Santa Ana - Culture

Santa Ana El Salvador  is the second largest city in the country and the commercial and processing center for a sugarcane, coffee, and cattle region. There are textile and food product industries. When the Spanish entered El Salvador, they encountered a dense population of Indians. Since the countryside was open, Spaniards managed to settle throughout the land. Thus most of the natives came under their direct influence. Because of this, Indians gradually adapted many European customs and came to be classified as Ladinos. For 100 years coffee has dominated the economy of El Salvador. It has been the major source of employment, has financed the cost of governments, and has paid for the construction of highways, railroads, and ports. Village lands were converted into coffee estates on which peasants laboured. The owners became the aristocracy of El Salvador. Present-day culture and politics are products of the coffee economy

Santa Ana, El Salvador's highest volcano, is a massive strato volcano immediately west of Coatepeque caldera. Collapse of the volcano during the late Pleistocene or early Holocene produced a massive debris avalanche that swept into the Pacific, forming the Acajutla Peninsula. Reconstruction of the volcano rapidly filled the collapse scarp. The broad summit of the volcano is cut by several crescentic craters, and a series of parasitic vents and cones have formed along a 20-km-long fissure system that extends from near the town of Chalchuapa NNW of the volcano to the San Marcelino and Cerro Chino cinder cones on the SE flank. Historical activity, largely consisting of small-to-moderate explosive eruptions from both summit and flank vents, has been documented since the 16th century.

The first historic eruption of Santa Ana was in 1520. Since then this strato volcano has erupted 12 times, most recently in 1920. Fumaroles have been observed with the crater.