November 8, 2018
Dr. Rebekah E. Pite, Lafayette College, traces the visual history of the yerba mate ritual in early 20th century Argentina and Uruguay
How do you picture a romantic goodbye? As the nineteenth century turned towards the twentieth, an image of a rural woman handing a gaucho on horseback a drink before he trotted away began to circulate with increasing frequency in the Río de la Plata region. The drink the woman handed the man was yerba mate, a stimulating infusion made from the ground up leaves of a local holly tree. While photographs, postcards, and artwork that featured this ritual contributed to the image of the supposedly unencumbered gaucho, they also signaled the ways in which rural women’s domesticity allowed this gaucho to get into the saddle in the first place. This talk will argue that the mate, and especially the woman who served it, has played an underappreciated but significant role in the gendered construction of local customs and national identities in Argentina and Uruguay alike. Co-sponsored by Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies, Food Studies, and Spanish & Portuguese.
Further information
- Location: Stern Great Room
- Time: 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
- Cost: Free