Our love for pupusas led us on a search to understand why so many people from El Salvador are coming to America. The timeline below takes us from artifacts found in Joya de Ceren, “El Salvador’s Pompeii”, a native village buried by ashes from a volcano eruption, where food and utensils were found as they were being cooked almost 2000 years ago, to present day.

Researching the history of El Salvador brought us to the unsettling reality that the smallest but most densely populated country in Central America has been struggling for a very long time, and many of those struggles can be tied directly to U.S. involvement over the past 50 years.

The nature of visual timelines is inherently reductive, but we hope the information below gives you a starting point for better understanding the history of a place that has given us the humble pupusa. If we have missed a point, or need to clarify any of the data provided, please let us know.

If reading about the strife in El Salvador (or the plight of the migrants coming to the US) moves you, please consider donating to the International Rescue Committee, The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, or the National Immigration Law Center. And support your local pupuserias! Eat at Salvadoran-owned restaurants often and tip your servers well.