Map - Acajutla

Acajutla is a seaport city in Sonsonate Department, El Salvador. The city is located at 13.59°N, -89.83361°W on the Pacific coast of Central America and is El Salvador's principal seaport from which a large portion of the nation's exports of coffee, sugar, and Balsam of Peru are shipped. As a city, Acajutla is one of seventeen such districts in Sonsonate. As of 1992, the population of the city was 18,008.

Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado, under the command of Hernán Cortés, had conquered Mexico and Guatemala before coming to the vicinity of Acajutla. There he met heavy resistance, but defeated the indigenous people in 1524 and conquered all of present-day El Salvador at the Battle of Acajutla.

Following the complete independence of El Salvador in 1838, the economy of the nation became increasinging dependent on the export of coffee. The rapid growth of this lucrative "cash crop" led to profound socio-economic changes in the region, and drew of the attention of foreign investors and the local plantation owners to Acajutla, where infrastructure development was seen as necessary to assure the transport of crops from the interior and the ability to load them efficiently aboard ships.

During the 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising, two destroyers of the Royal Canadian Navy, HMCS Skeena and HMCS Vancouver anchored off the shore of Acajutla at the request of the British Consul in El Salvador who feared for the safety of British nationals and assets. Armed Canadian sailors briefly landed against the wishes of the Salvadoran government and began preparing to continue on to San Salvador before the situation improved and the British no longer deemed an armed Canadian presence necessary.

During the twelve-year Salvadoran civil war (1980–1992), the oil refinery at Acajutla (then the only operating refinery in El Salvador), was a target for anti-government rebels.