San Miguel, in eastern El Salvador, played a central role in the country’s colonial economy, where thousands of enslaved Africans were forced to labor in gold mining and indigo, sugar, and cacao production. Many of the region’s current residents are descendants of Afro-mestizx and Afro-Indigenous communities, though formal recognition of Black identity has long been denied. While El Salvador is often imagined as a homogeneously mestizx nation, San Miguel reveals a deeper, often suppressed African legacy. Black Salvadorans continue to face erasure and discrimination, shaped by whitening policies and anti-Black migration laws of the 20th century. Yet African influence endures in food, language, music, and everyday cultural practices, pointing to a persistent, if marginalized, Black presence.
Around 7,441 Salvadorans self-identify as Afro-descendants. However, the Black descendant population has been continuously excluded from Salvadoran history. Around 94% of the population is considered mestizo; however, there is little discussion of the African contribution to Salvadoran history. “Many Salvadorans today are unaware of El Salvador’s African heritage and the African contribution made to mestizo culture has often gone unrecognized by Salvadoran scholars” (Williams 2001). Afro-Salvadorans have deep roots in the Spanish colonial era, while African ancestry is also present among Salvadorans who identify in other ways. Afro-Salvadorans are sometimes referred to as Afro-mestizos, although not all Afro-Salvadorans identify as mestizo (Williams 2001). The historical incorporation of African ancestry into dominant narratives of mestizaje has contributed to a lack of recognition of Blackness and African ancestry in El Salvador.
In 1541, after diseases brought by Spanish colonizers killed over 100,000 Indigenous people in El Salvador, Spanish royalty issued an ordinance that permitted the importation of enslaved labor to work on cacao, sugar, and indigo plantations. Over 10,000 Africans were forcibly brought to El Salvador following the ordinance. In the 1540s and 1550s, many Africans were forced to work in the gold mines around San Miguel. During the colonial era, several towns and cities had populations that were mostly African (Williams 2001). Today, many African descendants are found in places where there used to be plantations or gold mines, including San Miguel. According to colonial records, Afro-descendants in El Salvador have ancestral ties to Angola, the Guineas, and Mozambique (Rodríguez 2012).
Over time, communities of mixed African, Indigenous, and European ancestry formed, which colonial authorities classified through racial categories such as mulato and zambo. By 1779, 31% of the Salvadoran population was classified as being of mixed ancestry. In November 1824, slavery was abolished in El Salvador, making it one of the first nations in the Americas, after Haiti, to abolish slavery. This led to several enslaved people from Belize escaping to El Salvador and starting lives there. At the end of the colonial period, much of the population did not maintain strong ethnic ties to Indigenous, African, or European descent (Williams 2001). However, this assimilation also reflected cultural pressures to “whiten” oneself with the goal of social mobility (Rodríguez 2012).
Today, Afro-Salvadoran history is often overlooked, and many believe there are no Black Salvadorans, contributing to the stigma and erasure Afro-Salvadorans face. General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who ruled El Salvador during the 1930s and 1940s, is another important part of this history of Black erasure. His government created immigration laws restricting migration from non-European countries with the goal of promoting the “whitening” of Salvadorans. Carlos Lara, an artist and anthropology student in San Salvador, explains that the Salvadoran desire for whiteness and the erasure of Blackness also have ties to the caste system from the colonial period, which treated lighter-skinned people better (Cruz 2023). Despite the systematic erasure of Blackness in El Salvador, African heritage remains present in culture and language. For example, several Salvadoran cultural elements have African roots, including rice, horchata, the dish La Cochinita, plantains, and añil (the decorative use of indigo).
La Matanza: On January 22, 1932, thousands of campesinos (peasant workers) and Indigenous people came together to rebel against General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez’s authoritarian regime (Cuéllar 2018, 39). The rebellion, called “La Matanza,” was led by Agustín Farabundo Martí, a campesino revolutionary and member of the Salvadoran Communist Party. After his capture and execution, he was memorialized as a martyr and remained a remembered figure throughout Salvadoran leftist movements through the 1980s. The rebellion stemmed from the Salvadoran wage labor system, which replaced the colono system (where workers received plots of land in exchange for labor), and the rapid growth of coffee plantations. These systems encroached on campesino and Indigenous land and concentrated land in the hands of the “coffee elite,” increasing inequality along racial and ethnic lines and leading to struggles for land, hunger, and securing the means of social reproduction (Cuéllar 2018, 42–43). The rebellion was eventually crushed as the government deployed military force and recentralized power in the state. The elimination of dissent was so thorough that it was referred to as a “cultural mestizaje,” which meant that through the national citizenship project, Indigenous peoples were made mestizo and ladinized (assimilated to the Spanish-speaking, Hispanic, dominant culture). Following the rebellion, Indigeneity became increasingly marginalized and folklorized (Cuéllar 2018, 46–47).
