José Carlos Ramirez, twenty-eight, left El Salvador in 2002 and lives in East Boston with his family, which includes his wife, daughter, mother, sister, and several nephews. A lawyer in his country, José currently has two jobs cleaning and working maintenance. He attends Bunker Hill Community College and hopes to obtain a law degree in this country.
THE EAST BOSTON NEIGHBORHOOD WHERE the Ramirez family lives is vibrant on this beautiful Saturday morning in May. The sounds of cumbia, salsa, and merengue float through the windows of cars passing though this busy intersection. We walk by a small market selling Latino products; the doorway is bathed in sunlight and frames two teenage boys wearing T-shirts and jeans, who watch the action on the street with feigned disinterest. As we make our way to the row of three family buildings where José lives, a sleek jet glides surprisingly low, just skimming the rooftops. The startling roar of the engine comes next, slicing through the sounds of the neighborhood, a reminder that Logan Airport is nearby.
José, his wife, Ana, and their little girl, Gabriela, three years old, show us into their third-floor apartment. Aminta, José’s mother, wipes her hands on a dish towel and smiles when José introduces us. Saturdays are Amintia’s big cooking day; she makes quesadilla, a sweet cake in the Salvadoran case, for the Central American market around the corner, as well as
Opposite: José pours ingredients for quesadilla batter with his mother and daughter while his sister and nephew make pupusas.
pupusas, a Salvadoran specialty made with corn flour and filled with beans, cheese, or shredded pork, which she cooks for her large family almost daily. I struggle in Spanish to ask about the food she’ll be cooking today, when José’s sister, Evelyn, comes into the room. “Another excellent cook,” José says, introducing her to us.
In the kitchen, Aminta shows me the ingredients she’s set out for the quesadilla and pupusas. Miguel, four, and Ángel, two, friends from the apartment downstairs, are playing on chairs in the corner and look up eagerly, as if they’ve been anticipating our arrival. Ángel runs over to Aminta, who scoops him into her arms for a quick kiss before turning toward the stove to check on a large pot simmering with beans.
Aminta pulls a chair over to the table for her granddaughter, and together they pour the rice flour and sugar into a mixing bowl she’s set out to make the quesadilla. Ana, who speaks in a thick Central American accent and has a good command of English, talks about her mother-in-law’s cooking, her husband’s heavy work schedule, the challenges of raising Gabriela in a place far from home, and the English classes she takes at the same community college José attends. “It’s another life for me here. In my country, I was somebody. I was a lawyer, like my husband. So, I’m starting again now,” she says.
Ana talks freely, jumping from one subject to the next in sharing her experiences with me. She is not at all deterred by the cooking that is going on around her—Aminta and Evelyn reaching around for bags of rice flour and shredded pork—or by little Ángel, who runs through her legs to chase his brother about the kitchen. Soon, a teenage girl appears at the table, stepping in front of Ana for the bowl of corn dough and shredded pork. She quickly shapes a pupusa, clapping the dough between her hands, and then places it onto the hot griddle in the middle of the table. Before I am able to find out who she is, she disappears down the hallway.
While I’m listening to Ana, I realize that Aminta has already begun to pour ingredients into the bowl for the quesadilla. “¿Cuánto?” (How much?) I ask, pointing to the bag of rice flour Aminta has in her hand. She shrugs and indicates with a finger approximately how full it had been before she started cooking. I copy the ingredients into my notebook as Aminta tosses pinches of salt, baking powder, and small handfuls of grated parmesan into the bowl faster than I can write, and all the while Ana is still talking to me. Meanwhile, little Gabriela works the batter, using her tiny fingers to break up the clumps of sour cream her grandmother has just added. When Aminta tells her she’s finished, she smiles and puts them to her lips.
José, who stands next to his daughter, occasionally hands ingredients to his mother as he listens to his wife talk, nodding about something she has just said. When Aminta passes a spoon to José, he explains, “My mother always asks me if it should be more sweet.” After trying a generous scoop he tells her, “Un poco más”(a little more), and passes the bag of sugar across the table.
As Aminta makes room to pour the batter into pans, Ana describes the differences she finds between Salvadoran and American culture: “In my country, mothers are home with the kids. Mothers are like your best friend, because you’re always together. I want Gabriela to know our culture. I think one of the best places to be with your family is when you’re eating. For me, the kitchen is special. It’s three times each day to be with your family.”
José waits for his wife to finish. His eyes look tired behind the wire-rimmed glasses he wears, and he gestures toward several chairs in the corner of the kitchen. “In this country, it seems like parents don’t have enough time for the kids, because they need to work a lot. This is our situation right now,” he tells me. “My mother came here so I could become a lawyer in our country. Now I am here because I had to leave my country. I just want Gabriela to have a good life. I want her to be happy.” A concerned look remains on his face when he watches his little girl run through the apartment with Miguel and Ángel, and he reaches out to pat the top of her head when she passes.
I look around the kitchen, soaking up its warmth and the earthy smells of rice flour and sesame seeds coming from the oven, where the remaining pans of Aminta’s quesadilla bake, and I can hear the playful shrieks of Gabriela, Miguel, and Ángel in the next room. I consider the many family members who have come through here today to make a pupusa, laugh over a hot chocolate, or sit with a warm piece of quesadilla, and I can’t help but think that José needn’t be worried.
We eat here like we would at home. We have lots of beans and soups. My daughter, Gabriela, loves sopa de frijoles, bean soup. Sometimes we put an egg in it for her, or queso seco, the cheese, or you can add chicharrón, the pork. I want her to learn our customs, and for me, the food is really important. Oh, sometimes she eats hamburgers, like at Burger King, and she loves the french fries they have, and that’s okay, but I want her to know things about my country, too. Like when I take her to El Salvador, I want her to try our specialties, like ticucus. I don’t think she’s ever had that. It’s made with corn and has beans inside, and we usually eat it for Semana Santa, holy week.
