El Salvador Travel Guide

The first conquistador to set foot on El Salvador was Andrés Niño who, exploring the Pacific coast of the isthmus, landed on the island of Meanguera in the Golfo de Fonseca on May 31, 1522. The Spanish returned in June 1524 when Pedro de Alvarado , commanding a force of around 250 Spanish troops and 5000 indigenous people, entered what is now the department of Ahuachapán from Guatemala. The region was fertile and densely populated, with two rival city-states, Cuscatlán, more or less where the city of San Salvador now stands, and Tecpa Izalco, around the Sonsonate area. The Spanish called all this new territory Cuscatlán , a name which is still used today in presidential speeches, stirring newspapers and the like to evoke national pride.

Defeating the Pipils at Acajutla and then at Tacuxcalco, Alvarado advanced up the Zapotitán valley to the city of Cuscatlán, only to find it deserted, its army having fled to the mountains. Wounded and forced to return to Guatemala, Alvarado reported that the region would take time and effort to conquer. No doubt he exaggerated, but it is thought that the Pipil forces were up to twice as numerous as those of the Spanish, with the population of the territory as a whole put variously at between 130,000 and one million. Not until April 1528 did a third Spanish force under Diego de Alvarado succeed in subduing the Pipils and establishing the foothold of Villa San Salvador near present-day Suchitoto.

Once established, the Spanish almost immediately began to think about advancing east, motivated both by the persistent belief that the undiscovered territories would yield riches and by the need to remain dominant to the rival group of conquistadors advancing up the isthmus from Panamá under Pedrarias Davila. In 1530 Alvarado dispatched Luis de Moscosco from Guatemala to finalize the conquest of the east. Ten years later, despite a number of indigenous uprisings, the Spanish hold upon the territory was secure