Afro-Salvadorans also participated in La Matanza. However, in 1933, Hernández Martínez passed the Migration Law, which targeted communities along racial lines. The law prohibited “the migration of peoples from China and Mongolia, any members of the Black race, Malaysians,” and more. Sometimes, people with African features near Salvadoran borders were not only discriminated against but also expelled from El Salvador. The Migration Law fueled a narrative that Africans were from elsewhere, which has carried into the present, when Afro-Salvadorans still struggle for recognition (Cuéllar 2018, 48). The fallout of La Matanza contributed to both the erasure of Indigeneity and the exclusion of Blackness from dominant understandings of the Salvadoran nation. The loss of those identities in El Salvador extends to today and increases the difficulty of obtaining space to discuss discrimination and mobilizing issues, as well as to claim territorial space (Cuéllar 2018, 50–51).
Digital Organizing: The digital sphere is an essential place for Salvadoran visibility, recognition, and activism. AFROOS uses its Instagram platform to highlight stories of Afro-descendants. They also publish digital photo galleries that highlight similar stories. Several organized events and celebrations are promoted and discussed on these platforms as activists act in diasporic solidarity or advocate for their own recognition.
Salvadoran Afro-descendants Day: On August 29 each year, El Salvador celebrates the Day of Salvadoran Afro-descendants. It is celebrated during El Salvador’s Black History Month to promote heritage, culture, respect, and realization of the fundamental freedoms and rights of Afro-descendants (Cruz 2023; SomosAfro 2021). The day was first celebrated in 2014, and festivities often include music, cultural foods, and dance (Sibrian 2023). In 2021, AFROOS organized “Arte Afrogosto” to celebrate, which invited artists and illustrators to “represent 31 words (one for each day of August) of African origin used specifically in El Salvador.” The project highlighted the deep African influence on Salvadoran culture and included words like “Chingar, Xingar, Cumbia, Pachanga, Ruco, and Zombi” (Global Voices and Lara 2021).
● AFROOS (Fundación Afrodescendientes Organizados Salvadoreños) — Afrodescendientes Organizados Salvadoreños (AFROOS) is a Salvadoran organization that works for to recognize and fight for the Afro-Salvadoran populations to guarantee their rights. The organization works to recognize the Afro-Salvadoran population constitutionally and fights to eliminate racism and discrimination. AFROOS has been working since 2012 and is founded and run by people who self-identify as Afro-Salvadoran from around the world. AFROOS has a wide range of advocacy efforts that take place across their social media platforms: Facebook and Instagram @afroossv. They have advocated to congress for recognition and work with public and private institutions to advocate for the Afro-descendant population (Alianza Americas, n.d.).
● Miguel Ángel Ibarra — Miguel Ángel Ibarra was a Salvadoran author and advocate who fought against dispossession of land by landowners, injustice, and poverty in 1932. He was the first Salvador writer to self-identify as Afro-descendant in the book he wrote, Cafetos en Flor. The book discusses the history, culture, and experiences of the indigenous and
Afro-descendant population of the town of Atiquizaya, El Salvador. For his activism during La Matanza, he was sentenced to death by firing squad but survived (@afroossv 2023).
● #EscuelAfro — #EscuelAfro is an organization that advocates for “Afro-descendant Youth Leadership in Latin America and the Caribbean.” It trains young political leaders in strategies for impacting political decision-making from the local to the international level (#EscuelAfro n.d.). The Salvadoran branch of the organization, run by AFROOS, is named after Ángel Ibarra (@afroossv 2024).
● Zaira Miluska Funes (@Centam_Beauty) — Zaira Miluska Funes is an Afro-Salvadoran American. Her father was born in San Miguel and her parents immigrated to the US from El Salvador in the 80s (Funes 2016; VoyageLA and Funes 2019). She grew up in San Pedro, California surrounded mostly by white people and Mexican Latinos, with a very small community of friends who shared her Central American heritage (Arboleda 2017; VoyageLA and Funes 2019). In 2016, while taking an art class in community college, she was assigned to go to a museum and write a paper on the artworks. She chose to go to the Latin American Art Museum (MOLAA) and was shocked to find that there were only two artworks by Central American artists. This led to her creating her page, @Centam_Beauty, in 2017, to “celebrate all things Central American” and create a space to embrace and celebrate Central American culture and beauty (VoyageLA and Funes 2019).
● Carlos Lara — Carlos Lara is a gay Afro-Salvadoran artist, activist, and professor. He is from San Miguel and currently lives and teaches in San Salvador. His art focuses on personal portraits, still lifes, and comics. His comics highlight the everyday experiences of Salvadorans and fight against masculism, racism, homophobia, and more (Lara n.d.). He has also worked with Afroos to promote awareness of Afro-Salvadoran culture and history. His work can be found on Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, and his Website.
