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SOUTH SALT LAKE — When she moved to Utah from El Salvador in 2000, Gladis Rodriguez had to quickly get up to speed on how to make pupusas, perhaps the most recognized food staple of the Central American nation.

Living in Logan at the time, she'd travel to a Salvadoran restaurant in Salt Lake City, about the only locale at the time offering Salvadoran food in Utah, to get her fix. But that sort of trip gets old fast. "I had to learn how to make pupusas at home to be able to eat them more regularly without having to travel," she said.

Twenty-four years later, with a larger Salvadoran community in the state, there are more locales offering pupusas. Rodriguez, though, is on a mission to spread the good word about pupusas, and the Salvadoran and Latino Community of Utah, a cultural group she leads, is hosting International Pupusa Day activities Saturday in South Salt Lake in homage to the food staple.

"Americans like hamburgers. For us, it's the pupusa that we really like," said Rodriguez, now in her third year organizing Pupusa Day activities.

Pupusas are akin to thick corn tortillas stuffed in the middle with beans, cheese, meat or other fillings and topped with curtido, a mix of shredded cabbage, red onions, carrots and vinegar.

Saturday's event, co-hosted by Pupuseria El Paraíso, a Salvadoran food truck, is an offshoot of National Pupusa Day in El Salvador, decreed in Salvadoran law as the second Sunday of every November. As Juan Garcia sees it, the planned activities here are about educating the public about El Salvador, a tiny nation that accounts for the third-largest bloc of Latinos in the United States after Mexico and Puerto Rico, according to the Pew Research Center. He's originally from El Salvador and operates Pupuseria El Paraíso.

"We're doing it to promote the culture of El Salvador," he said. "We're trying to represent our culture."

Activities on Saturday go from noon to 4 p.m. in a parking lot adjacent to Pupuseria El Paraíso at 2775 S. 300 West in South Salt Lake. They include a pupusa-eating contest, with the winner getting $100.

Around 7,000 people with Salvadoran roots live in Utah, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, though community members put the number at 13,000 to 20,000. El Salvador operates a consulate in Salt Lake City, one of only three nations along with Mexico and Peru with diplomatic offices in the state.

'The food that differentiates us'

The 2005 Salvadoran decree declaring the second Sunday of each November National Pupusa Day notes the "Salvadoran addiction for pupusas" and the many small Salvadoran businesses that produce them, helping "thousands of Salvadoran families" survive. "Pupusas are for Salvadorans what hamburgers are for Americans, what tacos are for Mexicans, what paella is for Spaniards," reads the decree.

In the Salvadoran city of Olocuilta, considered a mecca of sorts of pupusas, activities are planned on Saturday and Sunday to mark National Pupusa Day, according to the Salvadoran news website elsalvador.com. Among other things, this year's activities include creation of a pupusa measuring about 18 feet across, as has been done in prior years.

"It's the cultural food of El Salvador. That's why we celebrate Pupusa Day," Rodriguez said. "Mexico has the taco as their traditional food, we have the pupusa as the food that differentiates us."

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Tim Vandenack

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Tim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL.com. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.