The native people have always been guardians of Mother Earth. Yet we have been displaced from our cultural identities, we have been massacred, violated, and imprisoned for protecting our Mother Earth and our own rights.
-- Chief Margarito Esquino
ANIS was founded in 1959 by Chief Rosendo Esquina Ceren for the purpose of reviving the cultural life, customs, traditions, ceremonies, and languages of the indigenous nations of Cuscatlan (now El Salvador).
Chief Rosendo, on the occasion of ANIS' foundation, handed the position of spiritual chief to his son, Adrian Esquino Lisco (b. 1938).Since then, Brother Esquino Lisco has traveled to over 75 countries and international bodies, including the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, and Geneva, Switzerland.
Each year in December ANIS holds an International Indian encounter attended by delegates from indigenous nations throughout the world and over 1,200 national indigenous leaders. Participants engage in traditional sweat houses, the smoking of the ceremonial chanupa (sage) pipe, and spiritual ceremonies to give thanks to Mother Earth and Father God.
For over 500 years, since the time of the Spanish Conquest, the indigenous nations of El Salvador have been the victims of repression and genocide. In 1932, over 30,000 peasants and Indians were massacred.
On 22 February 1983, members of the Jaguar Battalion, under the command of Captain Carlos Alfonso Figueroa Morales, ... arrested 16 peasants, took them to the Cuyuapa river and shot and killed them at point-blank range (U.N. Truth Commission, 1993). Read the Report...
PEACE, International
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