Salvadorans

the main population of El Salvador. The country’s total population is 3.9 million (1973, estimate). Their language is Spanish. The believers are mainly Catholics.

Most Salvadorans are mestizos, the products of mixing of the Spanish colonizers in the 16th to 18th centuries with the native Indians and, to a lesser degree, Negroes. The Indians, who are insignificant in number but who have retained their ethnic sep-arateness and languages, live in the western and central regions of the country (the Pipil) and in the northeast (the Lenca). Most Salvadorans are engaged in agriculture (small peasants, hired farmhands, and agricultural workers on coffee plantations).