Providence- based Verve company makes Glee Gum from chicle from trees of southern Mexico and northern Guatemala.

The Providence Journal SANDOR BODO

Show of hands — anyone ever dump a whole packet of Chiclets into your mouth when you were a kid? Crunching those multicolored rectangular bits into a big rubbery wad of flavor was even better than Pixie Stix.

Those of you who might scoff at the idea of a scholarly history of chewing gum, like me, should peel the wrapper off Jennifer Mathews’ Chicle: The Chewing Gum of the Americas, From the Ancient Maya to William Wrigley (University of Arizona Press). The Trinity University (in San Antonio) anthropology professor and Maya expert has thoroughly researched this sticky topic and serves it to us in easy-to-swallow form. The best part: It won’t take seven years to digest.

Q. First of all, what is chicle?

A. Chicle is a natural latex that comes from the Manilkara zapota, or sapodilla tree. It’s produced in the bark of the tree as a white, gummy substance to protect it from insect infestations or animal chewing — or the cuts from the machete of a chiclero, or extractor.

Q. What got you interested in chewing gum enough to write a book about it?

A. I’m a Maya archaeologist and was studying the ancient Maya roads in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. I noticed that these ancient raised roads often had the remains of small-scale railroads left from the chicle industry built upon them, and I became interested. I spent four summers documenting a 40-kilometer railroad that ends at the coast just 25 kilometers south of Cancun (at Puerto Morelos) and interviewing some of the old chicleros that worked chicle until the 1970s. I wrote a book chapter on that — and then realized that there was just so much more to the story and decided to go for a more comprehensive book.

Q. Do we really need “an 11,000-year overview of chewing gum”?

A. Well, it’s not going to cure cancer or change the world, but I do think it was an important history to write. As with any single-subject book (such as Mark Kurlansky’s Salt and Cod), it turns out that something as simple as chewing gum can have major implications in history.

For example, it greatly impacted the various economies of the Americas, producing millionaires in the United States from the turn of the 20th century on — it is currently a $19 billion dollar-a-year industry — while negatively impacting the economies of Latin America as the need for chicle fell. It dramatically changed the lives of the chicleros (the extractors who live out in the jungle and brought chicle to the rest of the world), most often for the worst. And it has ties to various historic figures, such as Amelia Earhart, whose first trans-Atlantic flight was funded by Beech-Nut Packing Co. (maker of Beech-Nut gum), and former Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

It is also a truly “American” invention in that it was discovered by the Maya and Aztec, collected by chicleros all over Latin America and industrialized in the United States.

Q. Thank you, I feel quite stupid now. What was Santa Anna’s role in the history of chewing gum?

A. He played a major role, although he died never knowing it. He was exiled from Mexico and living in New York (Staten Island) where he was hoping to meet an inventor who could turn his store of chicle latex (brought from Veracruz) into a rubber substitute. He dreamed of amassing great wealth from the invention so that he could fund his return to the Mexican presidency. His personal secretary and interpreter introduced him to Thomas Adams, a local New York inventor. Adams spent years trying to vulcanize it but was never successful, and Santa Anna returned to Mexico, penniless, never knowing the impact he had in introducing this rubbery latex.

Just when Adams was ready to throw the chicle into the Hudson River out of frustration, he happened into a candy store where he overheard a young girl asking for paraffin wax gum — and it hit him that chicle would make a great chewing gum.

Q. Is sugarless only for wusses?

A. I would say it’s for the dentally conscious. Is that wussy?

Q. What’s your chew of choice?

A. I’ve become quite a gum snob. After researching this book, I only chew Glee Gum (available at Whole Foods and Sun Harvest or at www.gleegum.com), which is the only chicle-based chewing gum available in the United States and is made with all natural ingredients. Additionally, the manufacturer (Verve Inc., based in Providence) pays Fair Trade wages to a small cooperative of chicleros in Mexico. It tastes great, is all natural, and you can feel good about chewing it because you know the workers are getting paid fairly.