The tradition of Yerba Mate

I see a lot of talk on the web about legends and myths about yerba maté and what it means to the people that drink it. How have they come up with a single narrative for a product that is the drink of choice of Chilean fishermen, Brazilian farmers, Argentine bankers, and Paraguayan indigenous groups?

a farmer resting between lines of just sprouted beans he is hoeing

a señora taking a break between chores

relatively affluent teenagers drink a mid-day tereré to beat the heat between classes

Yerba has been consumed since prehistory, originally by the Tupi-Guaraní peoples of the Atlantic Rainforest. Yerba was traded over vast distances, crossing forbidding territory to enter the distribution system of the Incan Empire (the maté, is derived from the Quechua word mati, meaning gourd). The leaf was chewed or dried by hand over an open flame, aged, and ground in a wooden pestle. It was consumed out of a gourd with a bamboo and fiber straw. The semi-nomadic Tupi-Guaraní occasionally packed up to leave, prepared corn kernels, beans, mandioca cuttings, and other seeds and set out for more fertile land, knowing that with their intimate knowledge of the forest, they would locate more native wild yerba trees. They even used over 50 forest plants to create an Ayurveda-like system of medicine known as Pohã.

a spread of the medicinal herbs available in almost any plaza in the cities of Paraguay

Then the Spanish arrived. In Jesuit missions, the labor of converted Guaraní indians was utilized to industrialize and export the leaf as it became a basic staple in the growing port of Buenos Aires. In the 19th and 20th centuries, German immigration to Southern Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina brought another increase in efficiency. Today, most factories are largely automated, a labyrinth of conveyor belts and electric motors accompanied by a few people. The leaf is consumed out of leather wrapped gourds, carved wooden cups, metal mugs and even hollowed out cow horns.

a variety of different cups for drinking both mate (hot) and tereré (cold)

The one uniting feature is the bombilla, the metal filter straw. A Brazilian will mix fruit juice with his yerba, an Argentine some mint leaves or chamomile. A Paraguayan will put any number of plants into their yerba from native all-stars like lemon verbena and stevia (sweet leaf), to roots, barks, vines, and weeds from what is left of the forest.

Yes, yerba is rich in tradition. But it is this way because it is constantly evolving and synthesizing its own tradition. So rather than try and drink yerba like a forest dweller or a Carioca (Rio de Janeiro dweller), drink the leaf for the sake of yourself and figure out what it means to you and noone else.