Xinka

The Xinka are a non-Mayan people of southeastern Guatemala, possibly among the earliest inhabitants of the region, predating both the Maya and the Pipil. Their Xincan languages form an isolated family with many Mayan loanwords. Before the Spanish arrival they shared the eastern Pacific plain with the Pipil.

In 1524 Pedro de Alvarado met them at Guazacapán and stormed their principal city of Atiquipaque, near Taxisco, on 26 May, against warriors fighting with spears and poisoned arrows. The survivors paid tribute in cacao, cotton, salt and vanilla, and many were enslaved and marched off to the conquest of El Salvador, which gave Los Esclavos near Cuilapa its name.

After 1575 deportations emptied whole towns, and by the time Archbishop Cortés y Larraz visited the diocese of Taxisco in 1769 the Xincan tongue survived in only a few communities.