Ilobasco History

 

Ilobasco is a city located in the Department of Cabañas, in the Paracentral Region of El Salvador; its population, of about  74,983 people who are dedicated to livestock, corn agriculture, commerce and pottery. Pottery is the activity for which Ilobasco is best known nationally and internationally.

Since colonial times the name of this population was written under the forms of Gilovasco, Hilobasco, Xilobasco, etc .; However, in a municipal report from the mayor's office of Ilobasco, on December 20, 1859 it was called "Ilobasco, the name comes from the indigenous language; Formerly this population occupied the place known today as" Old Site ", a 6 km to the Northwest of the current seat, and although "It is not known with certainty neither the reason nor the time of the transfer of the old inhabitants to the site that today occupies; but the most uniform tradition, preserved from father to son among the natives, is that, having disappeared for the first and second time the effigy of San Miguel, patron saint of the town, and being found on the trunk of a tree that was in the same place where there is the current Parish, the doctrinaire priest of that time, overcoming without few difficulties, managed to persuade the natives of the uncertain necessity, dates the foundation of Ilobasco in the place it occupies today ".

Since before 1609, according to the chronicler Fray Antonio de Remesal, the town of Ilobasco was administered, religiously, by the monks of the Santo Domingo de San Salvador convent; and, consequently, religious of this monastic congregation were the ones who made the patron San Miguel disappear for the first and second time and unfold the now called Old Site, founding the population in its current seat. When this event took effect, Ilobasco was a genuine indigenous town, already greatly diminished, since it only consisted of about 200 people. "That is where the name of San Miguel Arcángel comes from."