Usulután opens the door to the east of El Salvador, with a geography that combines the Tecapa-Chinameca range to the north with a long Pacific coast to the south. Its name is of Nahuat origin and is usually translated as 'city of ocelots' or 'place of small jaguars'. Unlike the Pipil west, much of this region was Lenca land, who spoke the Potón language and who inhabited the east of the country east of the Lempa River.
During the conquest, the people of Usulután fiercely resisted the Spaniards, and in the Bay of Jiquilisco —then called Xiriualtique— Pedro de Alvarado built part of a fleet. In the colonial and republican eras, Usulután was a land of indigo, cotton, sugarcane and, later, coffee, a diverse agricultural economy that marked its history and its landscape.
The north of Usulután rises into the Tecapa-Chinameca range, a mountain chain of volcanic origin with several cones, craters and lagoons. Its cool, fertile mountains are a land of high-altitude coffee and of temperate-climate towns that contrast with the heat of the low east. Alegría, on the slopes of the Tecapa volcano, is known as the 'garden of El Salvador' for its cool climate, its nurseries and its flowers.
Its jewel is the Laguna de Alegría, a volcanic lagoon of greenish, sulfurous waters set in a crater, surrounded by forest and mist, which legend associates with the Siguanaba. Nearby, the town of Berlín, another high-altitude coffee center, stands out for its old-style houses and its mountain setting, increasingly valued by rural tourism.
The volcanic subsoil of the Tecapa-Chinameca range hides an enormous energy wealth. In the surroundings of Berlín, in the Tecapa volcanic complex, one of the main geothermal plants of El Salvador has operated since 1992, harnessing the steam and heat of the subsoil to generate electricity. Together with the Ahuachapán plant, Salvadoran geothermal energy comes to provide more than a fifth of the electricity the country consumes.
That clean and renewable energy, born of the same volcanism that shapes the landscapes of Usulután, has made the department a benchmark for geothermal production in the region. In recent years, that energy capacity was even linked to bitcoin-mining projects promoted by the government, in an unexpected crossroads between the volcanoes of the east and the digital economy.
The greatest natural treasure of Usulután is the Bay of Jiquilisco, the largest estuary and wetland in El Salvador: a labyrinth of islands, channels, peninsulas, mangroves and beaches of enormous ecological value. It contains the largest mangrove forest in the country and is home to the largest population of aquatic birds, many of them migratory and threatened. Its old name, Xiriualtique, means in Potón 'bay of the stars'.
Declared a Biosphere Reserve by Unesco and a Ramsar site of international importance, the bay is one of the most important sea turtle nesting areas in Central America, with community projects for the conservation of species such as the olive ridley and hawksbill turtles. Puerto El Triunfo, founded in 1875 to export the coffee of northern Usulután, is today the gateway to this paradise of ecotourism and biodiversity.
Facing the bay, the open coast of Usulután offers long beaches of dark sand and warm waters, much loved by Salvadorans of the east. Playa El Espino, a wide strip of sand bordered by coconut palms, is one of the most popular, a traditional destination of sun, sea and fresh seafood. It is a more leisurely and local tourism, different from the international atmosphere of the surf beaches of the center of the country.
Between the cool mountains of the north and the warm coast of the south, between high-altitude coffee and the mangroves, Usulután unfolds one of the most varied and rich geographies of eastern El Salvador. Its combination of nature, geothermal energy, Lenca history and ecotourism makes it a department at once productive and full of natural beauty.