Once Used for Chewing Gum : A Lost Art: Harvesting Chicle in Yucatan Jungles

The healed herringbone scars, crisscrossing high up the trunks of the tall sapodilla trees, are the diaries of the bold chicleros who slashed them with their machetes years ago.

Chicle--milky liquid latex--once trickled freely down the sluices hacked in the trees, collecting in canvas bags at the base. Boiled down and molded into rubbery gray blocks for export, it was the basic ingredient of chewing gum until a few years ago.

Chicleros , the rugged, resourceful men who risked their lives and endangered their health in their quest for the once-essential substance, have passed into the folklore of their verdant homeland.

They scrambled up the thick trunks of the sapodillas, leaned out on ropes tied around their waists 60 or 80 feet above the floor of the tropical rain forest and went about their dangerous work.

All too often, a careless machete stroke severed a rope and sent a chiclero plunging to his death.

For those who survived, staying alive and healthy in the jungles of Mexico’s southern Yucatan Peninsula, the Peten region of northern Guatemala and northern Belize was a relentless challenge.

They had to work during the rainy season, when the chicle was flowing. They slept in hammocks slung from makeshift shelters. They slogged through dense, dank vegetation filled with malarial mosquitoes, poisonous snakes and a species of fly that infected them with disfiguring “ chicleros ‘ ulcers,” which sometimes caused ears, noses and other extremities to fall off.

Probably nobody knows more about chicleros than Herman W. Konrad, an anthropologist at the University of Calgary, Canada. He has been doing research on them for more than a dozen years and has actually lived in their camps.

The growth of the chicle industry was related directly to the growth of the chewing-gum industry in the United States. Konrad traces its origins to the 1830s. Sales increased after the 1860s, and by the Gay ‘90s the sugary confection had become a national fad.

Konrad estimates the fluctuating chiclero workforce in Mexico, the major chicle producer, at 1,200 in 1890, surging to 20,000 in 1945, and tapering off to 1,600 in 1983.

“I’ve declared the industry moribund since 1980,” says Konrad. U.S. imports have ceased but small amounts of chicle are still used regionally or exported to a few other countries.

Joan Weber, consumer affairs administrator for the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. of Chicago, a leading gum manufacturer, explains the decline of chicle:

“Because of the encroachment of civilization in the rain forests of Central America, the difficulty and expense of harvesting chicle, and the discovery of other suitable natural and synthetic latexes, the importance of chicle in the chewing-gum industry has greatly diminished.”

So where does that leave the surviving chicleros ? Some apply their detailed knowledge of the tangled terrain to tamer endeavors, such as mahogany lumbering or the collection of exotic ferns for export to American florists. A few, as they always have, seek black-market riches from looted Maya artifacts.

The machete-swinging exploits of their chicle-gathering days live only in memory.