Antecedents
Hernán Cortés, after conquering the city of Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire, delegated the conquest of the territories southward to his lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado, who set out with 120 horsemen, 300 foot soldiers, and several hundred Cholula and Tlaxcala auxiliaries. After subduing the highland Mayan city-states of present-day Guatemala through battle and co-optation, the Spanish sought to extend their dominion to the lower Atlantic region of the Nahuat-speaking people whom his translators called "Pipils," then organized as the powerful state of Cuzcatlán. The Kaqchikel Mayans, who had long been rivals of Cuzcatlán for control over their wealthy cacao-producing region, joined forces with Alvarado's men and supported his campaign. Accompanied by thousands of Kaqchikel warriors, Alvarado then marched on Cuzcatlán. The army arrived at the present territory of El Salvador, across the Paz River, on June 6, 1524. Receiving word of the approaching Spanish forces, the Pipil peasants who lived in the nearby villages of Mopicalco and Acatepeque fled.
Battle
On June 8, 1524, the conquerors arrived in the neighborhood of Acajutla (which the Spaniard's called Acaxual). Thousands of Pipil warriors had gathered there to halt their advance into the valley of Sonsonate. According to records, a battle ensued between the opposing armies, with the Pipil wearing cotton armor (of three fingers' thickness, according to Alvarado) and carrying long lances. This circumstance would be crucial in the progression of the battle. Alvarado approached the Pipil lines with his archers' showers of crossbow arrows, but the natives did not retreat. The conquistador noticed the proximity of a nearby hill and knew that it could be a convenient hiding place for his opponents. Alvarado pretended that his army had given up the battle and retreated. The Pipils suddenly rushed the invaders, giving Alvarado an opportunity to inflict massive losses. The Pipils that fell to the ground could not get back on their feet, hindered by the weight of their cotton armor, which enabled the Spanish to slaughter them. Decimated, the Nahuat forces retreated to reassemble further along his route. In a second battle a few days later, the remaining formal Cuzcatlan army again assembled on the battlefield but was finally defeated. In the words of Alvarado: "...the destruction was so great that in just a short time none were left alive...".
In the battle, Alvarado was struck by an arrow to his thigh which fractured his femur. According to later tradition, the arrow that hit the conquistador was hurled by a Nahuat-Pipil Tatoni (a prince) called Atonal, but Spanish chronicles do not specify the archer and Atonal appears to have been mythologized as Atlacatl. The resulting infection lasted about eight months and left Alvarado partially crippled, with one leg shorter than the other. In spite of this wound, he continued the campaign, marching with his army into the capital of Cuzcatlan where he assumed authority and enslaved many residents. The remaining Nahua resistance operated from the mountains where his forces could not engage them effectively, and the Nahua were still undefeated when Alvarado returned to Mexico. They would finally be defeated a decade later, with the second Spanish invasion.
Year 1524 (MDXXIV) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar.
Pedro de Alvarado was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalva's exploration of the coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico, and in the conquest of the Aztec Empire led by Hernán Cortés. He is considered the conquistador of much of Central America, including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The Nahua are an Indigenous group of Mesoamerican people inhabiting the western and central areas of present-day El Salvador. They speak the Nawat language, which belongs to the Nahuan language branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. There are very few speakers of the language left, which is a reason for the current efforts being made to revitalize it.
Tecun Uman was one of the last rulers of the K'iche' Maya people, in the Highlands of what is now Guatemala. According to the Kaqchikel annals, he was slain by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado while waging battle against the Spanish and their allies on the approach to Quetzaltenango on 12 February 1524. Tecun Uman was declared Guatemala's official national hero on March 22, 1960, and is commemorated on February 20, the popular anniversary of his death. Tecun Uman has inspired a wide variety of activities ranging from the production of statues and poetry to the retelling of the legend in the form of folkloric dances to prayers. Despite this, Tecun Uman's existence is not well documented, and it has proven to be difficult to separate the man from the legend.
The Kaqchikel are one of the indigenous Maya peoples of the midwestern highlands of Guatemala and of southern Mexico. They constitute Guatemala's third largest Maya group. The name was formerly spelled in various other ways, including Cakchiquel, Kakchiquel, Caqchikel, and Cachiquel.
In a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonization of the Americas, Spanish colonisers gradually incorporated the territory that became the modern country of Guatemala into the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. Before the conquest, this territory contained a number of competing Mesoamerican kingdoms, the majority of which were Maya. Many conquistadors viewed the Maya as "infidels" who needed to be forcefully converted and pacified, disregarding the achievements of their civilization. The first contact between the Maya and European explorers came in the early 16th century when a Spanish ship sailing from Panama to Santo Domingo was wrecked on the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in 1511. Several Spanish expeditions followed in 1517 and 1519, making landfall on various parts of the Yucatán coast. The Spanish conquest of the Maya was a prolonged affair; the Maya kingdoms resisted integration into the Spanish Empire with such tenacity that their defeat took almost two centuries.
