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The Chewing Gum of the Americas, From the Ancient Maya to William Wrigley
University of Arizona Press
June 2009
On Sale: June 15, 2009
142 pages
ISBN: 0816528217
EAN: 9780816528219
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
Although Juicy Fruit® gum was introduced to North Americans
in 1893, Native Americans in Mesoamerica were chewing gum
thousands of years earlier. And although in the last
decade “biographies” have been devoted to salt, spices,
chocolate, coffee, and other staples of modern life, until
now there has never been a full history of chewing gum. Chicle is a history in four acts, all of them focused on
the sticky white substance that seeps from the sapodilla
tree when its bark is cut. First, Jennifer Mathews recounts
the story of chicle and its earliest-known adherents, the
Maya and Aztecs. Second, with the assistance of botanist
Gillian Schultz, Mathews examines the sapodilla tree
itself, an extraordinarily hardy plant that is native only
to Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. Third, Mathews presents
the fascinating story of the chicle and chewing gum
industry over the last hundred plus years, a tale (like so
many twentieth-century tales) of greed, growth, and
collapse. In closing, Mathews considers the plight of the
chicleros, the “extractors” who often work by themselves
tapping trees deep in the forests, and how they have
emerged as icons of local pop culture—portrayed as
fearless, hard-drinking brawlers, people to be respected as
well as feared. Before Dentyne® and Chiclets®, before bubble gum comic
strips and the Doublemint® twins, there was gum, oozing
from jungle trees like melting candle wax under the slash
of a machete. Chicle tells us everything that happened
next. It is a spellbinding story.
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