Persistence and Transformation in the Founding Nuclei of Six Cities in El Salvador

Abstract

This study comprehends the analysis of the foundation's cores of the cities of Santa Ana, Chalchuapa, Sonsonate, Izalco, Nahuizalco and Santa Tecla with the objective of identifying the persistence or transformations of these cores. It’s important to mention that exists elements approached as assumptions on function of the information available and that have been addressed on a preliminary form, so these approaches can be taken as the base of future researching works that aims to deepen onto patrimonial value and the changes of social dynamics in these cities. For the realization of the analysis, with exception of Nahuizalco, there’ve been defined the different study areas on each city starting of the historic centers established by the government entities and field visits have been carried out inside these areas with the objective of identify those dynamics, uses and urban elements that can be considered as signs of persistence regarding their foundational organization or on the contrary, that makes evident the transformations that these cities have experimented. As a result of the information recollected among the visits, an individual analysis has been realized where it describes the organization and the urban uses estimated on their foundation time as the analysis of each current city. Immediately afterwards a comparative analysis has been realized between the six cities to put on evidence both those structuring elements in the urban organization and the common changes that these presents in function of their location, growing and importance inside the territory. Finally, because of the analysis realized, it’s possible to identify that the foundation’s cores of the six cities present various transformations inside their urban compositions and that despite this not representing a significant change inside the city's organizations, it does result as an evident transformation of the urban image.