Máte this… máte that… hmmm a glass of cold slightly sweetened máte with lemon on the beaches of Rio. But really, does anyone know what the true nature of the mysterious yerba mate plant is??

THE FACTS (from www.ushuaia.pl)

The plant, Ilex paraguariensis, was first scientifically classified by Swiss botanist Moses Bertoni, who settled in Paraguay in 1895.

The yerba mate plant is a shrub or small tree growing up to 15 meters tall. The leaves areevergreen, 7–11 cm long and 3–5.5 cm wide, with a serrated margin. The flowers are small, greenish-white, with four petals. The fruit is a red drupe 4–6 mm in diameter.

The plant needs at least 1500 mm of rainfall per year, an average monthly temperature between 15,5 and 28°C. It is able to survive short‑term temperature falls to -8°C.

It grows mainly on sandy-clayey and clayey-sandy soils, rich in phosphorus, potassium, iron, developed on permeable subsoil.

Almost 80% of the area of occurrence is located on the territory of Brazil, mainly in the following states: Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, and also: São Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul and Minas Gerais. Most of yerba mate leaves used for production in this country is harvested from wild growing trees. However in recent years the area under cultivation has been growing.

Natural area of máte cultivation

HISTORY (from www.miyerbamate.com)

The Guarani tale

There is an old Guarani Native American legend that relates the origins of the Guarani in the Forests of Paraguay. According to the legend, the ancestors of the Guarani at one time in the distant past crossed a great and spacious ocean from a far land to settle in the Americas. They found the land both wonderful yet full of dangers; through diligence and effort they subdued the land and inaugurated a new civilization.

The Guarani tribes worked the land and became excellent craftsmen. They looked forward to the coming of a tall, fair-skinned, blue eyed, bearded God (Pa’ i Shume) who, according to legend, descended from the skies and expressed his pleasure with the Guarani. He brought religious knowledge and imparted to them certain agricultural practices to be of benefit during times of drought and pestilence as well as on a day-to-day basis. Significantly, He unlocked the secrets of health and medicine and revealed the healing qualities of native plants. One of the most important of these secrets was how to harvest and prepare the leaves of the Yerba Mate tree. The Mate beverage was meant to ensure health, vitality and longevity.

A somewhat stereotyped, but authentic nonetheless, image of the Guarani

It was like this: the tribe would clear part of the forest, plant manioc and corn, but after four or five years the soil would be worn out and the tribe had to move on. Tired of such moving, an old Indian refused to go on and preferred to stay where he was. The youngest of his daughters, beautiful Jary, had her heart split: to go on with the tribe’s youths, or remain isolated, helping the old man until death would take him to Ivy-Marae’s peace. Despite her friends’ pleas, she ended up staying with her father.

This love gesture deserved a prize. One day, a unknown shaman arrived at the ranch and asked Jary what she wanted in order to feel happy. The girl did not ask anything. But the old man asked: “I want new forces to go on and take Jary to the tribe that went away”.

The shaman gave him a very green plant, perfumed with kindness, and told him to plant it, pick the leaves, dry them on fire, grind them, put the pieces in a gourd, add cold or hot water and sip the infusion. “In this new beverage, you will find an healthy company, even in the sad hours of the cruelest solitude.” After which he went away.

Sipping the green sap, the old man recovered, gained new strengths and was able to resume their long journey toward meeting their kinsmen. They were received with the greatest joy. And the whole tribe adopted the habit of drinking the green herb, bitter and sweet, which gave strength and courage and would comfort friendships at the sad hours of utmost solitude. Mate became the most common ingredient in household cures of the Guarani, and remains so to this day.

The Jesuits: blessing or curse for the Guarani?

COLONIALISM AND MATE

(excerpts from Ross W. Jamieson’s The Essence of Commodification: Caffeine dependencies in the early modern world. Journal of Social History, Winter 2001)

Initial Spanish colonization of the Parana-Paraguay system was tied closely to Jesuit missionization efforts. Jesuit policy encouraged large-scale plantation agriculture on the seventeenth century South American missions, as a method of using indigenous labor to produce marketable commodities, and make the missions both self-sufficient and profitable. The Jesuits realized the great economic potential of yerba mate, and from the 1650s to 1670s successfully founded yerba mate plantations at their missions.

[When the Jesuits] were expelled from all Spanish dominions their missions on the Parana-Paraguay were abandoned. This caused huge changes in yerba mate production, as the missions were transferred into royal and private hands. Massive exploitation and near-slavery of the local Guarani population led to their abandonment of the missions, and the temporary end of yerba mate as a plantation crop.

By the 1770s yerba mate was a popular social drink throughout the Andes, served at all hours of the day. The tea (or yerba) was traditionally drunk from a gourd (or mate), sipped through a straw known as a bombilla.

Developed as a plantation crop by the Jesuits to supply a South American market, it reverted to a system of commercial harvesting of wild plants after the Jesuit expulsion. The difficult transplantation of the wild plants meant that domestic plantations were not easily founded, and the wild plant harvest remained important for much of the commercial history of yerba mate. This situation continued until the 1890s, when large yerba mate plantations were successfully developed in the southern Mato Grosso [Brazil] to serve the modern regional market.

The Marvelous City: Rio de Janeiro!

MODERN BRAZIL AND MATE

In Rio de Janeiro, iced máte evolved into the city’s beverage. In the 1930’s, mate vendors began toasting the dried mate leaves and selling the brew as a cold beverage in soccer stadiums. Today the mate sellers on the beaches of Rio are a municipal icon. Gringos drink beer on the beach, Cariocas (Rio residents) drink mate!

Now, Southern Brazil has become the world’s largest producer of yerba máte, and máte bars and beach vendors are as ubiquitous in Rio as Starbucks is in North America.

As the demand for mate increases worldwide, wild harvesting and small, organic family-run farms ensure that mate cultivation remains ecologically sound while providing a sustainable source of income.

And so the stories go… get on board with the mate movement and reach for that Rio Máte !!