When I was young, maybe ten years old, I’d cook with my mother, like Gabriela does now. All of my sisters and brothers would help. We’d make the tamales with her every weekend, maybe seventy or eighty of them. It was a lot! I would get up early and go to the place where you grind the corn. I’d bring the masa, the ground corn, back home, and she’d have all the other ingredients ready—the chicken, potatoes, the salsa, and sometimes the loroco [a flower that’s added to some dishes, sometimes in its bud form]—and she’d fold everything into a banana leaf. My job was to tie them. We’d put them in a big pot to cook, and when they were done people would come to our home to buy them. We sold pupusas, too. They’re like tortillas filled with pork or beans and cheese. Only my mother and my sister, Evelyn, made the pupusas. So, I’d help with the salsa and the cortido; that’s the cabbage salad that you eat with them.
We lived humbly, and my parents worked hard. My brother and sisters and I helped when we weren’t in school. It was fun, because we told jokes and funny stories. Sometimes, though, we were angry, because we didn’t want to always cook. Sometimes my brother and I wanted to go play soccer. But my mother was working, so we all helped.
I miss those times with all of the family around, especially the holidays. We lived in the city, and during the holidays people who live in the country come into the city. Everyone would be together. We’d roast a turkey, and my mother would make a salsa with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and garlic. Delicious! Things are different here. For the last two Christmases I was working, and I wasn’t able to be with the family. In El Salvador everyone has a day off at Christmas. I miss that.
I had to come here. I was working as a criminal prosecuting attorney in Metapán, the city where we lived. I loved this job, but it was very dangerous: I was shot at twice. The scariest time, though, was the day they followed my family. I knew I had to leave. When I talk to my friends back home, they tell me I made the right decision, because things are really bad right now. So here I am in the U.S., more relaxed, but a little bit tired.
I’m working two jobs as a cleaner. It’s not cleaning like taking the trash out; I think it’s more like maintenance work. I work in a condominium building. When someone needs to change a lightbulb, they call me and I go to change the lightbulb. If the carpet is dirty, I shampoo it. This is in the day. At night, it’s cleaning in a gym in Quincy. I like it there, because I’m alone and nobody bothers me. I’m also going to school. I want to study law and to become a lawyer in this country someday.
Things are better here for us. We have a better life. You have to work really hard, but if you want to buy a pair of shoes, you can. In my country, if you want shoes, maybe you have some money to buy them, but you won’t be able to go out to eat with your family for two weeks. So we have more opportunities here, but we’ve lost something, too. For Gabriela, I think she’s lost some of the freedom she had in El Salvador. There, she could go anywhere. We knew everyone, and we had lots of family around to watch her. Since she has come here, she has to stay in the apartment all the time. She wants to go out on her own, but she can’t. I think she is really frustrated.
In East Boston, we don’t have many friends. It’s hard to become friendly with people here. We haven’t even met many Hispanic families. Sometimes I think Americans are right when they think something is wrong with Hispanics. Some of them seem so angry to me. I don’t know why, but sometimes when one Hispanic person sees another, he’s not friendly, and it’s like they don’t trust each other. I don’t know what happens to people. Maybe they’ve forgotten their origins.
I want Gabriela to know the good things about our culture and to be proud of it. I’m going to try to bring her back home next September. Here, she spends a lot of time with my mother, especially when I’m working, and that is good. My mother likes to cook with her, and when they do that, I think she learns about Salvador. My mother will tell her about different ways to prepare things, like the quesadilla, the way she sometimes did in Salvador when she would make the cheese herself with the requesón, the curd. I think it’s important that they spend this time together.
I really want Gabriela to understand that the family is the most important of all things. Even if I can’t spend a lot of time with her now, I want to be a good example for her. I am a professional in my country. I want to become a professional in this country, too. I want her to look at her parents and think, oh, they are studying and they work hard. I need to do that, too. Now I don’t have the time to be with her a lot, so I’m glad she has my mother and my wife. Some things are hard, like mealtime. Now I don’t eat meals with my family, not breakfast, lunch, not dinner. I never have a day off, because I’m going to school and then I have to work. Someday, though, my dream is to have only one job, not two or three. What I really want is to have one job where I only work forty hours a week, not eighty. And someday, I’d really like to be able to leave Gabriela at her school in the morning and pick her up when she finishes in the afternoon. That would be nice.
Sweet Cake
Serves 8
Not to be confused with the Mexican dish of the same name, Salvadoran quesadilla is a sweet, rich cake made with cheese. It’s easy to prepare and is a great dessert to make with children. José’s family serves this with hot cocoa for breakfast or sometimes as an afternoon snack. It’s also delicious with coffee or tea.
1 cup heavy cream
½ cup ricotta cheese
1 large egg
¼ cup cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon freshly grated parmesan cheese
¾ cup sugar
½ cups harina de arroz (rice flour)*
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
Adjust the oven rack to center and preheat the oven to 350°F.
Mix the heavy cream, ricotta, egg, cream cheese, and parmesan in a large bowl until smooth. Add the sugar and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix the rice flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this to the cream mixture and mix just until the ingredients are incorporated. Spread it into a lightly greased 9-inch cake pan and sprinkle with the sesame seeds. Bake until the cake springs back when touched in the center, about 30 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes.
Can be served slightly warm or at room temperature.
*Found in the ethnic cooking sections of large supermarkets and in markets specializing in Caribbean and Latino products.
