Sopa de Pata

Rafa invited me last Sunday to join him and his cousin Rafael at the birthday party of one of his good friends, Sampoña, in San Marcos, a town bordering San Salvador. It was a raucous, musical and joyful occasion.

Soon after arriving we were served sopa de pata, or “foot soup”. Sopa de pata was like a cousin of the pilgrims’ “stone soup”, where pretty much everything gets thrown in to the mix: yucca (a tuber), plantains, potatoes, veggies and lots of spices. Of course, the principal ingredient is “la pata”, or the foot of a cow, (I looked up the recipe online and the first ingredient was “two whole feet”) with a healthy dosage of tripe as well. Throw in a little hot pepper and some lime and it was delicious. The soup was accompanied by plenty of Pilsener beer.

Rafael, Sampoña and Rafa

 

Sampoña and me

Sampoña’s real name is Francisco, but his nickname is the name of an Andean pan flute. He earned this moniker because of his work with indigenous peoples, and because of his many musical talents, including playing the sampoña. In fact, his entire family seemed to be musically inclined, and live music permeated the air of the party for hours on end. People swapped guitars, flutes and other instruments, and joined in with full-throated choruses. The family even had what I would call the El El Salvadoran equivalent of Tony Bennett – a cousin of Sampoña and a real crooner. The music varied from traditional El Salvadoran music, to American rock to protest songs of the El Salvadoran revolution.

The rule in the house seemed to be that everyone should share their talents, so when I told Sampoña that I sing he insisted that I join in. We tried to find some songs that everyone had in common – a couple of Beatles songs, Hotel California, and a couple others, but we couldn’t find one that everyone knew the words to. But eventually Rafa, Rafael, Sampoña and I did a set of Pearl Jam songs. It was pretty much lost on the older generation, but the younger crowd really appreciated the renditions of “Alive”, “Jeremy”, and “Daughter”.

Later, when the rain forced the party inside, the festival of music continued:

When Rafa, Rafael and I finally took our leave, the guys took me up to a hot spot on a ridge overlooking San Marcos and San Salvador. There were bars, restaurants, and shops with knick-knacks for sale. We settled down into a bar and had a round of pupusas, which are one of God’s greatest culinary gifts to man.

Humble looking, but ooh so good

I had had pupusas before in Washington, DC – easy to find on many a street corner due to DC’s substantial Salvadoran population – but nothing like this. Like the ones my host mother makes these tortillas stuffed with beans, cheese, veggies and other possible ingredients just ooze with flavor. Add a little salsa and some spicy veggie garnish, and they are hard to beat. Oh, not to mention that they cost just $0.25.

We talked politics and economics – to my great appreciation perhaps the most popular topic of conversation in El Salvador – while overlooking the city. Of note, the mountain we were looking out over was the base of the FMLN’s final attack on San Salvador, which led to the peace accords in 1992. The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the former leftist resistance group which fought against the El Salvadoran government from the late ‘70s to early ‘90s. It became an opposition political party in 1992 after peace accords, and is one of the world’s most successful examples of an armed opposition group turned political party. They laid down their arms and have used politics to advocate for their constituencies for the past 17 years. Reaching outside of their party to select a candidate, the FMLN now has their first favorable candidate in Mauricio Funes, who seems to pretty popular across the board with over 70% approval ratings (though he just took office in June). As I mentioned, politics is a huge topic of conversation here. At the same time, it is like an onion with a lot of layers to peel off. More on politics in future posts.