For Salvadorans in Phoenix, restaurants offer oasis
Jessica Blanco was just 13 years old when she made the move to Phoenix from her home in El Salvador. It was 2011. She didn’t know anyone when she arrived; her entire family was almost 2,500 miles away.
“I felt very disconnected moving here, not just physically. I tried to join a community, you know, everyone wants that, but I didn’t see a lot of Salvadorans here in Arizona. I didn’t meet any Salvadorans in middle or high school,” she explained.
Through food, however, many Salvadoran Arizonans born in the U.S. and abroad have been able to find a sense of the community they grew up in, with their families here and with those they left back in El Salvador.
There is a huge population of Latinos in metro Phoenix. According to the U.S. Census, close to 43% of residents identify as Hispanic or Latinos. However, the majority are Mexican, a situation influenced by the many Mexicans who lived in the area long before borders were established and from mass migration flows that picked up in the ‘40s.
In the ‘80s, the U.S. saw migration patterns pick up from El Salvador as their civil war began to unfold. California is home to the largest number of Salvadorans living abroad - more than 700,000, according the 2019 U.S. census. By comparison, Arizona had fewer than 20,000 Salvadoran residents in the same period.
For many, like Blanco, finding a community in Phoenix that resonated with their Salvadoran roots proved difficult upon arrival. According to owners of pupuserías in the Valley, food from their native homeland helps create a meeting point for them.
Food and its connection to culture
According to Miriam Ramírez, owner of the restaurant El Salvadoreño #2, located on 75th Avenue and Thomas Road in Phoenix, ordering a pupusa made from loroco is a strong indication that you’re Salvadoran.
She said there are not many ways to identify Salvadorans in the Phoenix area — if their Salvadoran heritage isn’t detectable in the way they speak, then surely they’ll catch it in the way they order their pupusas.
Not many know what loroco is, Ramírez said. It is an aromatic flower that grows El Salvador and when mixed with the cheese and the warm corn dough that makes a pupusa, gives the dish a unique and delicious flavor.
It is precisely food that brings Salvadorans together in the Phoenix area, Ramírez said. Restaurants, like the chain she operates with her daughter Yesenia Ramírez, serve as meeting points for Salvadoran families who find that connection with their culture in their country’s cuisine.
“There are second or third-generation Salvadorans. You may not see them on the street with a flag, you can’t identify them at first glance,” said Yesenia Ramírez. “But when they see a pupusas
restaurant they remember the food their grandmother made for them, and they quickly connect those flavors with their traditions, their culture, their family”.
In 2005, pupusas were declared the national dish of El Salvador. The second Sunday of November was declared National Pupusa Day.
Around the Valley, authentic Salvadoran restaurants aren’t too hard to find. The majority though are found in Phoenix. Miriam Ramírez’s chain of Salvadoreño restaurants operates in Phoenix, Mesa and El Mirage, with a sixth location coming soon to Tempe. Others like Guañaquitos Restaurant, Restaurante Salvadoreño y Pupuseria Los 3 Hermanos and Reina de las Pupusas Restaurant are also in Phoenix.
Alongside pupusas made of cheese, chicharrón and the combination of cheese and beans, loroco pupusas are among the most requested dishes at Miriam Ramírez’s restaurant. It opened its doors in 2002 and has served thousands of Latinos and non-Latinos in the Valley.
But the culinary ingenuity of Salvadorans has gone further, and over time the dish has included endless flavors such as chicken, chorizo, ham, meat and even shrimp.
“We make some with pepperoni and cheese that are tasty, and Phoenix customers love them,” said Yesenia Ramírez.
The pupusas are accompanied by a pickled concoction of cabbage, carrot, chili, onion and vinegar.
Making Phoenix home
Unlike big cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, where hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans live, there is no designated neighborhood or area in Phoenix where the Salvadoran community is concentrated.
“In Los Angeles, you see the vast majority around MacArthur Park, there is a lot of Salvadoran businesses there; many markets that make you feel like you are in your hometown,” said Yesenia Ramírez. “That is lacking here in the Phoenix area. There is a lot of Salvadorans here, but we are all spread out. The Valley is very large and wide, and there is no specific place where we live or meet.”
Dr. Cecilia Menjívar, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, has focused her research on the Central American experience in the United States. In order to understand the lack of Salvadoran visibility in the Phoenix metropolitan area, we must understand the reasons why families have migrated here, she said.
