Aguilares is a district in the San Salvador department of

El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...

, The municipality is divided into five administrative divisions, called ''cantones'': Florida, Las Tunas, Pinalitos, Pishishapa, and Los Mangos. It is bounded on the north by El Paisnal, on the east by Suchitoto ( Cuscatlán Department) and Guazapa, to the south by Nejapa and Guazapa, and to the west by Quezaltepeque ( La Libertad Department) and El Paisnal.

Toponymy

The municipality was named in honor of , , and Manuel Aguilar, leaders in the Salvadoran independence movement.

History

In the 1970s, the associated

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

of Aguilares was served by Rutilio Grande, a

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

priest and activist who was assassinated on the outskirts of town. In 1979 or 1980, during the

Salvadoran Civil War The Salvadoran Civil War () was a twelve-year civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador, backed by the United States, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of left-wing guer ...

, the Salvadoran Army pillaged the town until its people retook it, depicted in Archbishop of San Salvador

Óscar Romero Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (15 August 1917 – 24 March 1980) was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador, Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular ...

homily A homily (from Greek ὁμιλία, ''homilía'') is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the "public explanation of a sacred doctrine" or text. The works of Origen and John Chrysostom (known as Paschal Homily) are considered ...

as images of the crucified Christ.

References

Municipalities of the San Salvador Department {{ElSalvador-geo-stub