Chalatenango (Spanish pronunciation: [tʃalateˈnaŋɡo]) is a department of El Salvador located in the northwest of the country.

Chalatenango's maximum elevation, located at Cerro El Pital (the country's highest point), is 8,960 feet (2,730 m).

[3] The indigenous peoples of the Americas had lived in the region of the modern-day Chalatenango department for over one thousand five hundred years before the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s.

[6][7] As a result, Chalatenango saw a significant increase of a lighter-skinned populace compared to the rest of El Salvador.

[15][16][17] The department continued to be a military stronghold for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a left-wing guerrilla group which the FPL was a founding member of, during the Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992).

[7][18] Due to its nature as a guerrilla stronghold, several military operations conducted by both sides of the civil war occurred in Chalatenango.

[19] During the civil war, many refugees fled south to the shore of Lake Suchitlán or left the department entirely for either Honduras or the United States.

On 13 June 2023, 67 of the 84 deputies of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted in favor of a bill proposed by President Nayib Bukele to reduce the total number of the country's municipalities from 262 to 44.

The first, the Northern Trunk Highway (CA4), connects San Salvador, the country's capital city, in the south with the Honduran border in the north.