Yerba Mate: Argentina's Conversation Beverage

  “Mate is exactly the opposite of television. It makes you talk if you’re with someone and think when you’re alone. When someone comes to your house, the first thing you say is ‘hi’ followed by ‘should we drink a few mates?’

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

 By Sabrina Hernández

Yerba Mate, an infusion beverage touted as having the strength of coffee, the health benefits of tea, and the euphoria of chocolate, is a drink ubiquitous in Argentina and as of late, embroiled in controversy because of the labor law violations in the almost slave-like conditions workers are subjected to in its harvest and production. An article in the Oct. 7 edition of NotiSur drew new attention to labor law violations in Argentina and to the persistence of child labor in almost slave-like conditions, especially in rural areas.

The labor violations resonate with Argentine citizens in a way that other similar situations have not. This is perhaps because these violations are centered around yerba mate. It is important to understand that yerba mate is an inextricable part of Argentine culture.

Yerba mate and the gourds they are served in are as quintessentially Argentinian as soccer, gauchos, flamenco, and Pope Francis. Mate consumption is Argentina’s favorite pastime and is a social tradition that foments togetherness through the custom where a a group of people enjoy the same mate cup and filtered straw. The deeply entrenched aversion to “cooties” and thus, straw sharing, would inhibit this practice here in the United States.

Photo:  Sabrina Hernández

Yerba mate at a Mexican hostel
My own travel experiences have confirmed that Argentines are never being too far from their mate. Just this last April, I checked into a hostel in Puebla, Mexico, and upon arriving I was shown to my room where a woman was seated on the couch in the common area. She had in front of her a mate cup and straw. Without knowing anything about her, I made a very low risk gamble and began conversation by asking if she was from Argentina. “How did you know?” she responded, her genuine curiosity apparent. I told her that it was by her mate, of course, to which she smiled and asked if I wanted to share her mate.

Another example of the importance of yerba mate is the 2011 critically acclaimed Argentine drama film "Las Acacias" directed by Pablo Giorgelli.The film follows a lonely Argentine truck driver named Rubén,who has been taking the motorway from Asunción, Paraguay, to Buenos Aires, Argentina for years, carrying wood. Even though the movie focuses on the relationship between the trucker and a passenger, yerba mate becomes a powerful symbol. Throughout the film, the viewer sees Rubén sipping the mate, which he is able to prepare quickly with the water he keeps in a large thermos. In a film that accentuates the loneliness of Ruben’s daily life, his mate is personified as the only reprieve from his solitude.

 In a 2005 Radio Mitre interview, Lalo Mir captured the cultural significance of mate. “Mate is exactly the opposite of television. It makes you talk if you’re with someone and think when you’re alone. When someone comes to your house, the first thing you say is ‘hi’ followed by ‘should we drink a few mates?’ Keyboards in Argentina are full of little pieces of yerba mate. Mate is the only thing that every house has all the time. Always. Amidst inflation, when there´s hunger, under a military regime, with democracy, during whichever of our eternal curses we are suffering. If one day you run out of yerba mate, a neighbor will give you some. Nobody is ever denied mate.”

The campaign against child labor
It is this prominence and importance of mate that caused these labor violations to strike a chord among Argentines. An NGO, Un Sueño Para Misiones, is working to raise visibility and pressure the Argentine government to take action against the labor violations that are occurring in the harvesting of Argentina’s culturally ubiquitous yerba mate in Misiones. Here is a 30-minute documentary about the work of the NGO to combat child labor in the yerba mate fields.  The documentary is  entitled “Me Gusta el Mate Sin Trabajo Infantil. (I like it Without Child Labor)."

Should a 10-Year-Old Child Be Allowed to Work?

There are 13 million (8.8%) of children in child labour in Latin America and the Caribbean -International Labour Organzation's latest report on Child Labor

Child labor already exists, and it is difficult to fight against it. Rather than crack down on it, we want to guarantee children’s labor security so that, step by step, we can eradicate [child labor] in the next five years. For that reason the law includes necessary safeguards in labor, health, and education rights. -Bolivian Sen. Adolfo Mendoza.

Image for ILO's Football Resource Kit

On July 17, 2014, the Bolivian Congress approved the Código Niño, Niña Adolescente, which lowers the minimum age at which children can work—to 10. The governing Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) defended the decision by saying it reflects what for "innumerable" families is simply a fact of life.

Is this a pragmatic decision or does it further entrench a practice that the global community believes is unacceptable?


