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.
The Nahuas are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest in El Salvador. They are a Mesoamerican ethnicity. The Mexica (Aztecs) were of Nahua ethnicity, as were their enemies, the Tlaxcallans (Tlaxcaltecs), and the Toltecs are often thought to have been as well, though in the pre-Columbian period Nahuas were subdivided into many groups that did not necessarily share a common identity.
Rivas is a department of the Republic of Nicaragua. It covers an area of 2,162 km2 and has a population of 183,611. The department's capital is the city of Rivas.
Ometepe is an island formed by two volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicaragua, located in the Rivas Department of the Republic of Nicaragua. Its name derives from the Nahuatl words ome (two) and tepetl (mountain), meaning "two mountains". It is the largest island in Lake Nicaragua.
Tola is a municipality in the Rivas department of Nicaragua. Tola means "Land of Tula", or "Land of the Toltecs" and its etymology derives from Nahuatl Tōllān, the altepetl of the Classic and Post Classic Toltec Empire of central Mexico. Tola is a direct reference to the Toltec ancestry of the Nahuas in Nicaragua. The indigenous inhabitants of Tola are the Nahuas.
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.
Mangue, also known as Chorotega, is an extinct Oto-Manguean language ancestral to Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica. Estimates of the ethnic population vary widely, from around 10,000 in 1981, to 210,000 according to Chorotega activists. Chorotega-speaking peoples included the Mangue and Monimbo. The dialects were known as: Mangue proper in western Nicaragua, which was further subdivided into Dirian and Nagrandan; Choluteca in the region of Honduras' Bay of Fonseca; and Orotiña in Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula.
Teōtl is a Nahuatl term for sacredness or divinity that is sometimes translated as "god". For the Aztecs teotl was the metaphysical omnipresence upon which their religious philosophy was based.
El Güegüense is a satirical drama and was the first literary work of post-Colonial Nicaragua. It is regarded as one of Latin America's most distinctive colonial-era expressions and as Nicaragua's signature folkloric masterpiece combining music, dance and theater. There was also a monument built in the center of a rotonda (roundabout) in Managua, in its honor. El Güegüense is performed during the feast of San Sebastián in Diriamba from 17 to 27 January.
The official language of Nicaragua is Spanish; however, Nicaraguans on the Caribbean coast speak indigenous languages and also English. The communities located on the Caribbean coast also have access to education in their native languages. Additionally, Nicaragua has four extinct indigenous languages.
Nicaraguan Spanish is geographically defined as the form of Spanish spoken in Nicaragua. Affectionately, Nicaraguan Spanish is often called Nicañol.
Nahuatl, Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.
Ometepe Island is an important archaeological site, located in the Lake Nicaragua in the Republic of Nicaragua, administratively belongs to the Rivas Department. Its name derives from the Nahuatl words ome (two) and tepetl (mountain), meaning two mountains, given that it is formed and practically the whole island is formed by two volcanoes: Concepción and Maderas.
Nicarao, or Macuilmiquiztli was the name of the ruler of the Nicarao, a Nahua group that inhabited western Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica. Based on research done by historians in 2002, it was discovered that his real name was Macuilmiquiztli, meaning "Five Deaths" in the Nahuatl language. Macuilmiquiztli governed the Nicarao from his capital Quauhcapolca, in what is today the department of Rivas in southwestern Nicaragua.
The Cacaopera people also known as the Matagalpa or Ulúa., are an indigenous people in what is now El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The Spanish conquest of Nicaragua was the campaign undertaken by the Spanish conquistadores against the natives of the territory now incorporated into the modern Central American republic of Nicaragua during the colonisation of the Americas. Before European contact in the early 16th century, Nicaragua was inhabited by a number of indigenous peoples. In the west, these included Mesoamerican groups such as the Chorotega, the Nicarao, and the Subtiaba. Other groups included the Matagalpa and the Tacacho.
The Kingdom of Nicoya, also called Cacicazgo or Lordship of Nicoya, was an indigenous nation that comprised much of the territory of the current Guanacaste Province, in the North Pacific of Costa Rica. Its political, economic and religious center was the city of Nicoya, located on the peninsula of the same name, which depends on several provinces located on both banks of the Gulf of Nicoya, as well as numerous tributary villages. In the 16th century, prior to the arrival of Europeans, Nicoya was the most important chiefdom of the North Pacific of present-day Costa Rica.
The Huetares were an important indigenous group of Costa Rica, who in the mid-16th century lived in the center of what is now the country. They are also mentioned with the name of güetares or pacacuas. Huetares were the most powerful and best-organized indigenous nation in Costa Rica upon the arrival of the Spaniards. During the 16th century, various chieftains dominated from the Costa Rican Atlantic coast to the Atlantic Slope. The Spanish chronicles mention a myriad of towns and the kings that ruled them, among them the Garabito Empire, located on the Central Atlantic Slope and the Tárcoles River basin, to the Virilla River and the Cordillera Central; the Kingdom of Pacaca, in the current canton of Mora, and the Lordship of el El Guarco, in the current Guarco Valley, in the Cartago Province, to the plains of the Central Caribbean and Chirripó. Their culture belonged to the Intermediate Area, and it stood out mainly for their works in stone, such as metates, sculptures, tables and ceremonial altars; and the non-practice of anthropophagy or cannibalism. Its language, the Huetar language, one of the so-called Chibcha languages, became the Lingua franca of the country. Although this language is extinct, it survives in a large number of place names in Costa Rica such as Aserrí, Tucurrique or Barva. One of the greatest enemies of the Huetares were the Nicaraos, a Nahua branch that encroached and settled on part of its territory and displaced the Huetar people that inhabited Bagaces, which resulted in tribal warfare between the Nahuas and Huetares that lasted until the arrival of the Spanish.
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