El Salvador

This small country, situated along the Pacific Coast in between Guatemala and Honduras in Central America, has long attracted attention from the specialty coffee world for its quality and willingness to innovate.

El Salvador’s most popular coffee varieties are Bourbon, Pacas, and Pacamara - varieties which command attention on the cupping table.  

The earliest settlers of the area were the Lenca people with traces of their presence from around 600 CE, and groups of Mayan people also lived in the region though they later migrated due to a volcanic eruption. The last indigenous people to settle in the area were the Pipil people, who spoke Nahua. Contact with Spanish conquerors was devastating, in particular due to the smallpox epidemic that swept through Central America claiming vast numbers of lives. A leader known as Lempira led a valiant fight against the conquest, but the Spanish defeated the uprising and consolidated their rule in 1537.

Colonial rule lasted until 1821, when the different regions under control of the Captaincy of Guatemala (controlled by Spain) were released from European control. El Salvador resisted joining the First Mexican Empire; instead, it was part of first the Federal Republic of Central America and then the Greater Republic of Central America, which collapsed in 1898. Coffee continued to rise in importance as the main cash crop of El Salvador. The country, now El Salvador, struggled through the 20th century - rural rebellions were brutally quashed, and in 1979 Civil War erupted after a successful coup d’etat. Peace accords were not signed until 1992. In the postwar years, crime and violence raged in the country, though in recent years the country has begun to normalize with crime levels declining.

The approximately 20,000 coffee farmers in El Salvador have persevered through many challenges over the years. Like in Guatemala, the coffee leaf rust epidemic and the trend of mass migration have greatly impacted the coffee sector. Replanting after coffee leaf rust has enabled farmers to focus on high quality coffee grown under shade trees, with the Pacas variety accounting for up to 25% of the coffee from the country as a whole. (The variety originates from El Salvador, and it is a natural mutation of Bourbon.)