San Vicente extends across the center of El Salvador, dominated by the imposing silhouette of the San Vicente Volcano, or Chichontepec, a volcanic massif of two peaks —hence its Nahuat name, which alludes to the 'two breasts' or 'two hills'— that presides over the central plain. At some 2,180 meters, it is one of the highest mountains in the country and the great backdrop of the department.
Of Pipil and Nonualco roots, the region was agricultural land since pre-Hispanic times, and during the colony it became one of the main indigo-producing centers of the whole province of San Salvador, with great haciendas and obrajes. That indigo wealth made San Vicente one of the most prosperous and influential areas of the center of the country in the colonial centuries.
The city of San Vicente was founded on December 26, 1635, by some fifty families of Spanish settlers, under a tempisque tree on the banks of the Acahuapa River, with the name of San Vicente de Lorenzana. It is one of the cities of greatest tradition and colonial lineage in the country. Its fertile surroundings and its central position made it an important urban center; it even came to be, briefly, the capital of the Republic in the 19th century.
Its most recognizable emblem is the Tower of San Vicente, an elegant clock tower some 40 meters high built between 1928 and 1930 facing the central park and the cathedral, a symbol of the city. Beside it, the church of El Pilar, of the colonial era, is one of the most important historic temples of San Vicente and holds a deep memory.
San Vicente was the setting of one of the most remembered episodes of 19th-century Salvadoran history: the rebellion of the Nonualcos of 1833, led by Anastasio Aquino, an indigenous leader who rose up against the abuses, tributes and forced recruitment imposed by the government. Aquino and his followers came to occupy the city of San Vicente on February 15, 1833, and according to tradition he himself took a crown from the image of the church of El Pilar and proclaimed himself symbolically 'king of the Nonualcos'.
The rebellion was finally quelled, and Aquino, captured and executed that same year in the city of San Vicente itself. His figure became an enduring symbol of indigenous and peasant resistance in El Salvador, and his memory remains very much alive in San Vicente and in neighboring La Paz, lands of the Nonualcos.
The department of San Vicente unfolds over one of the most fertile plains in the country, watered by the Lempa River and its tributaries, in the agricultural heart of El Salvador. Sugarcane, basic grains, cattle and other crops have for centuries been the basis of its economy, heir to the great colonial indigo haciendas.
Today San Vicente combines that agricultural and historical heritage with its rich colonial legacy —its cathedral, its tower, its churches— and with the natural appeal of the Chichontepec volcano, whose slopes offer coffee plantations, trails and thermal-water resorts, such as those of Infiernillos and the Aguas Termales de Amapulapa. Between the fertile land, the memory of Aquino and the shadow of the volcano, San Vicente is a department of deep identity in central El Salvador.
Around the capital, the towns of San Vicente preserve the memory of the golden age of indigo. Apastepeque, with its volcanic lagoon of the same name, was the seat of one of the great 'indigo fairs' of the colonial period, where the blue dye that enriched the province was traded. Tepetitán, Guadalupe, Verapaz and other municipalities round out a rural mosaic of deep tradition.
The Laguna de Apastepeque, small and of serene waters set in a crater, is today a corner of nature and rest. These towns, with their patron-saint festivities, their churches and their traditions, keep alive the identity of a San Vicente that was, in the days of indigo, one of the economic hearts of colonial El Salvador.