Las borracheras secretas de los abuelos de Panchimalco

This article is the excerpt of a research investigation which demonstrates how some practices change as time goes by and how they are shaped around the social, political and economic contexts. Taking advantage of ethnography as an anthropological method, the production of chicha (Salvadorean moonshine) downtown Panchimalco and its relation with the popular-religious celebrations was taken as the subject of study. Part of the findings from the field study lays in the categorization of the production stages subjugated by the tax systems established by each governor; its consequences include the strike that represented their dismantling in the hands of the Estate during the postwar and the present time, which has centered in presenting indigenous elements as an exotic component that draws tourism to the country.