● Breena Nuñez — Breena Nuñez (she/they) is an Afro Salvadoran-Guatemalan cartoonist from the Bay Area. She creates comics centering her experiences of blackness, being Central American in the Bay Area, queerness, and the awkwardness of racism. Their comic, “I Exist!” focuses on Nuñez’s questioning of their Afro Salvadoran identity. They struggle with the lack of representation in media of Afro descendant Central Americans and discuss the lack discussion of Black Salvadoran experiences. Nuñez describes how by reading Afro-Salvadoran history and meeting with other Afro-Latinx people who shared their struggles with Black identity, she came to embrace her “Blackness, Central Americanness, and queerness.” Breena Nuñez also co-founded a publishing company called Laneha House, where they self-publish their comics. They have also published in The New Yorker: Daily Shouts, The Nib, and several anthologies.
● Ana Yency Lemus Chavez — Ana is an Afro-Salvadoran activist and human rights defender. In 2017, 2019, and 2023, she submitted proposals for recognition of Afro-descendants to the Salvadoran government. She is the founder and leader of a youth-led organization called Afrodescendiente Organizados Salvadoreños (AFROOS) which fights against racism and discrimination (One Young World 2023). Through AFROOS, she has advocated to the Ministry of Education and Culture to support Afro-descendant culture and history, but the government has continuously neglected to act. She is motivated to fight against discrimination stems from her gradmother, Francisca Grijalva, being forced to leave school at 8 years old due to disscrimination. Ana believes discussion and recognition of Afro-Salvadoran identity is a strong way to promote inclusion (Redacción FOCOS 2021). She is recognized as a Young Influencer by the El Salvador Legislative Assembly. Ana was named “Orgullo Salvadoreño” or “Pride of El Salvador” by the Afro-Salvadoran Diaspora in the United States. She has also won several Youth Activism awards in Latin America (#EscuelAfro n.d.).
● Prudencia Ayala — Prudencia Ayala was a Salvadoran Indigenous writer, activist, and advocate for women’s rights whose legacy has also been claimed within histories of Afro-Salvadoran and Afro-Indigenous struggle. While available biographical accounts emphasize Ayala’s Indigenous ancestry and her own identification as indolatina, some contemporary accounts identify her as Afro-Indigenous. Given the historical erasure of African ancestry in El Salvador, the question of Ayala’s African ancestry remains open rather than definitively established. Largely self-taught after leaving school in the second grade, Ayala gained recognition through her writing and political activism. Beginning in the 1910s, she published opinion pieces advocating anti-imperialism, feminism, and the reunification of Central America and spoke out against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. She also published poems and books and founded the newspaper Redención Femenina. In 1930, Ayala sought the presidency of El Salvador at a time when women did not yet have the right to vote. Her political platform included support for unions, governmental transparency, restrictions on alcohol distribution and consumption, respect for religious worship, and legal recognition of children born outside marriage. Her attempt to register as a presidential candidate was ultimately rejected, but her campaign helped bring questions of women’s political citizenship and suffrage into public debate.
Research and writing by Allie Schlicht (Georgetown University Laidlaw Scholar)
● Cruz, Ingrid. "Afro Salvadorans Faced Erasure. Now They Are Reclaiming Their Place in the Country’s History." Los Angeles Times. October 10, 2023. https://www.latimes.com/delos/story/2023-10-10/afro-latinos-el-salvador-history.
● Cuéllar, Jorge E. "Elimination/Deracination: Colonial Terror, La Matanza, and the 1930s Race Laws in El Salvador." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 42, no. 2 (2018): 39–56.
● Global Voices and Carlos Lara. “El Salvador Project Illustrates the ‘Invisible’ African Roots of Common Latin American Words.” Adinkra, February 8, 2021.
● Hack, William. "A Description of the Plantations & Setlements in the Valley of Tepaca." National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, 1685.
https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-541213.
● Nuñez, Breena. "I Exist!" The Nib. February 19, 2020. https://thenib.com/afro-salvadoran-identity/.
● Rodríguez, Jorge A. Guzmán. “África, La Otra Raíz Salvadoreña.” Foro – Salvadoreños en Long Island, September 11, 2012.
● Sibrian, Sofía. "La Importante Contribución de La Comunidad Afrodescendiente En El Salvador." Red DT SV. August 31, 2023. https://www.desarrolloterritorialsv.org/post/la-importante-contribuci%C3%B3n-de-la-comunidad-afrodescendiente-en-el-salvador.
● SomosAfro. “29 de Agosto: Día de La Afrodescendencia Salvadoreña.” 2021.
● Williams, Kent C. “AFROMESTIZO.” 2001.
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