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Title of Dissertation : “Are They Indians?”: Indigenous Erasure and Resilience in Western El Salvador

Scholarship and common-sense knowledge about El Salvador have depicted the country as without Indigenous presence. In recent years, scholars of indigeneity have identified “the vanishing Indian” discourse, which purports that indigenous people no longer inhabit certain regions, as a key culprit that generates this belief. In this view, if Indigenous languages, traditional dress, and religious practices are absent, then Indigenous people are believed to
have vanished. In contrast, my research posits that Salvadoran campesinos and campesinas at my field site express their Indigenous heritage, not through these discrete traits, but through their relationship to water and land. This relationship is dynamic, responds to a changing environment, and maintains a strong relationship with pre-Columbian and colonial-era land tenure practices.