The Xinka, or Xinca, are a non-Mayan indigenous people of Mesoamerica, with communities in the southern portion of Guatemala, near its border with El Salvador, and in the mountainous region to the north.
Nawat is a Nahuan language native to Central America. It is the southernmost extant member of the Uto-Aztecan family. It was spoken in several parts of present-day Central America before Spanish colonization, but now is mostly confined to western El Salvador. It has been on the verge of extinction in El Salvador, and has already gone extinct elsewhere in Central America. In 2012, a large number of new Nawat speakers started to appear. As of today, the language is currently going through a revitalization.
Atlácatl is reputed to have been the name of the last ruler of an indigenous state based around the city of Cuzcatlan, in the southwestern periphery of Mesoamerica, at the time of the Spanish conquest. Atlácatl appears to have been a myth, however, as no contemporary chronicler mentions him. The only mentions of him are in the annals of the Cakchiquels where the Pipil coastal people were called Pan Atacat ; this might have been an elite personage or a title for a chief in Pipil culture. The myth is still believed locally. The name "Atlácatl" was adopted by one of El Salvador's elite army battalions: the Atlácatl Battalion.
Cuzcatlan was a pre-Columbian Nahua state confederation of the Mesoamerican postclassical period that extended from the Paz river to the Lempa river ; this was the nation that Spanish chroniclers came to call the Pipils or Cuzcatlecos. No codices survive that shed light on this confederation except the Annals of the Cakchiquels, although Spanish chroniclers such as Domingo Juarros, Palaces, Lozano, and others claim that some codices did exist but have since disappeared. Their Nawat language, art and temples revealed that they had significant Mayan and Toltec influence from the ties they had with the Itza in Yucatan. It is believed that the first settlers to arrive came from the Toltec people in central Mexico, mostly Puebla during the Chichimeca-Toltec civil wars in the 10th century AD.
The Kʼicheʼ kingdom of Qʼumarkaj was a state in the highlands of modern-day Guatemala which was founded by the Kʼicheʼ (Quiché) Maya in the thirteenth century, and which expanded through the fifteenth century until it was conquered by Spanish and Nahua forces led by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524.
Indian auxiliaries were those indigenous peoples of the Americas who allied with Spain and fought alongside the conquistadors during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. These auxiliaries acted as guides, translators and porters, and in these roles were also referred to as yanakuna, particularly during the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. The term was also used for formations composed of indigenous warriors which were used by the Spanish for reconnaissance and combat duties. Indian auxiliaries continued to be used by the Spanish to maintain control over their colonies in the Americas; frequently stationed on the frontier, they were often used to suppress anti-colonial revolts such as Arauco War.
The Spanish conquest of the Maya was a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, in which the Spanish conquistadores and their allies gradually incorporated the territory of the Late Postclassic Maya states and polities into the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Maya occupied the Maya Region, an area that is now part of the modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador; the conquest began in the early 16th century and is generally considered to have ended in 1697.
The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan is a 16th-century lienzo of the Nahua, a group of indigenous peoples of Mexico. It is one of two surviving Nahua pictorial records recounting the Spanish conquest of Guatemala and the earliest surviving maps of what is now Guatemala.
Pedro de Portocarrero was a Spanish conquistador who was active in the early 16th century in Guatemala, and Chiapas in southern Mexico. He was one of the few Spanish noblemen that took part in the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and was distantly related to prominent conquistador Pedro de Alvarado, who appointed him as an official in early colonial Guatemala.
The Spanish conquest of El Salvador was the campaign undertaken by the Spanish conquistadores against the Late Postclassic Mesoamerican polities in the territory that is now incorporated into the modern Central American country of El Salvador. El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, and is dominated by two mountain ranges running east–west. Its climate is tropical, and the year is divided into wet and dry seasons. Before the conquest the country formed a part of the Mesoamerican cultural region, and was inhabited by a number of indigenous peoples, including the Pipil, the Lenca, the Xinca, and Maya. Native weaponry consisted of spears, bows and arrows, and wooden swords with inset stone blades; they wore padded cotton armour.
El Salvador–Spain relations are the current and historical relations between El Salvador and Spain. Both nations are members of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, Organization of Ibero-American States and the United Nations.
Gómez de Alvarado y Contreras was a Spanish conquistador and explorer. He was a member of the Alvarado family and the older brother of the famous conquistador Pedro de Alvarado.
The Battle of Tacuzcalco was a battle on 13 June 1524 fought between a Spanish army under the command of conquistador Pedro de Alvarado and Cuzcatlan fighters under Atlácatl.
The folklore of El Salvador shares common traits with the rest of the Mesoamerican region. In El Salvador, the presence of the ancestral civilizations of the Mayans, Toltecs, Nahuas, among others, left their presence in many aspects of daily life in the region.
Spanish Empire 
Cuzcatlan 