Students and scholars of Latin America may be familiar with yerba mate, a caffeinated beverage usually served in a communal vessel with a straw. The origins of this practice – and of its very name – are less well known. South American Indigenous groups have long made an infusion from dried leaves known as caá (in Guaraní) or cȏgȏî (in Kaingang). When Spaniards and Jesuits witnessed this practice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they described the drink as yerba, meaning herb (even though it came from a tree) or Paraguayan tea. They referred to the communal gourd as mate, a word borrowed from either Quechua or Nahuatl. As Julia Sarreal explains near the beginning of her new history of yerba mate, ‘changing the name […] was a form of conquest’ (p. 10). ‘[T]he use of an Andean or Mesoamerican term instead of a Guaraní or Kaingang term highlights how yerba had moved beyond its region of origin to become a Spanish colonial good and a commodity’ (p. 13).
This etymological discussion epitomises Sarreal's innovative approach to commodity history. Her book incorporates methods and sources from fields that are rarely brought into conversation, especially Indigenous history, political economy and cultural studies, to analyse both production and consumption of this emblematic food crop. The resulting analysis is impressively wide-ranging, spanning the colonial and national periods and reflecting the author's expertise on both Argentina and Paraguay.
Sarreal's analysis of the colonial period draws on Jesuit accounts, Guaraní dictionaries and Spanish correspondence, and builds effectively on prior scholarship by Christine Folch, Juan Carlos Garavaglia and Thomas Whigham. By carefully reading colonial sources, Sarreal highlights the religious, medical and political significance of yerba for Indigenous people. European settlers and missionaries initially expressed distaste for the unfamiliar practice. Over the course of three centuries, however, yerba mate became a pervasive medicine and foodstuff, as well as an ‘improvised and informal tool of empire’ (p. 19). The Jesuits provided Guaraní converts with regular supplies of yerba and tried to dissociate its consumption from any religious connotations. As yerba spread to other Indigenous and non-Indigenous drinkers across South America, it constituted an important source of revenue and a form of currency.
As the book moves into the national period, Sarreal focuses on Argentina, while also considering connections to Paraguay and further afield. By analysing the slow development of yerba production in Argentina's north-eastern borderlands alongside changing ideas about consumption, Sarreal illuminates the contested process of nation-state formation. Over the course of the nineteenth century, as Argentina imported vast quantities of yerba from Paraguay and Brazil, the drink's cultural place in Argentina gradually shifted; what had once been a universal practice was associated with rural settings and lower classes (although still consumed in secret by the urban elite). When immigrants embraced the beverage, ‘they reshaped Argentinidad and made it more inclusive’ (p. 129). Total and per-capita consumption rose in the early twentieth century, and cultivation finally took off in Misiones Territory.
Readers may be surprised to learn that per-capita consumption declined in the late 1940s as Peronism empowered the working class. Sarreal's findings here resonate with other recent histories of Peronist consumption, highlighting the importance of upward mobility and modernity to Peronist rhetoric. She also discusses the activities of transnational corporations in Argentina and Paraguay, Argentina's protectionist policies, concerns over exploitative working conditions on plantations, and yerba mate's resurgence alongside Argentina's return to democracy and subsequent economic crises. Throughout, Sarreal shows resourcefulness and creativity in identifying sources, from government documents and statistics to advertisements and comic strips. Her example should inspire other historians of Argentina to make better use of archivos de redacción, thematic files of newspaper clippings, photographs and reference materials that were compiled by major newspapers.
The book is well written and well suited to teaching, either in its entirety or using selected chapters. It speaks to many important themes in Latin American historiography, from Spain's polycentric monarchy and Indigenous erasure to immigration and Peronist cultural politics. It also works well as an introduction to Argentina, because, as Sarreal concludes, it ‘exposes the deep and enduring tensions […] between the desire to be modern and “civilized”, and the desire for authenticity’ (p. 283). One hopes that it will inspire similar analyses linking the history of yerba mate and tereré (an iced version) to nation-state formation in Paraguay, Uruguay and perhaps even Brazil. Although Argentina now consumes, produces and exports more yerba mate than any other nation, the commodity has also played an important role in neighbouring countries’ economic and cultural trajectories.
While Sarreal does not have space to fully explore other national histories, she does contribute to an emerging transnational turn in Argentine historiography. In ‘Peripheral Interventions in Global History: Toward a History of Argentina outside of Argentina’ (Latin American Research Review, 58: 1 (2023), pp. 18−31), Juan Pablo Scarfi and Lisa Ubelaker Andrade argue that transnational histories of a ‘peripheral nation’ like Argentina ‘can articulate a global history of that nation’ while also enriching the broader historiography on globalisation. Sarreal's longue durée approach and her close engagement with Paraguayan history distinguish this book from many other recent transnational histories of Argentina, which tend to focus on post-1880 connections with Europe and/or the United States. Sarreal helps us understand the emergence of the Argentine nation in South American context, with colonial and national Paraguay playing important roles in the story. This example highlights the need for global history to consider regional as well as transregional processes.
