Pipil people
Total population | |
---|---|
~12,000 | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Western and central El Salvador | |
El Salvador | Estimated
12,000 Roman Catholic) and Traditional Indigenous Customs |
Related ethnic groups | |
Nahuas, Nicarao people, Lenca |
The
Nahua cosmology is related to that of the Toltec, Maya and Lenca.[2]
Language, etymology, and synonymy
The term Nahua is a cultural and ethnic term used for Nahuan-speaking groups. Though they are Nahua, the term Pipil is the term that is most commonly encountered in anthropological and linguistic literature. This
Archaeologist William Fowler notes that the term Pipil can be translated as "noble" and surmises that the invading Spanish and their Indian auxiliaries, the Tlaxcala, used the name as a reference to the population's elite, known as the Pipiltin. The Pipiltin were land owners and composed a sovereign society state during the Toltec expansion.
For most authors, the term Pipil or Nawat (Nahuat) is used to refer to the language in Central America only (i.e., excluding Mexico). However, the term (along with the synonymous Eastern Nahuatl) has also been used to refer to Nahuan language varieties in the southern Mexican states of Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas, that, like the Nawat in El Salvador, have reduced the earlier /tl/ sound to a /t/. The varieties spoken in these three areas do share greater similarities with Nawat than the other Nahuan varieties do, which suggests a closer connection; however, Campbell (1985) considers Nawat distinct enough to be a language separate from the Nahuan branch, thus rejecting an Eastern Nahuatl subgrouping that includes Nawat.
Dialects of Nawat include the following:[3]
- Izalco
- Nahuizalco
- Panchimalco
- Cuisnahuat
- Santo Domingo de Guzmán
- Santa Catarina Mazagua
- Teotepeque
- Tacuba
- Ataco
- Jicalapa
- Comazagua
- Chiltiupan
Today, Nawat is seldom used by the general population. It is mostly used in rural areas, mostly as phrases sustained in households, such as in the
History
Indigenous accounts recorded by Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Francisco de Oviedo suggest that the Nahuas of El Salvador migrated from present-day Mexico to their current locations beginning around the 8th century A.D. As they settled in the area, they founded the city-state of Kūskatan, which was already home to various groups including the Lenca, Xinca, Ch'orti', and Poqomam.
The Nahuas, a cohesive group sharing a central Mexican culture, are said to have migrated to Central America during the Late Classic and Early Postclassic period. Archaeological research suggests these migrants were ethnically and culturally related to the Toltecs.
The Nahuas organized the confederacy, Kūskatan, with at least two centralized city-states that may have been subdivided into smaller principalities. They were also competent workers in
When their presence was documented by the Spanish in the 16th century, they were identified as "Pipil" and located in the present areas of western El Salvador, as well as south-eastern Guatemala.[4] Poqomam Maya settlements were interspersed around the area of Chalchuapa.
Some urban centers developed into present-day cities, such as
Spanish conquest
In the early 16th century, the Spanish
According to legend, a Nahua
After the Spanish victory, the Nahuas of Kuskatan became vassals of the Spanish Crown and were no longer referred to as Pipiles by the Spanish but simply indios (Indians), in accordance with the Vatican "Discovery doctrine". The term Pipil has therefore remained associated, in mainstream Salvadoran rhetoric, with the pre-conquest indigenous culture. Today it is used by scholars to distinguish the indigenous population in El Salvador from other Nahua-speaking groups (e.g., in Nicaragua). However, neither the self-identified indigenous population nor its political movement, which has revived in recent decades, uses the term "pipil" to describe themselves but instead uses terms such as "Nawataketza" (a speaker of Nawat) or simply "indígenas" (indigenous).
Modern Nahua Culture
Popular accounts of the Nahuas have had a strong influence on the national oral histories of El Salvador, with a large portion of the population claiming ancestry from the Pipil and other groups. Some 86% of today's Salvadorans self-report as Mestizos (people of mixed Amerindian and European descent). A small percentage (estimated by the government at 1 percent, by UNESCO at 2 percent, and by scholars at between 2 and 4 percent) is of solely or nearly solely Indigenous ancestry, although the numbers are disputed for political reasons. There are still Natives who speak Nawat (Nahuat) and follow traditional ways of life. They live mainly in the northwestern highlands near the Guatemalan border, but numerous self-identified Indigenous populations live in other areas, such as the Nonualcos south of the capital and the Lenca in the east.
According to a special report in El Diario de Hoy, due to preservation and revitalization efforts of various non-profit organizations in conjunction with several universities, combined with a post-civil war resurgence of Nahua identity in the country of El Salvador, the number of Nawat speakers rose from 200 in the 1980s to 3,000 speakers in 2009. The vast majority of these speakers are young people, a fact that may allow the language to be pulled from the brink of extinction.[6] Nawat (Nahuat) language revitalization efforts are currently being made today, in and outside of El Salvador.
There is also a renewed interest in the preservation of traditional Indigenous customs and other Indigenous cultural practices, as well as a greater willingness by Indigenous Salvadoran communities to perform their ceremonies in public, and to wear traditional Indigenous clothing without fear of government repression.
