Yerba Mate - the hot drink that started a war

by Read Listen Learn


Paraguay, in the mid-1700s, was a curious society. The vast majority of the population were Guarani Indians. They lived in special communes organised by monks who had a special licence from the Pope in Rome. The monks had seen the way the Spanish (and the Portuguese in Brazil) treated the Indians: killing them, selling them as slaves, or just stealing their land. The monks, many of them also Spanish or Portuguese, had gone ahead of the white colonists and they had organised a way of life for the Indians that would allow them to resist both culturally and economically.

The economic life of these communes owed much to the ‘yerba mate’ plantations that the monks had carefully taught the Indians to set up and harvest. Yerba mate is, when fully grown, a tree with aromatic leaves. These leaves had been used by the Guarani and other Indians for generations before the Europeans arrived, but, since their arrival, demand had gone up. Before, the leaf gatherers had walked through the jungle looking for wild plants to harvest. Now, thanks to the monks, there was no walking to be done. And the plantation system increased production and quality. The wild leaf gatherers, across the River Plate, in Argentina and to the West, in Brazil looked with envy and hatred at the Guarani who were giving them such competition in the yerba mate market.

The Portuguese and Spanish colonists also envied the Guarani their yerba mate plantations and resented the politically powerful monks who protected them. Back in Rome, political wheels began to turn against the monks. The Pope changed his mind and took away the licence for the monks’ communes in Paraguay.

This was all that the waiting Spanish and Portuguese needed. They attacked the communes, killed many monks and many more Guarani. Others were taken as slaves. The yerba mate plantations fell into the hands of the attackers. Officially, the war had been about Church politics and rival factions within the Vatican but, in reality, it was the ‘yerba mate war’.

But, what is yerba mate? Well, in scientific terms, it’s ‘Ilex Paraguariensis’. More usefully, it’s a shrub or tree native to Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina in southern South America. Its caffeinated leaves are used to make an infusion or ‘tea’. The caffeine in the yerba mate leaves has a slightly different chemical composition than the caffeine found in tea or coffee so the effect is also a little different. Nonetheless, it is basically a stimulant and has an energising rather than a calming effect.

The early colonists in Latin America did not plant coffee or tea for the first couple of centuries and so, from the local Indians, they soon picked up the yerba mate habit. They also learned to drink it from a gourd just like the Indians, but they preferred a metal straw. They learned, too, that it is important to make the drink with very hot (90 – 95 degrees centigrade) but never boiling water. Yerba mate is already a very bitter drink and boiling water makes it too bitter for most people.

The dried gourds and metal straws are often beautifully decorated and even finished with silver; they are quite an art form. Yerba mate is a very sociable drink and, often, one gourd is shared between two or more people. However, the straws are a personal matter and, if only in the interests of hygiene, are not usually shared. Gourds and straws vary greatly in price with collectors paying thousands of dollars for the very old or very fine examples. You might see some of these gourds in the window of a specialist tea and coffee shop in your own city, along with the yerba mate itself.

But, yerba mate remains a South American passion. It has failed to win worldwide popularity like tea and coffee. There is one other region of the world where it is known and loved and they even grow it there. That is Syria and Lebanon, which might seem an unlikely connection until one remembers that Brazil and, especially, Argentina have large Syrian and Lebanese communities descended from immigrants who came there about one hundred years ago. Many travelled back on visits or to retire and they brought some yerba mate with them. Then, when it caught on, commercial imports began and even a few local plantations.

Yerba mate comes in different varieties, with different levels of bitterness and caffeine content. It can be dried over a wood fire to give a lightly smoky flavour or mixed with other leaves like mint or lemon. These days, Brazil is the biggest producer but Argentina is the biggest consumer.

As for the effects of yerba mate on human health, reports are rather mixed. It is quite certain that yerba mate drinkers suffer from a higher rate of mouth and throat cancer. In all fairness, this is not because of anything in the yerba mate. It is the culture of drinking it extremely hot through a hot metal straw and the habit of drinking it all day long – they just keep adding very hot water to the gourd.

There are some signs that yerba mate may help with weight control by helping to break up body fat but there is no credible scientific research to date and some have suggested that these claims are just an attempt to ‘cash in’ on the modern worries about health in general and obesity in particular. Further research is in progress and we should know more very soon.