Estanzuelas is a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 in the Usulután

Usulután Department

Usulután from the Nawat language is a department of El Salvador in the southeast of the country . The capital is Usulután.It is El Salvador's largest department...

 department

Departments of El Salvador

||A list of the departments of El Salvador in alphabetical order.Department :# Ahuachapán # Cabañas # Chalatenango # Cuscatlán # La Libertad # La Paz...

 of El Salvador

El Salvador

El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

.

Geography

The municipality is located to the southeast of San Ildefonso

San Ildefonso, San Vicente

San Ildefonso is a municipality in the San Vicente department of El Salvador....

 of the department of San Vicente

San Vicente Department

San Vicente is a department of El Salvador in the center of the country. The capital is San Vicente. On October 4, 1834, San Vicente City of Austria and Lorenzana was made the capital of State of El Salvador during the Federal Republic of Central America...

, to the north of Mercedes Umaña

Mercedes Umaña

Mercedes Umaña is a municipality in the Usulután department of El Salvador....

 and to the west of Nueva Granada

Nueva Granada, Usulután

Nueva Granada is a municipality in the Usulután department of El Salvador....

. Estanzuelas has a total area of 71.73 km².

History

La Estancia Sola, which was the name of the only hacienda

Hacienda

Hacienda is a Spanish word for an estate. Some haciendas were plantations, mines, or even business factories. Many haciendas combined these productive activities...

 in the old days, was changed to what is now known as Estanzuelas. The name was changed as the town grew and was eventually divided into six barrio

Barrio

Barrio is a Spanish word meaning district or neighborhood.-Usage:In its formal usage in English, barrios are generally considered cohesive places, sharing, for example, a church and traditions such as feast days...

s: El Calvario, El Belen, Las Flores, San Antonio, El Centro, and San Pablo.

Government

Jose Gonzalo Manzano is the current mayor who was democratically elected in the year 2006 and will stay in office for a three-year term. According to the 2001 Census (SIBASI) its population is about 10,000. Its people mainly make their living through agriculture and fishing and from the remittances received from family members in the US.

Culture

Many natives of Estanzuelas have migrated to the U.S. where they reside in communities in Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, New York, New Jersey, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Florida, Boston Los Angeles and Chicago. Estanzuelas is a small city with few public services. It has a plaza, an open market, a catholic church, a small clinic, a police station a postal office and a park where most of the kids stay to mostly play soccer.

People have to travel for other services such as banking to close towns such as Santiago de Maria and San Miguel.

Among some of the types of food you can savor in Estanzuelas are: tilapia fish, shrimp and fresh-water crab, sardines, pupusas, quesadillas (baked sweet bread), atol de elote (young corn oatmeal)and sopa de pescado [soup of fish].