San Salvador, El Salvador

San Salvador is the capital of El Salvador and the nation’s political, economic, and cultural center. Before the city was dominated by Spanish imperialism, which began in the mid-sixteenth century, San Salvador had been home to a thriving indigenous culture for centuries. The establishment of a wealthy European elite who wielded power over a vast but poor rural majority planted the seeds of future conflicts. A pattern of deep socioeconomic inequity, which has persisted throughout El Salvador’s history, culminated in a bloody civil war during the 1980s. Although El Salvador has experienced some movement toward democratic reform and economic recovery since the civil war, progress is still ongoing in the early twenty-first century.

Landscape

San Salvador is located in central El Salvador at 13° 41′ north and 89° 11′ west. The city stands at an altitude of 680 meters (2,240 feet) above sea level, on both sides of the Acelhuate River. It sits in a geologically active zone, in the shadow of several large hills and volcanoes, including Volcán San Salvador, which last erupted in 1917. The land the city itself is situated upon, however, is largely flat.

The Colonia Escalón, a zone of upscale commercial and residential development, has steadily encroached up the volcano’s lower slopes. Many of the capital’s other exclusive establishments are concentrated in the city’s Zona Rosa (Pink District).

The greater San Salvador area covers 886 square kilometers (342 square miles). Like most of the cities originally planned by Spanish colonial authorities, it is laid out in a grid pattern. The city is divided into four main quadrants. Its less affluent neighborhoods are concentrated in the foothills on the city’s southern edge. One of the hills, known as the Puerta Del Diablo (Devil’s Door), affords panoramic views of the capital below, the adjacent mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

San Salvador features a tropical climate with a dry season that lasts from November through April. During the hottest part of the dry season, temperatures hover around 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), but fall to around 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) at night. The rainy season occurs from May through October. During the coolest part of the rainy season, temperatures typically range from around 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day to about 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit) in the evenings.

San Salvador is on the Pacific Ocean, which makes it especially vulnerable to changes caused by climate change such as rising water, floods, and extreme weather. The area is experiencing more tropical storms than in the past. In 2019, Tropical Storm Julia damanged four hundred homes and left 180,000 people without food. Later tropical storms have caused millions of dollars in property damage.

People

San Salvador is home to 1.111 million people (2022), more than one sixth of El Salvador’s total population. With a population density of about 7,400 people per square kilometer (19,000 people per square mile), San Salvador is one of Central America’s most crowded cities.

The vast majority of the capital’s residents are mestizo, of mixed indigenous and European ancestry. Most speak Spanish, the official language, and more than half are Roman Catholic. However, evangelical Protestant denominations have grown increasingly popular since the 1992 peace accord that ended El Salvador’s civil war. About 21 percent of the city’s population is Protestant.

San Salvador’s society reflects the same sharp socioeconomic divisions that characterize El Salvador as a whole. More than a third of El Salvador’s population lives below the nation’s poverty line, while some 20 percent lives in extreme poverty.

Economy

Government efforts to privatize the nation’s economy in the aftermath of the twelve-year civil war have resulted in the capital’s steady economic revival. San Salvador has reestablished itself as El Salvador’s industrial and commercial hub. It produces about 60 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). In 2022, El Salvador's GDP was at its highest to date, $32.49 billion US dollars.

The capital’s manufacturing sector turns out clothing, textiles, shoes, leather goods, construction materials, soap, tobacco products, furniture, chemicals, processed foods, and beer. However, remittances sent from Salvadorans living abroad, primarily in the United States, continue to outstrip the income generated by manufacturing exports.

San Salvador’s job market has been unable to keep pace with the capital’s rapid population growth, which has contributed to a housing shortage and the emergence of large shantytowns on the capital’s outskirts. It has also fueled the development of a substantial informal economy of street vendors.

The availability of a large pool of cheap labor has attracted foreign investors and some controversy. While the mostly American-owned clothing factories have created thousands of jobs in San Salvador, the working conditions in many of the factories have been heavily criticized by labor and human rights advocates.

