Chewing gum
2004
Redclift, M. R.
Not long after the Civil War, three time Mexican president and Alamo victor General Santa Ana introduced chicle, a rare ingredient from Mexico that was the basis for what would become chewing gum, to a Staten Island inventor. Both were down on their luck, and little did they know that their chance meeting would help create an icon of the modern age. A functionally useless product that simply makes us happy, gum popped onto the American scene with a bang, quickly becoming an icon for baseball, movie stars, adolescent rebellion, and attitude. A barometer of modernity, it was one of the first products to be advertised on billboards, a scheme hatched by the Wrigley brothers of Chicago. But there was another side to the story as well. For not only was gum a mass culture archetype, it helped fuel a long indigenous revolution in the jungles of the Yucatan. And ironically enough, it was gum manufacturers like Wrigley who ultimately funded the Mayan Indians who collected the chicle as they fought for autonomyfrom the Mexican government. -- Publishers description.
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