Chicle: The Chewing Gum of the Americas, from the Ancient Maya to William WrigleyAlthough 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 ÒbiographiesÓ 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 ÒextractorsÓ who often work by themselves tapping trees deep in the forests, and how they have emerged as icons of local pop cultureÑportrayed 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Botany of the Sapodilla Tree | 19 |
The History of the Chewing Gum Industry in the Americas | 36 |
The Chicleros | 72 |
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Common terms and phrases
Achras sapota Alcorn American Chicle Company ancient Maya Anon archaeological Aztec bark Barrera de Jorgenson bats Beech-Nut Belize Bernardino de Sahagún bitumen Bonampak Botanical Brooklyn Campeche century Chadha chew chicle chewing gum chewing gum companies chewing gum industry Chiapas chicle camps chicle extraction chicle industry chicle latex chicle-based chicleros cooking copal courtesy of Macduff cultivars culture Dibble and Anderson exportation Fleer flowers forest grafting Guatemala gum base gum industry gum manufacturing Hanighen harvesting Hendrickson henequen insects jungle Karling Konrad Kute and Shete Landon latex Lundell Macduff Everton Manilkara zapota Mathews and Lizama-Rogers Mesoamerican Mexico Mickelbart natural Peissel percent personal communication Petén Photograph courtesy plant pollen production Quintana Roo Redclift Research resin rubber Sahagún Santa Anna sapodilla fruit sapodilla tree sapodilla wood Saponins sapota Scheina Schwartz seedlings seeds species spruce gum tapped Tikal Topps tropical United Washington Post William Wrigley Jr workers Yucatán Peninsula