Landmarks

The destruction and subsequent rebuilding of the city several times in its history is one outcome of San Salvador’s setting in an earthquake zone. The damage from an 1854 quake was so severe that San Salvador had to relinquish its status as the national capital for four years during the construction of Nueva San Salvador (New San Salvador).

As a result of the city’s geologically turbulent history, only a fraction of San Salvador’s colonial-era heritage has survived. The city’s oldest square, now called the Plaza Libertad (Liberty Plaza), was once anchored by elaborate Spanish-designed buildings dating to the capital’s sixteenth century origins, but all of the original structures have succumbed to earthquakes or fire. Standing at the center of the plaza is a monument honoring the city’s quest for freedom, which culminated in Central America’s 1821 declaration of independence from Spain.

San Salvador’s historic center features several key landmarks, such as the exquisitely frescoed National Theater, that have been carefully reconstructed and renovated. Two of the downtown district’s most noteworthy landmarks are the National Palace and the Metropolitan Cathedral, both of which are located in the center’s main square. The Plaza Barrios is another significant landmark within the city. The plaza was named for nineteenth-century Salvadoran president Gerardo Barrios, who successfully established coffee as the country’s highly lucrative main export.

The ornately marbled National Palace served as El Salvador’s national government headquarters from 1905 until the 1986 earthquake. The Metropolitan Cathedral, originally built in 1888, destroyed in a 1956 fire, and rebuilt again in 1999, is famed for its distinctive blue-and-yellow patterned dome and its colorful façade consisting of thousands of hand-painted tiles. It is also revered as the resting place of Archbishop Óscar Romero, a national hero and beatified Catholic martyr who was assassinated by government agents in 1980.

San Salvador is home to several well-known museums, including the David J. Guzmán National Anthropology Museum, which contains wide-ranging exhibits on the ancient Mayan civilization, as well the most significant archeological and ethnographical artifacts gathered from indigenous cultures throughout El Salvador. Additionally, the Museum of Popular Art and the Museum of Modern Art provide visitors with access to regional folk and contemporary artworks. The Museum of Words and Images displays manuscripts, objects, photographs, film, video, and works of art to document the Salvadoran search for truth and reconciliation in the aftermath of its troubled recent history.

The somber Monument to Memory and Truth memorializes the estimated 25,000 people who died or “disappeared” during El Salvador’s long civil war. The memorial is one of the capital’s most notable landmarks. Built of black granite, the 91-meter (300-foot) monument is inscribed with the names of the civil war’s victims.

History

The original settlement of San Salvador was founded in 1525 by Spanish imperial forces, a year after a previous effort to subjugate the indigenous people failed when local warriors repelled the invaders. On their second attempt, the Spanish succeeded in establishing a foothold some 30 kilometers (17 miles) northeast of the present-day site of the capital.

Three years later, they moved their settlement to the current location of the capital, which was officially granted the status of a city in 1546. By 1570, its population had grown to about 150 Spanish inhabitants.

San Salvador remained under colonial authority until 1821, despite an ill-fated 1811 attempt to rise up against Spanish rule. The city served as the capital of the United Provinces of Central America for several years before El Salvador declared its own independence from this union in 1839, whereupon San Salvador became the capital of the newly formed Salvadoran nation.

San Salvador became a major battleground during the bloody civil war that engulfed El Salvador from 1980 through 1992 and claimed tens of thousands of lives. During the conflict, large numbers of rural Salvadorans fled from the countryside to the capital. The capital was not immune to the fighting, however. In 1989, the Salvadoran government ordered the bombing of areas of the capital thought to be guerilla strongholds, reducing large areas of San Salvador to rubble.

Since the signing of a peace accord in 1992, some degree of political stability has returned to San Salvador. The capital continues to contend with significant rates of poverty, crime, and gang violence fueled by unaddressed socioeconomic inequities.

In the late 2010s, under the guidance of mayor Nayib Bukele, the city's historic center was extensively renovated, in part with the aim of curbing gang activity in the area. In addition to restoration of buildings and parks, the city center was given better outdoor lighting in order to increase a sense of safety, and some vendors at a market that was known as a hub of gang activity were convinced to move elsewhere. Bukele was later elected president of El Salvador.

San Salvador became a sister city of Washington, DC, in 2018.

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