Welcome to Perquín

So I’ve arrived in Perquín where I’ll be working for the next eight months as a Peace Corps volunteer, promoting tourism. And exactly how did I become an expert in tourism? you might well ask. As a result of my three years with Peace Corps in Perú, where I volunteered in a community with fifteen outdoor restaurants.

As I mentioned previously, Perquín is a quiet town of 5,000 people in the highlands of eastern El Savador. Here’s what Perquín looks like from “El Mirador,” the highest easily accessible point in the area. It’s quite a beautiful place and I feel fortunate to have been assigned to this region. From the looks of it we shouldn’t have much trouble convincing tourists to visit.

I arrived just in time for the Días Patronales, a yearly festival that celebrates the founding of the town. The festival included soccer tournaments, the crowning of a princess, lots of food, fireworks, a horse show and a greased-pig competition. Imelda, the mother of the family I’m living with, won the women’s division. Here she is stalking the pig she won.

Perquín has an interesting history. It was the principal battleground during the Revolution of the 1980s and 90s. The FMLN, the political party that was then a guerilla movement, is very strong here and people are proud and independent and very liberal; they haven’t forgotten the war, during which most of the poplation of this area was displaced to refugee camps in Honduras and much of the region’s infrastructure was destroyed. Morazán, my state, is the poorest state in the entire country, possibly as a result of the displacements and the subsequent rebuilding difficulties. 

 A mural in the town square depicting some of Perquín's history.

It hasn’t helped that most of the national governments since the war have come from the other party—the ARENA, the conservative party. The conservatives haven’t been enthusiastic about directing money to a leftist region of the country. But in the last elections a member of the FMLN was elected president so more money is coming our way, including the grant that will fund the work that I’ll be doing coordinating the efforts of the tourist sector here in Perquín.

 The town square during the recent festival.