Chocolate: A Gift from the Pipil to the World

The word “chocolate” comes from the name given to a beverage from the Izalcos region of present-day El Salvador. Cocoa production was of immense importance to the region and its peoples, connecting Indigenous inhabitants to local and global commercial and cultural networks. So important, in fact, that the political power of the Izalco Pipil was based on a system of cocoa production unparalleled in Mesoamerica.