The folklore of El Salvador shares common traits with the rest of the Mesoamerican region. In El Salvador, the presence of the ancestral civilizations of the Mayans, Toltecs, Nahuas, among others, left their presence in many aspects of daily life in the region.
The arrival of Europeans to the continent began an amalgamation of customs, traditions, and diversity of expressions. Despite the efforts of the colonizers to eradicate local cultures, the native cultures persevered, and eventually coexisted with those of the Europeans. The coexistence of both European and native cultures and living led to assimilation into a new colonial society. Examples of this combined culture include the adaptation of several Nahuat words into Spanish, the continued dominance of the Catholic religion, and the daily presence of corn in meals. The combined folklore of the two cultures perseveres to the modern day, though some aspects have been lost to time.
Material folklore includes physical, created items, such as foods, furniture, and traditional medicine.
In popular cuisine, dishes made from corn are common, including pupusas, atol shuco, tortillas, tamales, corn chicha, chilate, corn atol, torrejas, and cashew seed atol.
Drinks include hot drinks, such as hot chocolate and coffee, as well as cold drinks (popularly called "frescoes" or "soft drinks"), such as horchata, barley soft drink, and tamarind soft drink.
Popular sweets include coconut preserves, milkshakes, grapefruit sweets, and marshmallows. Jellies are often made of local fruits, such as the quince and guava.
Regarding housing and furniture, examples of common items are hammocks, petates, tombillas, tecomates, bateas, comals, and pitchers.
Social folklore relates to popular festivals, brotherhoods, games, and markets. It can be divided into the following categories, with common examples:
Spiritual-mental folklore relates to popular religious manifestations, popular literature, music, dance, oral tradition, idioms (popularly known as Caliche), and other related concepts.
Salvadoran oral tradition includes all of the legends and stories of pre-Hispanic, colonial or republican origin that have been transmitted from generation to generation in the Salvadoran populations. These can be classified based on the character or location of the story (with some examples):[1] [2]
Each municipality is dedicated to a patron saint and is celebrated annually. Among the most important:
Some popular religious celebrations include Roodmas, Holy Week, the Talcigüines, and the Day of the Animas.
There are around thirty dances. Among the most popular are: dance of the historians, the Chapetones, the Partesana, the Torito Pinto, the Tiger and the Deer, the Negritos, the Giantess, the feathered ones, and the Cortadoras.
Among the traditional musical instruments are: the Caramba, the Eunuch flute, the Sacabuche, and the Jawbone.