Notable Nahuas of El Salvador
- Anastasio Aquino (1792–1833), Tagateku Nonualco war chief [7]
- Prudencia Ayala (1885–1936), indigenous rights activist
- Feliciano Ama (1881–1932), Izalco chief
- Francisco "Chico" Sánchez, Juayua Chief
- Nantzin Paula López Witzapan, poet and Nawat linguist (1959-2016)
- Alicia Maria Siu, muralist.
See also
- El Mozote massacre (1981), perpetrated by the Salvadoran Army during the Salvadoran Civil War.
- La Matanza (1932), an indigenous resistance ending in the Republic Army executing and murdering between 10,000 and 40,000 Indigenous people.
- Annals of the Cakchiquels (1571), a manuscript written in the indigenous Kaqchikel language.
- Pipil language
- Pipil language (typological overview)
- Pipil grammar
References
- ^ "Pipil in El Salvador".
- ISBN 9780313306204. Retrieved 17 October 2017 – via Google Books.
- ^ Cambell, Lyle (1985). The Pipil Language of El Salvador. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. p. 15. Retrieved 14 September 2022.
- ^ OCLC 19130791.
- OCLC 948355675.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-09-28. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "Anastacio Aquino".
Bibliography
- ISBN 0-688-11280-3.
- ISBN 0-19-510815-9(set).
- Campbell, Lyle. (1978). Middle American languages. in L. Campbell & Marianne Mithun (Eds.), The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment (pp. 902–1000). Austin: University of Texas Press.
- Campbell, Lyle. (1985). The Pipil language of El Salvador. Mouton Publishers.
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
- Ciudad Universitaria.
- Clavijero, Francisco Xavier. (1974 [1775]). Historia Antigua de México. Mexico: Editorial Porrúa.
- Asunción, Paraguay: Editorial Guaraní.
- PhD dissertation, Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary).
- Fowler, William R. (1983). La distribución prehistórica e histórica de los pipiles. Mesoamérica, 6, 348-372.
- de Fuentes y Guzmán, Francisco Antonio. (1932–1933 [1695]). Recordación Florida: Discurso historial y demostración natural, material, militar y política del Reyno de Guatemala. J. A. Villacorta, R. A. Salazar, & S. Aguilar (Eds.). Biblioteca "Goathemala" (Vols. 6-8). Guatemala: Sociedad de Geografía e Historia.
- ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: www.ethnologue.com).
- Ixtlilxochitl, Don Fernando de Alva. (1952 [1600-1611]). Obras históricas de Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlixochitl, publicadas y anotadas pro Alfredo Chavero. Mexico: Editoria Nacional, S.A.
- Jiménez Moreno, Wigberto . (1959). Síntesis de la historia pretoleca de Mesoamérica., Esplendor del México antiguo (Vol. 2, pp. 1019–1108). Mexico.
- Jiménez Moreno, Wigberto. (1966). Mesoamerica before the Tolteca. In Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
- Lehmann, Walter. (1920). Zentral-Amerika. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
- Miguel León-Portilla. (1972). Religión de los nicaraos: Análisis y comparación de tradiciones culturales nahuas. Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
- OCLC 13436697.
- Stoll, Otto. (1958 [1884]). Zur Ethnographie der Republik Guatemala (Etnografía de Guatemala). Seminaro de Integración Social Guatemalteca publication 8.
- Carnegie Institution of Washington, Contributions to American anthropology and history (44). Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Tilley, Virginia. (2005). Seeing Indians: A Study of Race, Nation and Power in El Salvador. University of New Mexico Press.
- Monarquía Indiana. Biblioteca Porrúa(Vols. 41-43). Mexico: Librería Porrúa
Further reading
- Batres, Carlos A. (2009). Tracing the "Enigmatic" Late Postclassic Nahua-Pipil (A.D. 1200-1500): Archaeological Study of Guatemalan South Pacific Coast (MA thesis). Carbondale, Illinois, USA: Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
- Fowler, William R. Jr. (Winter 1985). "Ethnohistoric Sources on the Pipil-Nicarao of Central America: A Critical Analysis". OCLC 478130795.
- Fox, John W. (August 1981). "The Late Postclassic Eastern Frontier of Mesoamerica: Cultural Innovation Along the Periphery". Current Anthropology. 22 (4). S2CID 144750081.
- Polo Sifontes, Francis (1981). Francis Polo Sifontes and Celso A. Lara Figueroa (ed.). "Título de Alotenango, 1565: Clave para ubicar geograficamente la antigua Itzcuintepec pipil". Antropología e Historia de Guatemala (in Spanish). 3, II Epoca. Guatemala City, Guatemala: Dirección General de Antropología e Historia de Guatemala, Ministerio de Educación: 109–129. OCLC 605015816.
- Van Akkeren, Ruud (2005). "Conociendo a los Pipiles de la Costa del Pacífico de Guatemala: Un estudio etno-histórico de documentos indígenas y del Archivo General de Centroamérica" (PDF). XVIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2004 (Edited by J.P. Laporte, B. Arroyo and H. Mejía) (in Spanish). Guatemala City, Guatemala: Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología: 1000–1014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-09-14. Retrieved 2012-02-18.