The department of Sonsonate was the territory of the Izalcos, one of the richest and most populous Pipil regions of the dominion of Cuzcatlán. Its fame came from cacao, a Mesoamerican currency and sacred drink that made the area one of the great economic centers of Mesoamerica in pre-Hispanic times and in the early colony. Several settlements —Tacuscalco, Nahulingo, Tecpán Izalco, Caluco— formed the famous region of 'the four Izalcos', coveted by the conquistadors.
The city of Sonsonate, of colonial origin, keeps a Nahuat name usually associated with 'many waters' or 'river of many springs', on account of the area's numerous watercourses. It was an important administrative and commercial center of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, seat of an alcaldía mayor that enjoyed great autonomy during much of the colonial period.
Sonsonate is the heart of the living Nahuat-Pipil identity of El Salvador. Nahuizalco —whose name means 'the four Izalcos of Nahui'— is one of the municipalities with the strongest indigenous presence in the country, where a few Nahuat speakers still hold on, along with wicker and tule crafts, the traditional night market and the cofradías. It is one of the last strongholds of a language and a culture that came to the brink of disappearance.
Izalco, at the foot of the volcano, is another town of deeply indigenous roots, famous for its cofradías, its dances and its religiosity. There lived the chieftain José Feliciano Ama, leader of the 1932 insurrection. Both towns preserve a spirituality that mixes the Catholic and the Pipil, with processions, mayordomías and festivals whose roots sink into centuries of cultural syncretism.
Sonsonate was the epicenter of the Matanza of 1932, one of the most tragic episodes in Salvadoran history. In January of that year, thousands of peasants and indigenous people from Izalco, Nahuizalco, Juayúa and other towns of the west, impoverished by the coffee crisis and organized by the Communist Party and by local leaders, rose up armed with machetes against landowners and authorities.
The repression of the regime of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez was devastating: thousands of indigenous people were executed en masse in the squares and cemeteries of the region. Feliciano Ama was hanged in public in Izalco. The trauma was so deep that many survivors abandoned forever the Nahuat language and traditional dress so as not to be identified as indigenous. Sonsonate carries that wound engraved in its collective memory, today the object of commemorations and cultural recovery.
The natural symbol of the department is the Izalco Volcano, the youngest in El Salvador and one of the most perfect and famous volcanic cones in the country. It was born just in 1770, from a simple crack on the flank of the Santa Ana volcano, and grew rapidly until it formed the cone we know today. For nearly two centuries, until 1966, it was in almost permanent activity, lighting up the nights with its incandescent glow of lava.
That constant glow, visible from the sea, earned it the nickname of 'the lighthouse of the Pacific', and it is said to have served as a reference for sailors. Now extinguished, its gray, bare silhouette contrasts with the greenery of the neighboring Cerro Verde and is one of the most iconic images of Salvadoran geography, contemplated by thousands of visitors from the lookout points of the Los Volcanes complex.
Sonsonate shares with Ahuachapán the famous Ruta de las Flores. Within its territory are some of its most beloved towns: Juayúa, famous for its weekend Food Fair, for its Church of the Cristo Negro —a much-venerated image— and for its waterfalls, such as the Chorros de la Calera; and Salcoatitán, one of the smallest and most charming coffee villages of the circuit. High-altitude coffee, gastronomy, crafts and mountains combine in these misty towns.
The city of Sonsonate is also known throughout the country for its solemn Holy Week processions, among the oldest and most famous in Central America, a legacy of colonial Baroque religiosity. That devotion, which coexists with the indigenous spirituality of the mountain towns, and the carpets of dyed sawdust that cover the streets, make Sonsonate's Holy Week one of the richest cultural expressions of western El Salvador.