El Salvador’s Cultural Memory and María de Baratta’s Piano Music: Kushkatan, Nahualismo, and the Representation of Indigeneity

Following independence from the Viceroyalty of New Spain between 1821 and 1823, the United Provinces of Central America entered a period of cultural redefinition, as emerging national frameworks sought to integrate diverse ethnic and historical legacies. After a century, in early twentieth-century El Salvador, a revival of Kushkatan—a pre-Hispanic Indigenous territory within present-day El Salvador—gained symbolic traction among intellectual elites during a politically volatile era marked by social upheaval and cultural realignment. Within this historical context, Cuzcatlán Típico (1951) by María de Baratta, published by the Ministry of Culture, stands as the first ethnomusicological study dedicated to Indigenous music in El Salvador and a pioneering effort in shaping national musical discourse. Her work engaged dominant ethnomusicological methods of the period, including monodic transcription practices and the diffusionist pentatonic theory associated with Raoul and Marguerite d’Harcourt, while also attempting to classify musical materials collected from rural communities across the country. Baratta’s piano works Nahualismo (1934) and El Zafa Caite, Son Nacional Salvadoreño (1961) reflect a regional trend toward incorporating Indigenous heritage into nationalist expression. Combining musical devices—such as anhemitonic pentatonicism, harmonic minor scale gestures, and rhythmic ostinatos—with symbolic allusions to Indigenous worldviews, these works engage exoticist tropes historically linked to both Eastern and Indigenous cultures to shape a romanticized vision of otherness and national identity. Through sound and scholarship, Baratta positioned herself as a central figure in the movement to assimilate Indigenous heritage into El Salvador’s emerging national identity, actively shaping the cultural memory of the nation.