Chapter XX: Industrious Little Salvador; and Belize

Tucked away on the Pacific side of Honduras lies Salvador, the smallest republic between Hudson Bay and the Golden Horn. In size it is just a big farm, 140 miles long by 60 miles wide. There are single estates larger than that, in Mexico and in several other countries. Yet it has more inhabitants than any other Central American country except Guatemala. In area not much larger than Vermont, it has five times the population of the Green Mountain State. The 1,700,000 people who live in its 7,225 square miles make Salvador the most crowded country in the western hemisphere, with the single exception of the “black republic” of Haiti in the West Indies. In fact, few countries in the world are more thickly populated.

Where people are crowded, the struggle to earn a living is harder; and where it is hard to earn a living, people cannot afford to be lazy. So it is not surprising to find that the Salvadoreans have more energy and industry than their neighbors. Hillsides that would remain untouched in Honduras are cultivated to their very summits. Nowhere can you look down into a valley without seeing it well planted. Salvador has less forest and fewer wild animals than the other Central American republics, and with the possible exception of Costa Rica it is the most progressive country in that group.

Perhaps there are other reasons for its progressiveness besides a large population. There are few Indians, and these are more advanced than the Indians of the neighboring countries. They all speak Spanish. Most of the upper class are of pure European descent. Perhaps the inhabitants of Salvador have always been of better stock than their neighbors. Certainly Alvarado found it a hard job to conquer Cuscatlán, as this region was called in early days.

There are very few foreigners in Salvador; they do not own much of the country, as the Germans do in Guatemala. Nearly every Salvadorean has his own piece of land, instead of working for a huge estate, and this condition naturally makes the people ambitious and willing to work.

Like Guatemala, Salvador is a land of volcanoes. On the way to the capital you can count several peaks; from the ocean you can see a dozen. Mount Izalco has been in such constant eruption for more than a century that sailors call it the “Lighthouse of Salvador,” and for a long time volcanoes were the only lighthouses along the coast. The postage stamps of Salvador once bore the picture of a volcano.

As I said earlier, the damage done by eruptions and accompanying earthquakes is often balanced by the fact that volcanic ash enriches the soil. Salvador is a fertile country. Its narrow seaboard, its low alluvial plain, and its level plateau, about two thousand feet high, furrowed by river valleys and broken by smoking cones, grow splendid crops. Its rivers, flowing toward the Pacific, water the country well. In some regions there are three crops of corn a year. But coffee is the principal product. It was introduced in 1840 by a Brazilian school teacher, and to-day there are hundreds of thousands of descendants of the coffee tree he planted in his garden. In fact, eighty per cent of the exports of Salvador consists in coffee, which goes mostly to France and Germany.

Panama Mail Steamship Co., San Francisco

Mount San Miguel in Salvador still smokes. The lava in the foreground
rolled down the mountain side a century ago.
]

Indigo, which grows in many parts of the country, was once the chief export, but aniline dyes made it a less important crop. Did you know that indigo when under cultivation looks like a field of willow switches? The switches and leaves are soaked in water to which chemicals have been added, the resulting fluid being boiled down later into a paste. Indigo is used to dye cloth as well as to make the blueing for wash day. In Salvador cattle abound and there are many minerals, but it is an agricultural rather than a grazing or a mining country.

Panama Mail Steamship Co., San Francisco

Coffee being dried on a plantation in Salvador.
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The Usual Way to Enter Salvador

Almost all visitors to Salvador come by sea. It has several ports along its single coast. At Acajutla steamers anchor a mile out. Sometimes passengers have to be transferred to the shore boat in a big basket, lifted by a steam winch on board the ocean vessel. La Unión, down at the southern border of the country on the Bay of Fonseca, has a good harbor and better docking facilities.

A railroad runs from Acajutla to San Salvador, the capital; altogether there are now about 250 miles of railway. It is hoped to make connection with the railways of Guatemala and Mexico so that the people of Salvador can go all the way to New York by rail. This little country has good roads between the chief cities, and the government is building new ones. On them one sees some automobiles but more oxcarts. There are other fairsized towns besides the capital, the largest being Santa Ana. In addition, one passes through a number of pretty villages.

