Pupusas, tradition, pride, and giving

In the brightly lit Yellow Room cafeteria at Uniondale High School, a cluster of women and teen girls watched Juana Hernandez’s swift hands knead warm water into fine cornmeal, creating a thick dough called masa.

It was a deceptively simple start to a morning of nutrition, tradition and supportive fellowship at a meeting of the Latina Mentoring Initiative last Saturday.

Businesswoman Addie Blanco-Harvey, a Uniondale Board of Education trustee of Salvadoran heritage, was leading the day’s meeting, which she called, “Bonding through the art of making Salvadoran pupusas.”

Now Blanco-Harvey stood with Hernandez and Rosita Orellana, two Salvadoran women who are staff members at Uniondale High.

Blanco-Harvey narrated the process — and the meaning — of making pupusas, the filled flatbread of El Salvador.

“Just this process itself, from making the salsa to filling the masa, takes about three hours,” she said.

Pupusas pack protein, complex carbohydrates and vegetables into cozy griddle cakes meant to be consumed companionably, sitting around a table with friends.

A common street food in Salvadoran cities, the pupusa was proclaimed the national dish of El Salvador in 2005. They are an important national export, and nowadays most U.S metropolitan areas are dotted with pupuserías — restaurants whose specialty is pupusas.

Once the masa had been kneaded, Blanco-Harvey led the group into the cafeteria kitchen, where Hernandez’s and Orellana’s skilled hands pinched the dough into circles, added palmfuls of bean-and-cheese filling (with or without meat), and deftly flattened the nutritious balls into pancakes destined for a hot griddle.

When ready to eat, the hot pupusas are traditionally laid on a plate, topped with a spicy cabbage slaw called curtido, and moistened with freshly blended tomato salsa. For this session, the ingredients were donated by Giovanni and Lorena Fernandez, owners of La Fuente Restaurant in Uniondale.

By the middle of the process, 15 teenage girls, their mentors, Uniondale High Principal Mark McCaw, and district Superintendent Monique Darrisaw-Akil were packed happily around the stove with Hernandez, Orellana, Blanco-Harvey and Estrella Olivares-Orellana. Laughter and chitchat filled the air, and everyone took a turn at shaping the doughy circles.

Olivares-Orellana is the director of the Multilingual Learners program in the Uniondale district, and the site coordinator for the Latina Mentoring Initiative at Uniondale High.

“This is not just about making pupusas — it’s about instilling confidence, cultural pride and a sense of community in our young Latinas,” she said. Olivares-Orellana is in the second year of leading the mentoring group, which was started by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“On Oct. 21, 2021, Latina Equal Pay Day, Governor Hochul announced the Latina Mentoring Initiative to level the playing field for young Latinas,” Olivares-Orellana said. “The New York State Mentoring Program rolled out this initiative, Superintendent Darrisaw-Akil accepted the invitation, and in September 2022, Uniondale High School became a NYS Latina Mentoring Site under my leadership.”

The mentors are volunteers who apply through the state program and select Uniondale as their preferred site. Mentees are recommended by teachers or other faculty members. They all meet twice a month at Uniondale High.

“We do different activities every time,” Blanco-Harvey said. “Around Thanksgiving, we do ‘Friendsgiving.’ We had a session where we helped the mentees work on a five-year plan. At another, we did mock interviews after we helped them with resume writing.”

Last year, Blanco-Harvey took the girls to one of the offices of Premier Endodontics, where she is a marketing manager. The doctors spoke to them about applying to dental school.

“We are really trying to encourage our mentees to know that they can accomplish anything they set out to do,” Blanco-Harvey said.

When the pupusas were cooked, the group ate together. Several of the girls, all seniors at the high school, sat with one of the mentors, Liliana Polo-McKenna, and talked about why the meetings are important to them.

“We learn about getting ready for college,” Iris Alfaro said. “Finding a job is going to be very easy for all of us, because we have the mentors’ help.”

“I like the community feeling,” said Yeissi Artita. “We have people from different countries. I learn from each one.”

“You can say whatever you feel,” Amy Hernandez said. “The mentors want to give you ways to walk forward in your life.”

“It’s an incredibly rewarding experience, seeing them Saturday after Saturday, every other week,” said Polo-McKenna. “The school is so supportive.”

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Hernandez and Orellana put the finishing touches on the last heap of pupusas, which had a charitable destiny. Olivares-Orellana and Victoria Basantes, a mentor who is also the intake coordinator for the district’s Multilingual Learners program, drove to the houses of eight recently arrived newcomer families and presented them with pupusas.

“They were very happy,” Olivares-Orellana said. “It was just a great event.”