9781422286548

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A Small, Struggling Land

Three Distinct Landscapes Three distinct landscapes extend east to west across the country: the Coastal Lowlands, the Central Region, and the Interior Highlands. The Coastal Lowlands—a 10- to 12-mile-wide (16- to 19-km) coastal plain—parallels the Pacific Ocean, interrupted only by volcanic hills. Large sections of the land have been developed for farming. Many factories and a fishing industry are located near Acajutla, the leading port. A row of volcanoes separates the Coastal Lowlands from a second landscape—narrow interior valleys known as the Central Region. The Central Region forms the heartland of El Salvador. About three-fourths of the nation’s people live in the Central Region, many in or near large cities like San Salvador, which along with its suburbs has a population over more than 2.4 million, and Santa Ana, with a popula- tion of around 275,000. Most of the country’s industry and fertile farmland is here, too. The southern border of this region, the Coastal Range, is a band of rugged mountains and high, inactive volcanoes. On the range’s lower slopes, coffee plantations and cattle ranches are interspersed among forests of oak and pine trees. A broad, deeply eroded plateau of gently rolling land lies north of the Coastal Range. The plateau’s volcanic soil and green pas- tures make it El Salvador’s chief agricultural region. Although two peaks in the row of volcanoes and several peaks in the volcanic plateau near the Honduran border reach 7,000 feet (2,134 m), very little of the land surface in El Salvador is higher than 5,000 feet (1,524 m) in elevation. The Interior Highlands occupy northern El Salvador and make up the