Five steps in making Guatemalan chuchitos:
Masa (Dough): Mix corn flour with stock, shortening, and cheese for a soft dough.
Recado (Sauce/Filling): Cook and blend tomatoes, chilies (like guajillo), onion, garlic, and spices.
Meat: Cook shredded chicken or pork.
Assemble: Spread the dough on softened husks, add the filling, then fold and tie.
Steam: Steam the chuchito for 1.5 to 3 hours until cooked through. Make sure to watch to avoid the topping up of water.
Making chuchitos, specifically the Guatemalan one, is not that hard—but it is definitely one of the more tedious recipes out there. I guess that’s why it tastes like a bomb of flavors exploding in your mouth when you eat one!
Chuchitos was one of the foods that Carlos and his mom, Sandra, made for us when Fiona and I visited their apartment in Middletown for our third community partner meeting. At the beginning of my Global Engagement class, I was assigned to Carlos, and I was notified that he is a partner outside of Wesleyan. I was very excited to know that my partner wasn’t someone on campus, not because I don’t like being with one, but because I knew I needed to talk to someone outside of Wesleyan. Carlos was the perfect match.
Carlos grew up in Guatemala with his mom, Sandra, and two other sisters, and after a constant occurrence of gang violence in their hometown, he and his mom were granted refugee status in the U.S. They moved to Middletown last August 2024 and have been staying there since. Throughout the semester, we’ve shared stories of ourselves, made and ate each other’s “home” food, watched a film, and probably drank more than five cups of coffee from Perk on Main.
Chuchitos were particularly significant for me and my relationship with Carlos. Not only was it well-prepared and served to me, but it also reflects my time with him. If there’s one thing that I learned from this class, and especially with Carlos, it is that getting to know and learning from someone is a not-that-hard but completely tedious process, just like how you make chuchitos!
From learning Carlos’ background of him being a law student and paralegal in Guatemala, to his experience of moving to the U.S. and being away from his sisters who stayed in the country, to him sharing his FedEx job experience and how we resonated with this idea of “crab mentality” amongst our people, to us sharing food while watching Inglorious Bastards on Netflix, to us reflecting on the semester and our past meetings together—all of it were big pieces of our lives that we shared with each other. But there are also the small things: things like chocolate being Carlos’ favorite food, his love for mystery and somewhat strange films and books, his favorite coffee latte and brownies from Perk, or his story of losing his folder full of important documents when he arrived in the U.S. for the first time. These are all pieces of his life that I was privileged enough to know.
It was through these stories that I was able to understand him and dig deep into the context of him as an individual beyond my initial knowledge of him as a refugee (just how the anthropologist Geertz asks us to dig deep into the context and find the “thick description” of things). It was through these stories that I realized the privilege that comes with getting to know someone whom I would have never met if I wasn’t taking this class. It is also through these stories that I was reminded of my responsibility as an individual with access to a good liberal arts education to ensure that I use my power not just in my own pursuit of wisdom, but to use it to create and bridge communities.
Chuchitos is more than a Guatemalan staple; it’s a culturally and historically significant dish that marked the sacred relevance of corn for the native people of Mesoamerica. Corn-based dishes were a gift from the gods and a source of life, and what a privilege it is to be able to sit with Carlos, Sandra, and Fiona and eat such wonderful food. And just as the famous quote goes, “With power comes great responsibility,” there lies a question of how do we use our power to learn about the world around us and enact change? How am I using my power to create an impact?