Panama Mail S. S. Co., San Francisco

Sacks of indigo, product of Salvador, ready for shipment to San
Francisco. The straw man at the top of the pile shows that these
workmen were as fond of a joke as ours would be.
]

I hope you have not made the mistake of thinking that this country is the San Salvador where Columbus first landed. That was a small island in the West Indies; this is a continental country bordered by the Pacific. Besides, its name is merely Salvador, though the capital is called San Salvador. This capital, by the way, is one of the most beautifully located cities of Central America, a warm, sunny place about two thousand feet above sea level. It stands in a fertile plateau, among green hills, at the base of a volcano 8,360 feet high. Deep ravines are worn in the plain by streams rushing down from the highlands. As these are crossed only by narrow tracks they protect the city in time of war. However, Salvador is quite a peaceful state compared to its neighbors. It has not had a revolution since 1903. Its presidents are legally elected and they are not dictators.

Panama Mail Steamship Co., San Francisco

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a ride in this kind of swing? At La
Libertad, Salvador, the water is so shallow that passengers have to
be transferred from the ocean vessels to shore boats.
]

The Capital and Its Troubles

The capital, however, has had its troubles. Founded in 1528, it has been ruined several times by earthquakes. It was completely destroyed in a single night in 1854, and there have been many severe shocks since then. Once it was rebuilt twelve miles southwest of the original site, but it was moved back in 1858. As recently as 1917 a great earthquake did heavy damage to five towns including the capital.

No wonder, then, that the houses of San Salvador are nearly all of one story, with very thick walls built to withstand earthquakes. There is a handsome government building, and a cathedral. The streets are straight, the sidewalks paved with rock and cement, the water supply a good one. There are more automobiles in San Salvador than in any other Central American place except the city of Panama. In general it is perhaps the most modern and progressive city of that region, outside the Canal Zone. One sees many pretty _señoritas_, many priests in black robes. The 120,000 people of the capital, all white or _mestizo_ (Spanish and Indian mixture) do not wear gaudy garments, and there is little that is picturesque.

Salvador possesses a good telegraph system, and better schools than those of its neighbors. In theory the schools are all free and every child is obliged to attend. But this is true only in the towns. The country people and the lower classes have little education. Since even in the United States many people cannot yet read or write, we must not be too critical of conditions in Central America.

Panama Mail Steamship Co., San Francisco

In the city of San Salvador there are handsome buildings in the
shopping district which surrounds Duenas Park.
]

A few queer old customs remain. Men ringing bells go along the streets and through the markets with little boxes containing tiny images of the Virgin, to which people may bow if they pay a penny. Horse cars rattle leisurely through the streets with a great cracking of the drivers’ whips. There is music almost every night in the central _plaza_, and flirtations under the palm trees. In almost every town an official looks after the people’s health. Sanitary conditions are better and there is less sickness than in most tropical countries. Salvador, lacking an Atlantic coast, is free from the diseases that are common in the fever-infested hot lands.

England’s Central American Colony

Belize (British Honduras) is one region in Central America that we are likely to forget or overlook, for it is not a republic. Yet it is larger than Salvador, being of much the same width but nearly forty miles longer. We find that its area is about that of Massachusetts. Tucked away on the eastern side of Guatemala and the Mexican peninsula of Yucatan, much of Belize is low country bordering on the Caribbean. Besides the more usual tropical products, such as mahogany and chicle, it has tortoiseshell and sponges for export.

Of its 45,000 people only about a hundred are pure white. Most of the inhabitants are negroes from the West Indies, and English is the language spoken. The river Belize runs through the middle of the colony. The capital, of the same name, has a population of about 13,000.

Belize seems to be a Spanish corruption of “Wallis,” the name of an early British settler. Buccaneers or pirates first occupied it, then came logwood hunters. Off the coast, the British settlers were attacked by a Spanish fleet, but they repulsed it and landed a force of two thousand men. In 1798 Spain acknowledged the occupation. Belize has been an organized British colony since 1862.