Pipil

The Pipil were the southernmost Nahua people of Central America, speaking Nawat, closely related to the Nahuatl of central Mexico. Their ancestors began moving south from Mexico around the eighth century to the Pacific coast of El Salvador, where Nawat speakers had arrived by about 900.

In Kuskatan, between the Paz and Lempa rivers, the Pipil built a loose confederation of city-states that became a hereditary monarchy by 1400, with irrigated cacao estates around Izalco and a cotton-textile trade reaching from central Mexico to Costa Rica. In 1524 Pedro de Alvarado invaded Cuzcatlan but was repulsed within months.

San Salvador, founded in 1525, was overrun in the rising of 1526, and Diego de Alvarado reestablished it in 1528, when the last native stronghold at Cinacantan fell. Revolt continued until the province was judged pacified in 1539, after which the Pipil lived under encomienda rule within the Captaincy General of Guatemala.