Archaeology

Participating in an archaeology project that forms part of the larger tourism project on which I’ve been working here in Perquín, I learned to spell the word correctly.

The tourism project aims to increase awareness of the culture and history of the Lenca—the preColumbian ancestors of the current inhabitants of Perquín and Morazán—and to make Lenca history and culture a part of the tourism offerings in Perquín.

I’ve gotten to go for long grueling walks with Marcelo, an archaeologist from the Ministry of Culture in San Salvador, and with locals who are familiar with sites where vestiges of a preColumbian civilization might be present. The prehispanic civilization that would have left evidence of its existence in this area would be the Lenca culture. The Lenca arrived in the area about 4000 years ago from South America and settled eastern El Savador, western Nicaragua and southeastern Honduras.

The Lenca left behind a signficant number of cave paintings. The best example from our region would be the cave known as La Cueva del Espíritu Santo (Ti Ketau Antawinkil in Lenca-Taulepa), located in Corinto, about an hour from Perquín.

We’ve found pieces of ceramic and obsidian in caves and on trails here in Perquín. Obsidian is a mineral form of lava. There are many volcanos in El Salvador but none large enough to produce what the Lenca might have called “weapons-grade obsidian.” That means that the obsidian we’ve found must have arrived via a trade route from what is now Guatemala and Honduras. The Spanish had no need for obsidian since they brought steel and iron with them. So by deduction we know that there must’ve been a preColumbian presence in Perquín. PreColumbian cultures were the only cultures that made use of obsidian in the production of arrowheads and spear points.

The figure below represents Balám Colóp, a Lenca prince who, according to legend, brought language to the culture. It’s said that the Lenca goddess Ish-Manahual called together all the princes of the regions controlled by the Lenca. She placed upon the tongue of each prince a leaf from a sacred tree called “Tanawapate” and commanded the princes to return to their villages. All but one spat out the leaves after leaving Ish-Manahual’s presence but one kept the leaf upon his tongue as she’d instructed. That prince was Balám Colóp. When he reached his village he found that he’d acquired the ability to speak a language.

Balám Colóp then instructed all other princes from all other Lenca villages to seek out the tree called Tanawapate and to bring back a leaf to their villages. That’s how the Lenca languages were born. The painting represents Balám Colóp and the staff or stick in his hand the Tanawapate tree.

Youth Guides

Another fun component of the tourism project has been a course designed to train young people to be tour guides. We hope that the young guides will take a special interest in Lenca history and culture and the training we’ve provided has been intended to furnish as much information on those topics as possible.

It’s been a rigorous 16-week marathon, two sessions a week, half a day Fridays and all day Saturdays. The demands of the course have caused some heavy attrition; the group dwindled from 30 to 15. Actually I was expecting much worse; I was figuring we’d end up with ten at the most.

The main components of the course have been:

1) Lenca history and culture

2) The Conquest, independence and “contemporary history” (that’s the euphemism for the civil war of the 1980s).

3) The tourism industry.

4) Guide techniques.

Different professionals taught the different modules according to their respective specialties.

It’s not a course designed to turn out professional guides. Its purpose has been to select a small group of young people with interests and abilities that could possibly lead them to careers in tourism.

Not all of the young people are all that young. Classmembers range in age from 15 to 61. By that criteria I, too, am a young person.

The class has generated much enthusiasm from those who’ve managed to stick around. A group from the class helped out during Perquín’s Winter Festival in August, orienting the many first-time visitors who arrive in Perquín for the Festival.

Danilo Vásquez, a crazy and charismatic Lenca from nearby La Unión, taught the module on Lenca history and culture and captivated the group. Danilo taught basic phrases in Lenca-Taulepa and generated interest in a class T-shirt which I helped design. On the front it says “yampáre” (“hello”) and on the back “akú-ki” (“good-bye”). The handprint is purported to be the first Lenca symbol and is one of a group of images represented in the cave paintings at Corinto, El Salvador.

Members of the class also accompanied me in search of archaeological sites that we hope might be of interest to archaeologist Marcelo Barraza, a Salvadoran scientist hired to assist with the project. My young guides led me to waterfalls, caves, bunkers where spent AK-47 cartridges and other guerrilla artifacts littered the ground, and sites where the founders of the community that would become Perquín processed coffee and sugar cane, made bricks, and tanned hides to produce leather goods. They taught me how to recognize the difference between an ordinary mountain pine and an ocote, a pine with a hard, resinous heartwood that Perquín’s early settlers used to fashion torches. In Lenca-Taulepa, Perquín means “camino de brasas” or “road of embers.” The name refers to the live embers left on the roads when the early settlers walked at night, lighting their way with ocote torches.

Those of you who know me best know that “youth mentorship” would not previously have figured promimently in a catalogue of my most noteworthy talents. So the students weren’t the only participants who learned and grew as a result of the course.

When the course ends on September 27, the remaining members hope to continue their training in a certified course for professional guides taught by the Ministry of Tourism or train as tourism specialists and assist in the development of a new tourist route, “Camino de Brasas,” that I and archaeologist Marcelo Barraza helped develop based on our excusrsions in search of preColumbian Lenca artifacts.