How tradition & joy feed the resistance

Making Venezuelan hallacas celebrates family & homeland

To Doris Farias, 60, and her daughter Siury Pulgar, 39, Christmas is a time for hallacas. And hallacas means it’s time for La Fiesta de Las Hallacas.

For Farias, it’s a favorite memory of her Venezuelan childhood, a time when her mom, aunts, uncles and cousins would sleep over at her grandmother’s home and have a hallaca-making party, cooking all night. It’s a tradition she passed on to her daughter and has now brought all the way to south San Jose to share with her young granddaughters.

Hallacas are often called Venezuelan tamales because both have corn doughs stuffed with a filling, then wrapped in banana leaves. Both are labor-intensive and best made in the company of family and friends. But that’s where the similarities end. While a Mexican tamale is all thick dough with a little filling, a hallaca is a thin dough wrapped around a good amount of guiso, a filling traditionally made with meat (beef, pork or chicken) cooked with onions, peppers, olives, capers and raisins. Mexican tamales are steamed, while hallacas are wrapped in a banana leaf painted with bright orange annatto-infused oil and then boiled.

“The olives, capers and raisins — that’s what makes it taste like Christmas,” Pulgar says.

In the center of her daughter’s large kitchen, Farias is surrounded by family and friends chatting happily in Spanish as they all sip chicha de arroz, a rich and drinkable Venezuelan rice pudding. She’s been prepping for days. Her two guisos — one chicken, one vegetable — have been cooked and cooled. Her dough has been made, thanks to a combination of Harina P.A.N., water, a little sugar and juices from the guiso. The banana leaves have been washed and cut, and the annatto oil infused.

She lines people up into an assembly line around the kitchen

From top: Candy Brito, Chiquy “Boom founders Doris Farias (left) and Pulga