continued from san juan del sur HOME

The People of San Juan del Sur: “Sanjuaneños”

By Kelvin Marshall
& Mayra Perez J.

Ramona mixes her dough, made with ground corn, forms each tortilla by hand (no press) and cooks them on a steel griddle over an open fire. On an average day Ramona makes 300 tortillas and on a good day as many as 400. She goes through about 35 pounds of ground corn per day and needs about 100 good sized pieces of slow burning, split firewood a week to keep the fire going.

30 years ago the ground corn she uses was 65 Córdoba’s for 100 pounds. The lack of rain last year pushed the price of corn up dramatically. She now pays 350 for the same size sack (1 quintal).

The small, 1.5 x 4 metre, smoky wooden structure has no signage. “Everyone knows where I am and what I make”.

Asked what she thought about the changes in San Juan and if it was good for her, she hands over a piping hot tortilla straight off the grill and replies: “Yes, the more the town grows, the more tortillas I can sell.”