Like coffee or tea, yerba mate is one of the world's most beloved caffeinated beverages. Once dubbed a "devil's drink" by Spanish missionaries in South America only to be later hailed by capitalists and politicians as "green gold," it has a long and storied history. And no country consumes and celebrates yerba mate quite like Argentina.
Yerba Mate is the first book to explore the extraordinary history of this iconic beverage in Argentina from the precolonial period to the present. From yerba mate's Indigenous origins to its ubiquity during the colonial era, from its association with rural people and the poor in the late nineteenth century to its resurgence in the last years of the twentieth century, Julia Sarreal meticulously documents yerba mate's consumption, production, and cultural importance over time. Yerba Mate is the definitive history of this popular beverage and social practice, and it tells a fascinating story about race, culture, and how a drink helped forge the national identity of one of the world's most dynamic countries.
Yerba Mate The Drink That Shaped a Nation
About the Book
Reviews
"This book is unique: the first ever on the deep history of yerba mate, the Indigenous stimulant tea of South America whose significance has only grown over time. The book takes on mate, now the crucial marker of modern Argentine national identity, as a remarkably changeable cultural, political, and social commodity. Julia Sarreal's story here is as delightful and stimulating as a warm infusion of mate itself."—Paul Gootenberg, general editor of The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History"A long-awaited work and a true tour de force through five centuries of the history of yerba mate. At the intersection of economic, social, and cultural history, this book will be required reading for those who research food, commodities, and labor from a historical perspective. "—Valeria Manzano, Universidad Nacional de San Martín - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina
"Sarreal’s exhaustively researched book narrates Argentina's economic and cultural history through its fluctuating relationship with a single, fascinating commodity. By exploring the persistence of mate drinking—an Indigenous custom—in a country that has often emphasized its connections to European modernity, she illuminates the conflicts that have shaped the nation."—Matthew B. Karush, author of Musicians in Transit: Argentina and the Globalization of Popular Music
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 • From Indigenous Staple to Colonial Commodity
2 • Tool of Empire
3 • Borderland Production and the Struggle to Form an Argentine Nation
4 • Gaucho Mythology and the Drink of the New Argentines
5 • Profits and Nationalism: The Rise of Green Gold in Argentina’s Belle Epoque
6 • Yerba Regulation, Nationalism, and the Fall of Laissez-Faire Ideology
7 • Yerba Workers as a Symbol of Capitalist Exploitation
8 • Modernity, Mass Politics, and Mate’s Decline
9 • The Rebirth of Mate with Democracy, Economic Crisis, and Globalization
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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