Title: Chicle
First published: 2009
Description: From the Publisher: 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.
Subjects: Social aspects of Chewing gum, Social aspects, Chewing gum industry, Industrial applications, Chicle, Chewing gum, Sapodilla, History, Candy, United states, social life and customs, Mexico, social life and customs
Places: America, Central America, Mexico, United States
LC classification: SB291.S3 M38 2009