The Bolivian Congress believes that children are having to work by necessity, and that any prohibition against having children as young 10 years old participate in the workplace would be counterproductive, particularly when this practice has taken place for generations. The legislation recognizes that low-income Bolivian children will and must work. And if this is going to happen, they have to have protections.

While the arguments of Bolivian legislators and President Evo Morales might merit strong consideration, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) believe that the standards were set for a reason: to provide a framework to eradicate the practice of child labor. "One of the most effective methods of ensuring that children do not start working too young is to set the age at which children can legally be employed or otherwise work," the ILO says in a report on conventions and recommendations on child labor. Read more about this issue from Andrés Gaudín in this week's edition of NotiSur,

Here is the ILO's latest report on recent child labor trends.  Here is the ILO's Football Resource Kit on using football (soccer)  in child labor elimination and prevention projects.  And here is what UNICEF says about child labor.

Also in LADB this week...
Other Issues involving Youth and Children
If you have been following the ongoing coverage of the surge in the number of unaccompanied minors fleeing from Central America to the US, Ben Witte-Lebhar offers us the perspective from El Salvador in  this week's edition of NotiCen.

In NotiSur, we look at youth from a totally different perspective. Greg Scruggs tells us why Brazil's newest potential voters, those aged 16 and 17, have chosen not to register to vote in record numbers.

Health-Related Matters
We also covered children from a broader-health related perspective in this week's newsletters.  In NotiCen, Louisa Reynolds examined how Latin American countries are dealing with the problem of obesity in a region where (according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO)  23% of the adult population and 7% of preschoolers are overweight or obese.

In SourceMex, we wrote how a chemical spill into the Sonora River forced environmental and health authorities to declare an environmental emergency in seven cities. 

International Hero or Corrupt Fugitive?
Our other article in SourceMex reported on the latest effort to bring fugitive miners' union leader Napoleón Gómez Urrutia back to Mexico. There are two sides to Gómez Urrutia.  Even though he has been accused of embezzling US$55 million from the union, he has been reelected as secretary general on numerous times. And international labor organizations have given him awards for his efforts to shine the light on corporate greed and inadequate safety standards for miners in Mexico.

-Carlos Navarro

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Escaping Crime and Gang Violence

 "More often than not, their neighborhood has become so dangerous or they have been so seriously threatened, that to stay is to wait for their own death or great harm to their family. Their neighborhoods are full of gangs. Their schools are full of gangs. They do not want to join for moral and political reasons and thus see no future,  -Elizabeth Kennedy, author of a study on Central American minors emigrating to the U.S.

Casa de Belen Posada del Migrante, Saltillo, Coahila (Photo by Chuy Mendez Garza via Wilkimedia Commons

Immigration (or emigration) is an important theme in three of the articles in our newsletters this week. The airwaves, the front pages of daily newspapers, and popular Internet sites in the United States and elsewhere have been filled with images of minors who have been caught after crossing into Texas. According to the White House, a record number of unaccompanied minors (more than 52,000 in the first five months of the year) were detained in U.S. border communities.

There are many factors prompting the young people to make the long and treacherous journey from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala through Mexico to seek a better life in the U.S. Economics and a desire to reunite with relatives (many times parents) certainly play a significant role in that "better life," but the children and teens are also seeking to escape out-of-control violence and crime that has ravaged their communities. Elizabeth Kennedy, a researcher at San Diego State University and University of California Santa Barbara, tells us more in a study entitled "Refugees from Central American gangs."

We covered the topic in SourceMex, weaving in the point of view of Mexican authorities and non-governmental organizations,  We also discussed a summit on the crisis in Guatemala City that included Presidents Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala and Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador, US Vice President Joe Biden, Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, and Honduran Government Coordinator Jorge Ramón Hernández Alcerro. Read More

A second article in SourceMex reported on an increase in remittances sent by Mexican expatriates to relatives back home during the first quarter of 2014. This is despite adverse economic conditions during that period in the country where most expatriates reside: the US. 

Map of Hatian migrants in Dominican Republic (Wikimedia Commons)

In NotiCen, we covered the new plan by the Dominican Republic to regularize the migratory status of "illegal aliens." The plan will benefit between 500,000 and 700,000 people, most of whom have ties to neighboring Haiti. While a percentage of those affected are recent immigrants, many others have lived their entire lives in the Dominican Republic, even though parents or grandparents came from Haiti.  Read more

Also in LADB this week
NotiCen also covered the case of former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo, who was sentenced by a US court to five years and 10 months in jail for accepting US$2.5 million from the Taiwanese government and attempting to launder the illegal money through US banks.

