Creighton University’s Latino Student Association will be making pupusas on Saturday in order to fundraise for upcoming projects.

For the past several weeks, the Creighton Latino Student Association had been selling pupusas, a traditional El Salvadoran dish, at $12 for a half dozen and $20 for a dozen. Orders were due on March 18.

“Pupusa is a popular El Salvadoran dish,” said Katherine Lopez, a member of CULSA. “It’s made of a thick, corn tortilla filled with anything from meats to cheeses to refried beans to pork rinds. It varies depending on the person.”

The pupusas being sold at Creighton are made of pork and cheese and are one of CULSA’s biggest fundraisers of the year. Last year, the association raised roughly $1,200.00 towards their various projects.

On March 25^th, Isrrael Garcia, another member of CULSA, and his family will be coming up from Wichita, Kansas, to make the pupusas. Because the dish can be time consuming, Garcia’s family will be preparing the meat, masa, salsa and curtido — a cabbage relish — before arriving in Omaha.  The dish will then be prepped here at Creighton.

“CULSA executives and members all come together in Becker Dining Hall and make them together,” said Joanna Perez, the secretary of CULSA. “It takes between 6-8 hours to make almost 600 pupusas.”

Perez also added that the day of preparation is filled with a lot of music, conversation and dancing. The distribution of the pupusas begins that night and will be finished within three days of production. 

The money raised from this event goes towards big events such as Las Mañanitas and the annual Hispanic Leadership conference in Chicago next year.

“Las Mañanitas is mainly a Mexican celebration of our Lady of Guadalupe,” said Jesus Yañez Ruiz, the president of CULSA. “La Virgen de Guadalupe, known here as the Virgin Mary, is celebrated Dec. 12 as that date is when Juan Diego encountered La Virgin in México and was asked to build a church.”

This year’s sales of pupusas have succeeded last year’s with roughly 1,086 orders this year.