A DIVERSITY OF THANKS : Salvadorans Put Their Own Stamp on Day

A handwritten sign on the door of Napoleon and Ester Villalta’s Salvadoran restaurant in Pacoima captures an awkward fusion of two disparate cultures: “Aviso--Costa Del Sol estara cerrado Nov. 25, El Dia de Turkey.” It means, “Notice: The Sun Coast restaurant will be closed Nov. 25, Turkey Day.”

What may have begun as a feast by English Puritans now is a fiesta for immigrant Salvadorans, who have settled in the San Fernando Valley in droves. More than 10% of the Valley’s burgeoning Latino population--which reached 392,898 in 1990--hails from El Salvador, according to U. S. census statistics.

Many came to escape the mind-numbing political violence that decimated the small Central American nation in the 1980s, and continues sporadically today. Still others came in search of opportunities.

“I was filled with illusions about a better life,” said the 55-year-old Villalta, who worked in factories and kitchens in San Salvador, the capital, before coming to Los Angeles in 1980.

It was a year before Villalta celebrated Thanksgiving, he said. He and Ester, his fiancee at the time, had been living with one of his cousins, sleeping under a kitchen table, shortly after their arrival. Their life was too meager and miserable for him to give much notice to Thanksgiving, let alone put on a feast, he said.

Nowadays, however, the restaurateur who once worked in some of El Salvador’s finest hotel dining rooms cooks a Thanksgiving turkey at home in an unusual style surrounded by typical dishes from his native land.

Villalta will serve “drunk turkey,” a dish patterned after his restaurant’s “drunk chicken.” He prepares it with beer and dry white wine, he says. Like most cooks, Villalta will reveal little else of the recipe.

Along with the turkey will be such typical Salvadoran dishes as pupusas, corn-flour pancakes filled with cheese, beans or meat and served with a spicy salad similar to cole slaw. Villalta also will serve yucca with pork, and atol, a corn-based drink that dates from pre-Hispanic times.

“Ninety percent, I would say, celebrate Thanksgiving,” Villalta said of Salvadorans. “Because no one works anywhere; everything is closed. And in all the factories around here, they get free turkeys.”

Villalta once was among those factory workers. He worked his way through several factory jobs before saving enough money to help open a neon-sign plant. He later sold his share to buy the restaurant.

“The factory took up too much time,” said Villalta. “In three years, I only saw my two children once during the day. When I saw them, I would see them sleeping. This gives me more time.”

Villalta admits he was lucky to have left El Salvador before the country experienced its worst violence during a 10-year civil war. He also feels fortunate to have marketable skills. Not everyone has had the same experience. For many Salvadorans, Thanksgiving will consist of a donated turkey or something less fancy.

Ester Leonor Zamora, a 29-year-old waitress at the restaurant who fled El Salvador three years ago, said she will prepare a holiday dish of chicken or maybe a turkey and bread dish, pan con pavo . And while eating with her husband and three sons, she will think about the family members she left behind in a country still torn by violence.

Thanksgiving is “not that special, really, for us,” she said. “I feel sad. I want to be with my family, but I can’t.”