Menjívar has documented the history of Central American immigration to the U.S., highlighting how political and economic difficulties in the ‘70s have influenced current migration patterns.
In her academic study, “The Power of the Law: Legality and Daily Life of Central Americans in Phoenix, Arizona,” Dr. Menjívar explains that “although the political conflicts officially ended in 1992 in El Salvador and in 1996 in Guatemala, immigration from both countries has continued, and is now compounded by
the high rates of unemployment, underemployment and high levels of violence associated with ‘common crime’ in Central America.”
The study focuses on the legal infrastructure that has created the environment in which Central Americans live today. Current immigration laws, as Menjívar explains in her work, affect the daily lives of immigrants from places like El Salvador, including their ability to create community.
Like Mexicans and immigrants from other Central and South American countries, Salvadorans tend to come to the U.S. with the plan to stay two years at most, providing for their families this way and heading back home soon after. They do this “to earn money and return to their hometown, but as time goes by, most decide to stay,” Miriam Ramírez said.
“That we stay to live here does not mean that we forget our country, our family, or our roots. What we do (in the U.S.) is done thinking about keeping our roots alive,” she said.
A need to educate on ‘Salvi’ culture
Enrique Meléndez, a member of the diplomatic corps of El Salvador and former honorary consul of El Salvador in Phoenix, said that Salvadorans are concentrated in Mesa, Phoenix and Tucson. And despite their few numbers in Arizona, Salvadorans have created with other Latinos in the area, especially Mexicans.
“The Salvadoran people in Arizona are very sociable ... and respect other nationalities. Many of them are very hard-working and develop various trades — something similar to what happens with Mexicans, Hondurans and (people from) other Latin American countries,” Meléndez said.
For Jessica Blanco, however, finding home in Phoenix has also resulted in some form of erasure of their own culture as salvadoreños. “I think that as Salvadoran immigrants, we find ourselves trying to merge with the Latino culture here, but it is as if the Mexican culture is very prevalent,” he said.
Blanco, 23, said that at the lack of knowledge from fellow Latinos of her country, she dedicates some time to educate those around her about her identity. The hegemony that the Mexican identity has over how a Latino should look and be in Phoenix — and in the U.S. — forces this kind of unlearned environment for Salvadorans and other Latinos.
“I think the erasure of Central America is something major that I realized while trying to navigate different groups,” she said.
Kenneth Velásquez, originally from Tucson, moved to Tempe to study architecture at Arizona State University. Like Blanco, he said he hasn’t been very exposed to other Salvadorans in metro Phoenix.
“I would say that although I have been able to connect a lot with the Latino community, I have not been able to connect as much with other Salvis in particular,” he said.
Velásquez is the oldest son of immigrant parents from El Salvador. His family’s immigration history illustrates some of the patterns of Central American immigrants in recent years. His mother obtained temporary protected status in 1999 and moved to Arizona shortly after. His father arrived in 2008, and to this day continues to send remittances to El Salvador to support family.
Velásquez believes he doesn’t see enough Salvadoran representation in Phoenix. Outside of his experiences with family and meeting others through family ties, he does not feel that he has been able to find a community among other Salvadorans here.
“I have yet to really connect with the Salvi community here,” he explained. “The only real connections I’ve had with the community are through pupuserías and a soccer game, things that have a direct connection to the country.”
Velásquez’s experience is one that Miriam and Yesenia Ramírez understand. For this very reason, restaurants specializing in El Salvador’s cuisine, their way of keeping their “roots alive,” offer that space that salvadoreños crave in order to make community, they said.
At the lack of an official consulate office in Phoenix, the closest one being in Tucson and then Los Angeles, Salvadoran restaurants in the Valley offer their dining halls as venues for consulate services when Tucson personnel visit.
Yesenia Ramírez also helps organize the annual Arizona Pupusas Festival, one of the few events in the Valley that celebrate Salvadoran culture. The event usually falls around the celebrated Pupusa Day. This year, it will take place on Nov. 13 at the cultural center Roosevelt 16 (1650 E Roosevelt St.) in Phoenix. The event is being organized by the Cultivo Market Collective.
The event promotes Salvadoran cuisine from local restaurants, live traditional music, typical dances from El Salvador, art exhibitions from local Salvadoran creatives and other activities.
“Many of the people with whom we have established a good relationship we have met either in the restaurant or through events such as the Pupusa Festival,” said Miriam Ramírez. “That is the objective of this festival: to bring people together and promote our culture, and so far it has worked for us.”