History of yerba mate

(in picture) are known to have consumed yerba mate before the Spanish conquest of Paraguay Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Guaraní people, indigenous to the area of natural distribution of the plant, are known to have consumed yerba mate at least for medicinal purposes. Remnants of yerba mate have also been found in a Quechua tomb near Lima, Peru and has therefore been suggested to have been associated with prestige. By 1596 the consumption of mate as a beverage had become so common in Paraguay that a member of the cabildo of Asunción wrote to governor of Río de la Plata Hernando Arias de Saavedra: :"the vice and bad habit of drinking yerba has spread so much among the Spaniards, their women and children, that unlike the Indians that are content to drink it once a day they drink it continuously and those who do not drink it are very rare." The same author of the letter went on to claim that Spanish settlers sold their clothing, weapons and horses or fell into debt to obtain yerba mate. ==Spread across South America (1600–1650)==

In early 17th century, yerba mate had become the chief export of the Guaraní territories, above sugar, wine and tobacco, which had previously dominated. The Governor of Río de la Plata, Hernando Arias de Saavedra, turned in the beginning of the 17th century against the burgeoning mate industry due to beliefs that it was an unhealthy bad habit and that too much of the Indian workforce was consumed in it. He ordered to end the production in the governorate and at the same time sought approval from the Spanish Crown, which rejected the ban, as did also the people involved in production who never complied with the order. although the Jesuits domesticated it first in the mid 17th century. Up to 1676, during the rise of the industry, the main production centre of yerba mate was the Indian town of Maracayú northeast of Asunción. In Maracayú, amid forests rich in yerba mate, settlers from Asunción dominated production. Maracayú came however to be the place of long-standing conflict when settlers from the towns of Villa Rica del Espíritu Santo and Ciudad Real del Guayrá begun to move into the Maracayú area that the old settlers regarded as theirs. In the 1630 the conflict escalated when settlers from Villa Rica and Ciudad Real del Guayrá and the Jesuit missions of Guairá had to flee over to the Maracayú area due to attacks from Portuguese settlers from São Paulo. In the Maracayú area the new settlers made mate their main income source sparking a conflict with the settlers of Asunción which only ended in 1676 when the Portuguese settlers made another push making Maracayú a rather exposed borderland zone. The settlers of Maracaýu relocated to the south forming the modern city of Villarrica and transformed their new lands into the new centre of the mate industry. The conflict between the old and the new settlers in Maracayú coincided with the spread of consumption of mate beyond the colony of Paraguay, first to the trade hub of Río de la Plata and from there to Upper Peru (Bolivia), Lower Peru, Ecuador and Chile, Once trade networks were established mate arrived overland to Chile and from Valparaíso small quantities were exported north to the ports of El Callao, Guayaquil and Panama. The shift southward to Villarrica of the production led Asunción to lose position as the sole hub of export downstream to Santa Fe and Buenos Aires. When production was centred in Maracayú transport down Paraná River was difficult and therefore the yerba was bought through Jejuy River to Asunción on Paraguay River which was navigable all the way down to Río de la Plata. The local government of Asunción tried unsuccessfully to have all mate produced north of Tebicuary River to pass through the city, but the Villarrica settlers, as well as the Spanish Crown, largely ignored the complaints of the Asunción government. ==Jesuit era and domestication (1650–1767)==

The Jesuits began in the late 16th century to establish a series of reduction settlements in the lands of the Guaraní people to convert them to Catholicism. The Jesuit missions had a high degree of autarky but needed coins to pay taxes and acquire products they could not produce. In 1645 the Jesuits had successfully requested the Spanish Crown to be allowed to produce and export yerba mate. These privileges caused a conflict with the Paraguayan cities of Asunción and Villarrica that accused the Jesuits of flooding the Platine market with cheap yerba mate, and led to the imposition of limits for the Jesuit exports, which they nevertheless exceeded, so that at the time of the expulsion of the Order they exported four times the amount they were legally allowed. == Expansion (1767–1870)==

, a 19th-century ruler of Paraguay, with a mate and bombilla women of the Argentine Pampas drinking mate. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1767 the production and importance of mate-producing regions which had been dominated by Jesuits began to decline. After independence, Paraguay was to lose its pre-eminence as top producer to Brazil and Argentina, although Argentina went into a mate crisis. At independence, Argentina inherited both the largest mate-consuming population in the world as well as Misiones Province where most of the Jesuit missions had been and where the industry was in decay. The decline of production in Argentina relative to the constant increase in demand lead Argentina in the mid-19th century to depend heavily on its neighbors for supply. Yerba mate came to be imported to Argentina from the Paraná highlands in Brazil. This yerba mate was labelled Paranaguá after its shipping port. In Paraguay, yerba mate continued to be a major cash crop after independence but the foci of industry shifted away from the mixed plantations and wild stands of Villarrica, north to Concepción in late colonial times and then by 1863 to San Pedro. During the rule of Carlos Antonio López (1844–1862), the yerba mate business was managed by the military commanders of the district, who could harvest yerba mate as a state enterprise or give concessions. The onset of the Paraguayan War (1864–1870) caused a sharp drop in the harvesting of yerba mate in Paraguay, estimated at 95% between 1865 and 1867, caused by enrolment. Despite a relative decline the social importance of mate was enough in the port city of Coquimbo for a stylistically distinct type of mate cup known as mate coquimbano to emerge in the early 19th century. Aspects of the Mate coquimbano style were diffused in the neighboring Andean region of Argentina. Yerba mate was widely consumed among in the cold and montanious areas of Chile, as well as in the south of the country. Indeed, yerba mate was one of the basic supplies to be found in the mountain shelters established in the 1760s as part of the Trans-Andean postal system. ==Industrialization and spread to the Levant (1870–1950)==

of Patagonia drinking mate while the meat of the asado is roasting, 1895 attracted considerable European immigration. With the devastation of Paraguay and insignificant Argentine production, by the end of the 19th century, Brazil became the leading producer of yerba mate. In the 1930s Brazil changed from mate to coffee production, as it gave more income, leaving the resurrected Argentine industry as the biggest producer, ==References==