Kaminaljuyu in the south. Soon Copán would be a regional power on its own.

The Chortis resettled San Andres, Chalchuapa, Santa Leticia, Cara Sucia, and surrounding areas, as well as the present-day area of San Salvador. It is likely that during the time period that Chalchuapa was a bilingual Pocoman-Chorti city. By 400 AD, there was likely significant divergence between these two Mayan languages. It is also likely that some local Chorti elites settled in Matamaras in northern Chalatenango and the Lago Güija in northwestern Santa Ana at this time. Both Chalchuapa and Lago Güija would have given the Chortis access to the obsidian at nearby Ixtepeque, to the northwest.

While Tehuacán along the eastern slope of Chichontepeque volcano in San Vicente may have been a Chorti Maya site prior to 210 AD, or, more likely, a bilingual Chorti-Lenca ceremonial and trade center, it is likely that the Chorti elites left with the other Chortis to the north post-Ilopango. In the early classic period of 210 to 600 AD, Tehuacán was clearly a Lenca site and related most closely to Quelepa to the east, with similar jaguar rock sculptures as Quelepa.

E. Wyllys Andrews, one of the first archeologists to study the Quelepa site, noted that there was no evidence of contact between Quelepa and western El Salvador between 200 and 600 AD. On the other hand, prior to the departure of the Chortis in 210 AD, there had been significant trade and cultural contact between the Chortis in western El Salvador and the Potón Lenca in eastern El Salvador. In the interceding 190 years, the knowledge of each other's languages must have disappeared, as well as Chorti memory of Quelepa as a source of obsidian. Ironically, Andrews found that the Lenca continued to trade with the Olmec/ Totonac people of the Veracruz Coast. There is little evidence of the Lenca having contact with peoples on the overland route to Veracruz so it seems that they traveled by ocean canoes or rafts north and then crossed the Tehuantepec isthmus to Veracruz.

The history of the Salvadoran region would take another major twist in 590 AD, when for the second time in 400 years, a volcano would erupt and interrupt the development of civilization in the region. The history of immigration and disaster recovery would continue for Salvadorans.

Indigenous Peoples of El Salvador

Many Salvadorans think that Pipil is the main indigenous root of the Salvadoran people. Pipiles may have been the largest group at the time of the Spanish conquest and might be the only group that maintained an explicitly indigenous identity beyond the matanza of the 1930s, but El Salvador has many different groups of indigenous within its history. In fact, the Pipiles did not even arrive on the scene from central Mexico until about 610 A.D.

Prior to the Pipiles, the primary people of El Salvador were the Chorti Maya and the Lenca. The Chorti extended throughout western and central El Salvador as well as north into western Honduras, including Copan, and eastern Guatemala, in the area of Escuintla and Quirigua in the Motagua Valley. The Lenca extended from the east-central portion of El Salvador from the coast north into central and western Honduras. The Chorti and Lenca have lived side-by-side for thousands of years without a history of aggression or conflict. Today, traditional Chorti Maya live in the upper reaches of the Motagua watershed in both eastern Guatemala and western Honduras, while the Lenca are centered in the Intibuca province of southwestern Honduras.

East of the Lenca were the Mangues along the Gulfo de Fonseca and the Uluas in present day northern La Union. In addition, the Cacaoperas lived in present day Morazan. The Cacaoperas were most likely a Lenca-related people but also seem to have roots with the Chontales of Nicaragua. In any case, the Cacaoperas were the main trading link between El Salvador and the indigenous of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.

In far west El Salvador were the Pokomam Mayans, in the area of present day northern Ahuachapan, centered around Itiquizaya. The larger Pokomam population is based in present day eastern Guatemala. The Pokomams are more closely related to the Quiches in western Guatemala than to the Chortis, possibly indicating a migration toward El Salvador in the early classic period, possibly at the time that the Chortis abandoned most of El Salvador following the Ilopango eruption in about 210 A.D. The Chortis began to repopulate the valleys of the Salvadoran volcanic range in about 400 A.D.

The Pipiles arrived from central Mexico in about 600 A.D., most likely driven out by the dominant Toltecs. Given the similarity of place names, it is believed that the Pipiles originated in the current state of Puebla. The Pipiles are Nahuat-speaking people and some settled in coastal Guatemala and Nicaragua, as well as El Salvador. Some also settled in Honduras. Settled is a polite way of saying invaded – they were not welcomed by the Chortis and Lencas and entered by force. The Pipiles were the dominant political force in El Salvador for at least 400 years and took over the old Mayan ceremonial centers, adding a few monuments of their own. This lasted until about 1050 A.D., when a Quiche – Putun (Chol) – Aztec – Chorti coalition defeated the Pipiles and re-established Mayan control over the ceremonial centers. The Pipiles then concentrated themselves in Sonsonate around Izalco and in Nonualco, south of Lago Ilopango, with other Pipil villages spread throughout the country.

Originally posted Nov. 28, 2009 on BlogBox