Within Strange El Salvador
How Hidden Voices Returned to Public Memory
This San Salvador institution turns clandestine broadcasts, photographs, embroidery and mystical art into evidence of lives once pushed underground.
On this page
- Radio Venceremos and the recovered counter archive
- Salarrue's spiritual art and invented worlds
- Embroidery, exile and testimony as museum objects
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Introduction
The Museum of the Word and Image (MUPI) in San Salvador is unusual not because it displays bizarre objects, but because it rescues voices that were once meant to disappear. Hidden radio broadcasts, handwritten letters, photographs, refugee embroidery, paintings and personal testimonies have been transformed into a public archive that challenges official silence. Rather than collecting curiosities for their own sake, the museum preserves evidence of lives lived in secrecy, exile and conflict, making fragile memories into tangible museum objects. Within El Salvador’s landscape of unusual collections, MUPI stands out as a counter-archive: a place where material once concealed for survival now forms one of the country’s richest public records of cultural memory.[museo.com.sv]museo.com.svMUP I – Museo de la palabra y la imagenMUPI – Museo de la palabra y la imagenJuly 15, 2026…
Radio Venceremos and the recovered counter-archive
The heart of MUPI grew directly from the archive of Radio Venceremos, the clandestine broadcaster that transmitted from guerrilla-held territory during the Salvadoran Civil War. Founded by journalist Carlos Henríquez Consalvi, known by the nom de guerre “Santiago”, the station documented military events, reported civilian experiences and challenged government accounts while constantly moving equipment to avoid detection. After the 1992 peace accords, instead of allowing these recordings to scatter into private collections or disappear altogether, Consalvi used them as the foundation for a new museum dedicated to preserving historical memory.[wikipedia.org]WikipediaRadio VenceremosRadio Venceremos
What visitors encounter is not simply an exhibition about a radio station. Original recording equipment, photographs of broadcasters working under wartime conditions, audio recordings and documentary material demonstrate how information itself became a contested resource. Listening stations and reconstructed broadcasting spaces make clear that these broadcasts were produced under extraordinary circumstances, often from mountain camps that could be abandoned within minutes if discovered.[Wikipedia]WikipediaRadio VenceremosRadio Venceremos
The archive’s importance extends beyond military history. Universities and research institutions have partnered with MUPI to digitise the Radio Venceremos recordings because they preserve voices, accents, music, humour and eyewitness testimony that rarely appear in official documents. The broadcasts are now used by historians, linguists and human-rights researchers as primary evidence of everyday life during the conflict rather than merely as political propaganda.[utexas.edu]curriculum.llilasbenson.utexas.eduRadio Venceremos Audio Collection (Primary Sources) – CurriculumRadio Venceremos Audio Collection (Primary Sources) – Curriculum
Salarrué’s spiritual art and invented worlds
The museum’s collections move far beyond war. One of its most distinctive archives centres on the writer and artist Salvador Salazar Arrué, better known as Salarrué. While celebrated for his literature, he also produced an extensive body of paintings inspired by spiritual philosophy, visionary symbolism and imagined landscapes that occupy an unusual place within Salvadoran art.
Rather than presenting only finished artworks, MUPI preserves Salarrué’s wider creative world. Manuscripts, unpublished writings, correspondence, personal objects, sketchbooks and a substantial personal library reveal how literature, painting and spiritual thought informed one another. The archive contains over a thousand letters alongside original manuscripts and artworks, allowing visitors to trace creative processes rather than simply admire completed pieces. UNESCO’s Latin American Memory of the World programme has recognised the significance of this archive as documentary heritage.[museo.com.sv]museo.com.svSalarrué – MUPISalarrué – MUPI
This makes the collection especially unusual within El Salvador’s museum landscape. Salarrué’s paintings often depict mystical or dreamlike environments that resist straightforward interpretation. Displayed alongside his notebooks and correspondence, they become evidence of an individual intellectual universe rather than isolated works of art. The museum therefore treats imagination itself as an archival subject worthy of preservation.[museo.com.sv]museo.com.svSalarrué – MUPISalarrué – MUPI
Embroidery, exile and testimony as museum objects
Perhaps the museum’s most unexpected collections are its embroidered testimonies created by Salvadoran women living in refugee camps during the civil war. Instead of written memoirs, these textile works record villages, displacement, violence, daily routines and hopes for return through stitched images and carefully chosen colours.
