Talk:Pipil people

Modern Pipil

I'm mostly away from Wikipedia right now so don't want to get involved too deeply but I have a few observations to throw the way of anyone listening about the little paragraph named "Modern Pipil" at the end of the article.

To begin with, I'm not sure about that title. Firstly, what does it mean? "Modern Pipil" sounds to me mostly like it refers to the modern Pipil language, but of course it doesn't (although Nawat is mentioned). Presumably then it actually refers to the modern Pipil people, in which case it might be better to say "The modern Pipil" or even "The modern Pipils". A more serious problem I have here, though, is that as it is written it is not terribly obvious to me that the paragraph is actually about the modern Pipils. Who are they, the 90% who have some indigenous ancestors, or the 1% of pure indigenous ancestry? If the former, these do not consider themselves "Pipils" and are not so considered by others (at least in El Salvador), so the heading would be a bit obscure and misleading to say the least. And if the latter, which I assume to be the case, then the problem is that the paragraph really says very little about them (just a part of one sentence towards the end), and actually concentrates on the other issues, which is the customary way of ignoring the indigenous peoples out of existence in El Salvador itself while pretending to be interested in them, and won't do.

Having said all that, I'd also like to add that the wording of the paragraph is confusing and inaccurate because it glosses over the fact that the Pipils are not the only indigenous group in El Salvador and certainly not by any means the ancestral source of all present-day Salvadorans. Thus the Pipil is only one component in the ancestry of the 90% of mestizos referred to, but the way it's put seems to be assuming that Pipil and indigenous in El Salvador are practically the same thing. The Pipils attracted most attention when the Spanish turned up because of their political and military predominance in the centre and southwest of the area now called El Salvador and probably also by the fact that their language was intelligible to the Mexican interpreters who accompanied them, and the Pipils of today have the added distinction of being the only indigenous group whose language is still spoken by anyone at all, but that does not mean that nearly all the people in El Salvador are descended from Pipils just because they are mestizos. Depending on the region and family history, people may have Lencan, Cacaoperan or Mayan blood. They may also have a mixture of course, but that would depend largely on the degree of mobility of earlier generations.

Sorry to have gone on for so long, but I have one more thing to say quickly. The description of the location of modern Pipils as "near the Guatemalan border" is not quite accurate. Of course El Salvador is so small that it could all be described as near the Guatemalan border in a sense, but within the relative geography of El Salvador, the department of Sonsonate (where most of the few remaining Nawat speakers probably are) would not normally be thought of as all that close to the border. It's like describing Oregon and New York City as "near the Canadian border". But here I'm no doubt splitting hairs. --A R King 06:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Page moved. Uncontested and uncontroversial. -- Hadal (talk) 07:41, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

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Pipils → Pipil people – As per WP:SINGULAR and in keeping with other ethnic peoples articles. Unfortunately the two edits on the redirect page "Pipil people" prevent me from making the move myself. Uyvsdi (talk) 18:56, 6 July 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Pipil oral tradition?

The lede used to claim that the Pipil have an oral tradition of coming from the southwestern US. This seems unlikely, as the Pipil predate the existence of the US; rather it seems to be taken from the (probably incorrect) identification of Aztlan with some location in, or sometimes all of, what is now the southwestern US. Note however that the location of Aztlan is uncertain and it may even be just a mythical location (like the Garden of Eden probably is, for example), and could be anywhere from, say, Nayarit (which is fond of claiming to be the "real" Aztlan) to, well, anywhere, including the US. Also note that the origin point (urheimat) of Uto-Aztecan (also "Yuto-Aztekan") languages is far from settled, and could be anywhere from Durango to Nevada. However, the most likely origin point seems to be located somewhere in southern Sonora, near the modern homelands of the Yaqui (Yoeme) and Mayo (Yoreme) peoples, placing it outside of the US.