The Spanish Province of San Salvador in the Mid-Sixteenth Century

Abstract

The impression one has when visiting El Salvador in the late twentieth century is of businesslike order, confirming the remark that Salvadorans are the Swiss of Central America. In the city of San Salvador - wonder of wonders - buses run on schedule. One has the same impression in a Salvadoran consular office in the United States: Information is made available quickly, as are good maps. The editor and publisher of El Salvador News Gazette recently stated that those who have worked with Salvadorans, whether it is here [in El Salvador] or in the United States, know that this is a country of merchants, not peasants. The first thing Salvadorans do if they're able to save a little extra money is to start a small business. The commercial bent of modern El Salvador has roots that run through millennia and involve distant territories, particularly Mexico. When the conquering Spaniards arrived in the early sixteenth century, long lines of trade extended out of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital in central Mexico. They were not the invention of Aztec traders but went back to the Toltecs in Tula, half a millennium earlier, who established connections to what are now central Mexico, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica (Diehl, Lomas, and Wynn 1974, 187). A similar organization probably existed previously to facilitate trade between Teotihuacan, before its fall in the seventh century, in central Mexico and Kaminaljuyu in Guatemala (Diehl 1983, 114). Even earlier, Mexicans of the plateau traded with Izapa near the Pacific Coast of present-day Chiapas State and ultimately with the Olmec of the Gulf Coast. THE OLMECS The Olmecs, whose culture took form in the southern part of present-day Veracruz State and in part of Tabasco State, may have been the aboriginal ancestors of Mexico - Central America trade. Sometime after 1200 B.C. and continuing for almost a millennium, their trade network reached northwestward into the states of Oaxaca and Morelos, into the plateau of central Mexico, and beyond into the state of Guerrero (Coe 1986, 72). The network also stretched southeastward to Chalchuapa in what is now El Salvador and beyond to Costa Rica (Morley and Brainerd 1983, 64; Sheets 1984, 86). The Olmec political organization and trade disappeared in the early fifth century B.C., as mysteriously - to us - as it had begun more than half a millennium earlier, but the pattern of its trade routes was remembered at the local centers that had been involved (Coe 1986, 75). Exchanges were continued among them and to some degree with the more distant markets that had been known by the Olmecs. One such center, Izapa, whose inhabitants may have spoken the language of the Olmecs - and whose art style was clearly derived from them - is now a zone of remains in the low, hilly country about twenty miles from the Pacific shore of present-day Chiapas, near the Guatemala border. Early settlement there may have been made at the beginning of the first millennium B.C., but full development took place between 300 B.C. and A.D. 150. Izapa's traders made contacts along the Pacific Coast of Guatemala and up into the highlands near what is now Guatemala City, with at least one extension to the Veracruz coast (Coe 1986, 55-56; 1987, 51). Another important center was Kaminaljuyu, whose ruins lie at the edge of modern Guatemala City. Kaminaljuyu's early trade contacts may have been with the Olmecs, who procured obsidian from Central America - probably from the site of El Chayal, not far from Kaminaljuyu (Sharer 1984, 64-65, 71). A simple settlement had been made at the location near the beginning of the first millennium B.C.; its craftsmen were making articles for trade (Coe 1987, 37, 40). During the two centuries before the beginning of the Christian era the simple village of Kaminaljuyu had become an important city, with a sophisticated culture that included large-scale sculptures and pyramids. At least some of its citizens were literate. …