In NotiSur, our two articles dealt with land issues and indigenous rights. One article tells us how citizens of Ecuador adversely affected by Chevron's operations in the South American country managed to organize a protest at multinational company's annual shareholders' meeting.  This is despite Chevron's decision to move the meeting from the San Francisco Bay area to a more isolated location in Texas in order to avoid the protestors.  The second article looks at the five-year anniversary of the Bagua massacre in Peru, and how nine legislative decrees by ex-President Alan Garcia led to violent conflict. The decrees, related to energy projects, infringed on the ancestral right of indigenous communities to their land. Several trials related to the conflict are proceed slowly.
 
 -Carlos Navarro

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Controversial Aqueduct in Sonora; Colombia Coca Farmers Seek Protection; Bad Reviews for Guatemala President Otto Pérez

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Articles in SourceMex, NotiCen and NotiSur for July 31, August 1-2

Colombian Guerrillas Offer Campesino Protesters Support

Colombia's strategic northeastern region of Catatumbo, on the border with Venezuela, has become a volcano, which, after years of lying dormant, now seems close to erupting. Since June 10, campesinos have been peacefully protesting against a government policy that threatens their only source of sustenance--coca fields--and they are specifically demanding that their lands be declared a Zona de Reserva Campesina (ZRC). ZRCs are a legal concept established in 1994 to promote agricultural development through work cooperatives, which receive state subsidies until they are able to successfully operate on their own. The Colombian government has refused the request, and in fact, has cracked down on local protests, sparking violent and fatal conflicts in the area. -Andrés Gaudín    Read More

Yaqui Indians Claim Aqueduct in Sonora State Infringes on Tribal Water Rights

The scarcity of water in northwestern Mexico has created a conflict between the Yaqui Indians in Sonora and the federal and state governments regarding control of the scarce water that flows on the Río Yaqui. The controversy concerns an aqueduct constructed by the administration of Sonora Gov. Guillermo Padrés Elías, which captures 634 gallons of water per second from the Río Yaqui and diverts it through 130 km of pipeline between Presa El Novillo and the state capital of Hermosillo. The Yaquis, which have opposed the project from its inception, argue that the Sonora government has usurped their water rights and violated the law by ignoring court orders to halt construction and then to stop operations of the aqueduct. -Carlos Navarro    Read More

President Enrique Peña Nieto to Present Energy-Reform Plan in August

After months of promising to overhaul Mexico’s energy sector, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration might finally be ready to send an initiative to the legislature. Leaders from the governing Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) said they expect energy-reform legislation to arrive in Congress during the first week of August. The energy debate—which is expected to center on the future of the state-run oil company PEMEX—comes as Mexico’s crude-oil reserves are falling rapidly and interest from private investors in exploration and extraction is low because of a lack of incentives.  -Carlos Navarro    Read More

Administration of Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina Scores Badly in Recent Poll

A year and a half after President Otto Pérez Molina came to office , a poll carried out by Vox Latina shows that the popularity of the ruling Partido Patriota (PP) is at an all-time low. In the poll, carried out by the government as part of a confidential report that was leaked to Guatemalan newspaper El Periódico, most respondents said they believed that Pérez Molina "lacks enough character to make decisions" and regard the economy as the country’s greatest problem, followed by crime and violence. A report published by the Universidad Rafael Landívar in January also concludes that the Pérez Molina administration has failed to meet voters’ expectations, has not met its campaign promises, and has not adequately solved social conflicts.  -Louisa Reynolds   Read More

Paraguay's Efforts to End Child Labor Face Uncertain Future

Two weeks before businessman President-elect Horacio Cartes' Aug. 15 inauguration, no one yet knows what his policy regarding children and child labor will be, even though, since his electoral win in April, national and international children's advocacy agencies have urged him to make some commitment to the most powerless and neglected sector of society. Cartes had promised before the election to address the issue. But he has since remained silent. And in the days leading to his inauguration, the president-elect said his priiority is to transfer state assets to the private sector, which means the issue of eradicating child labor could receive less attention. -Andrés Gaudín   Read More

Political Parties Choose Presidential and Congressional Candidates for Costa Rica’s 2014 Elections

Costa Rica’s political parties are getting their act together for next year’s presidential and congressional elections. For their top tickets, some parties have gone through primary elections, while others have had only one nomination each, thus not needing to hold primaries and just having their respective assemblies ratify their nominee. So far, adding traditional, medium-size, and small political parties, the presidential offer in this Central American nation of just over 4.6 million people consists of 15 hopefuls.    -George Rodríguez    Read More