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Often blending Catholicism with indigenous traditions, the confraternities or brotherhoods in Western El Salvador are custodians of religious statues and organizers of annual feasts and processions.

Salvadorans are especially fond of setting up decorative crèches with blinking lights. Salvadorans have absorbed American secular representations of Christmas. Many of the cofradías also sponsor Christmas-related displays and feasts. In Izalco, the Cofradía Niño Dios de María hosts a large Nativity scene in the front room of the majordomo’s house. The Cofradía del Niño Pepe holds its feast for five weeks, December 8-January 12.

While feasts, shrines and lay confraternities may be distinct phenomena in many cultures, they all come together through the cofradías, the lay confraternities that help define Catholic life in parts of in Western El Salvador.

Economic challenges have played a part in the changing family structures — single parenthood has become the norm while many partners leave El Salvador for better work opportunities.

In El Salvador one often sees reminders of the reality of death, including in religious images, roadside crosses that mark places of death, and elaborately decorated rural cemeteries.

Families mark the young women’s coming of age on her 15th birthday with a celebration known as a fiesta rosa or quinceañera.