Did you know that the word ‘chicle’ has its origin in the Mayans? Learn the history of the gum tree

By Sergio Cedeno Amador*

Every time October arrives and I see the fabulous gum tree on the Cañas hacienda —commonly called chicozapote or medlar (manilkara zapota)— laden with fruit, I never miss an opportunity to caress it as one does a horse or a bull, and at the same time remember its ancient history.

This beautiful tree belongs to the family sapotaceae, the same for other fruits, such as star apple, mamey, canistel, cauje and lucuma.

It is an ancient tree and also sacred to the Mayans, since its origin is located in the south of Mexico, especially the state of Quintana Roo, where it still abounds, and in the Petén jungle, in Guatemala and Belize.

The Mayas had the custom of removing the latex from the trunk by making oblique incisions similar to those made today with the rubber or rubber tree. Then they boiled the liquid so that it turned into a gum that they called tzitcliwhere does the name of bubble gumand later they chewed it indefinitely to clean their mouths before the ceremonies and to alleviate thirst and hunger.

All this was observed by the American inventor Thomas Adams, who in 1860, adding sugar and flavorings to this gum, invented the famous Adams Chiclets.

Later, in 1898, William Wrigley became famous by adding mint to “chewing gum” and by sending four pieces of gum as a gift to 1,500,000 people in the United States, for which his photo appeared in the magazine Time October 1929.

During the First World War there was a notable boom in chewing gum due to the campaigns that said: “Chewing gum lowers blood pressure, alleviates thirst and hunger”, so much so that chewing gum was always included in the rations of the United States Army .

All the chewing gum at that time came from the millions of wild trees existing in Mexico, which made the chicleros famous, men who extracted the valuable material from the jungle.

Since the middle of the last century, competition from chewing gums based on petroleum derivatives has won the market over organic or natural chewing gums; but they are still extracting gum, and with great efforts, a few cooperatives in the last jungles of Mexico, in Campeche and Quintana Roo.

Each tree produces approximately 2 kg of gum; but, after its extraction, it cannot be extracted again until three years later, once the trunk wound heals.

Unfortunately, the gum fly also inhabits these forests, also called midges (Lutzomyia), which looks more like a mosquito and transmits a parasite that causes the leishmaniasis disease, which causes ulcers on the ears of chicleros. Therefore, some of them are missing a piece of ear.

And all this while here in Ecuador we enjoy eating the delicious fruits of the chicle tree, called medlars or chicozapotes, which are rich in fiber, antioxidants, vitamins A and C, and many minerals that are beneficial to human health.

* Member of the Academy of History of Ecuador.