page_title: Salvadoran literature
section_title: Secular literature
hierarchical_section_title: Salvadoran literature / Origins of Salvadorean literature / Secular literature
caption_attribution_description: Primer libro impreso en El Salvador.
context_page_description: During the colonial period, literature flourished in the Iberian metropolis; in the American colonies there was also a remarkable cultivation of the arts, especially architecture, fine arts, and music. There were significant barriers, however, to a comparable emergence in literature. Religious authorities zealously controlled the lives of recent converts to Christianity, insisting that literary expression be in the service of faith and under their careful scrutiny. Despite this, an important secular literary tradition emerged in the viceregal courts of Mexico and Lima. This literature tended to imitate the metropolitan canons, though occasionally nourished an original and memorable voice like that of Mexican poet Juana Inés de la Cruz.
  The Salvadorean territory was far from the centers of culture. Literature may have enjoyed popularity among small circles of educated criollos, but there is little evidence of this. What evidence does exist confirms that literary development was sporadic, ephemeral, and even accidental.
context_section_description: A major non-religious work was a manual for the manufacture of indigo El puntero apuntado con apuntes breves, by Juan de Dios del Cid, who made a rudimentary printing press to publish his work, which may have been the first press in the territory of El Salvador. The document is printed with the date 1641, but Salvadorean literary critic Luis Gallegos Valdés asserts that this date was a typographical error, and some historical references place it in the next century. Another major work was the Carta de Relación, written by the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado for practical reasons; it narrates major episodes in the conquest of the Americas.
caption: The title page of El puntero apuntado con apuntes breves
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