The pupusa is a typical dish from El Salvador, but spread throughout Central America when tens of thousands of Salvadorans were scattered throughout the region during the civil war of the 1980s. Many families settled in countries of the region, others sought refuge in United States and Canada. They even arrived in Europe and Australia. I had the first contact I had with the Salvadoran Pupusas, in October of 2006 when I was in Los Angeles, California, as part of a tour that included Palm Springs, to attend the North American Convention of Rena Ware. In such travel our guide and Executive of Rena Ware, Teresa Aviles, El Salvador native invited us to a Salvadoran restaurantico to taste the pupusas rich; more recently here in Miami we have developed a deep friendship with Salvadoran families who sometimes we were invited to taste them. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, was one of the religious who came to America; in one of his texts in 1570, it relates about the existence of a meal of baked dough, mixing with meat and beans. On the other hand, a publication of the David j.
Guzman Museum says that pupusas were an essential part of the diet of pre-Columbian settlements in Ahuachapan, allegedly quiches that had migrated from Guatemala. Anthropological studies conducted by Ramon Rivas placed the origin of pupusas before the arrival of the Spaniards in American soil. According to Dr. Jose Manuel Bonilla, specialist of the nahuat language and director national spaces of cultural development of Concultura in El Salvador, the pupusa word originates from the combination of the word foo (scrambled eggs) and tsa (bulging), which translate bulge stuffed. In the early 19th century, Santiago i. Barberena on page 231 of his book Quicheismo of American folklore, wrote: Pupusa means – well United – one of the main requirements to make a good pupusa is remaining well United tops, because otherwise it would be filling.