The history of chicle has been largely ignored in the formal academic literature on Mexico and Central America. The absence of research into an international commodity of vital importance to the United States, as well as to Mexico, is in stark contrast with the celebrated literature on henequen (sisal) in Yucatan. The story of chicle in Mexico is also in marked contrast to the celebration of chewing gum in the popular culture of the United States. Chicle, the raw material from which chewing gum was derived, came from the resin of the chicozapote tree, which grew in the high forests of the Yucatan Peninsula and Central America. This paper reviews recent thinking on producer-consumer relations and highlights the changing boundaries between local and metropolitan cultures, and the processes through which consumer cultures have become globalised, leaving the marginalized producers in the “shadow-lands”.
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