Seen in a gallery, the embroideries resemble folk art. Read alongside accompanying oral histories, however, they become documentary evidence. They preserve memories of forced migration and survival in forms that many participants found safer, more accessible or more culturally meaningful than written testimony. The museum has treated these textiles not as decorative craft but as historical documents carrying first-person witness accounts.[utexas.edu]lib.utexas.eduSeptember 26, 2019…
Digital collaborations have expanded access to this material without separating it from its context. Joint projects with international academic partners have photographed, catalogued and presented the embroidered works alongside interviews and historical information, allowing viewers to understand both the artistic techniques and the experiences encoded within each piece.[lib.utexas.edu]lib.utexas.eduSeptember 26, 2019…
The same philosophy shapes other collections throughout MUPI. Photographs of indigenous communities, posters from international solidarity campaigns, personal letters, manuscripts, family photographs and everyday objects are interpreted as evidence of social movements and individual lives rather than simply as historical illustrations.[Wikipedia]WikipediaMuseo de la Palabra y la ImagenMuseo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Why these rescued voices matter
Unlike conventional history museums that rely heavily on official government records, MUPI deliberately preserves material created outside state institutions or hidden from them. Many of its most important objects survived because individuals protected them in exile, carried them across borders or concealed them during years of conflict. The museum’s long-running campaign against what it calls the “chaos of forgetting” continues to encourage members of the public to donate or lend documents, photographs and recordings before they are lost.[museo.com.sv]museo.com.svColabora – MUPIColabora – MUPI
This approach gives the museum a distinctive place within El Salvador’s culture of unusual collections. Visitors do not come to see spectacular relics or mysterious artefacts. Instead, they encounter rescued voices: broadcasts that once travelled secretly across mountains, paintings born from spiritual imagination, and embroidered cloth that quietly records experiences of exile and survival. Together, these collections demonstrate that memory itself can become one of a country’s most remarkable museum objects.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: museo.com.sv
Title: MUP I – Museo de la palabra y la imagen
Link:https://museo.com.sv/?product-page=1
Source snippet
MUPI – Museo de la palabra y la imagenJuly 15, 2026...
Published: July 15, 2026
2.
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museo_de_la_Palabra_y_la_Imagen
3.
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Radio Venceremos
Link:https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Venceremos
4.
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Radio Venceremos
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Venceremos
5.
Source: curriculum.llilasbenson.utexas.edu
Title: Radio Venceremos Audio Collection (Primary Sources) – Curriculum
Link:https://curriculum.llilasbenson.utexas.edu/sources/sources-mupi-radio-venceremos/
6.
Source: library.csun.edu
Title: Memory, Culture, and Identity in El Salvador | CSUN University Library
Link:https://library.csun.edu/events/memory-culture-identity-el-savador
7.
Source: museo.com.sv
Title: Salarrué – MUPI
Link:https://museo.com.sv/salarrue-2/
8.
Source: lib.utexas.edu
Link:https://www.lib.utexas.edu/about/news/embroidered-testimonies-salvadoran-civil-war-refugees-accessible-online
Source snippet
September 26, 2019...
Published: September 26, 2019
9.
Source: museo.com.sv
Title: Colabora – MUPI
Link:https://museo.com.sv/colabora/
10.
Source: museo.com.sv
Link:https://museo.com.sv/mupi-y-ccesv-inauguran-exposicion-cartografias-de-la-memoria-archivo-vivo-creado-a-traves-del-bordado-por-mujeres-de-chalatenango/
Source snippet
MUPI y CCESV inauguran exposición «Cartografías de la Memoria»: archivo vivo creado a través del bordado por mujeres de Chalatenango – MU...
11.
Source: hrdi.lib.utexas.edu
Link:https://hrdi.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/hrdi%3Aa1dce5e3-87c3-4a5e-96cb-21be41e59bce
12.
Source: hrdi.lib.utexas.edu
Link:https://hrdi.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/hrdi%3A62518027-956f-4bb3-b2b1-0c80dbfdcdce
13.
Source: museo.com.sv
Link:https://museo.com.sv/?product-page=2
14.
Source: ipsnews.net
Title: Inter Press Service CULTURE-EL SALVADOR: Museum of Words | Inter Press Service
Link:https://www.ipsnews.net/1995/10/culture-el-salvador-museum-of-words/
Additional References
15.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbLNK_WZOik
Source snippet
Carlos Henriquez Consalvi at the meeting of the Latin American Network of Sites of Memory, Bogota...
16.
Source: elsalvadormemory.org
Link:https://www.elsalvadormemory.org/carloshenriquezeng
17.
Source: elsalvadormemory.org
Link:https://www.elsalvadormemory.org/museo-de-la-palabra-es
18.
Source: english.elpais.com
Link:https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-05-28/a-podcast-against-obscurity-radio-venceremos-once-again-defies-the-silence-in-el-salvador.html
19.
Source: youtube.com
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOh9rGH3pNo
Source snippet
The Decision to Win (4)...
20.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqW1ssVTFUg
Source snippet
Conozca el Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen...
21.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Conozca el Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbr2DPsto84
Source snippet
Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen...
22.
Source: urbipedia.org
Title: Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Link:https://www.urbipedia.org/hoja/Museo_de_la_Palabra_y_la_Imagen
23.
Source: moma.org
Title: 72854 radio venceremos
Link:https://www.moma.org/artists/72854-radio-venceremos
24.
Source: youtube.com
Title: The Decision to Win (4)
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpuiS-HQf_U