ANTIGUA, GUATEMALA—The words cimarrón and cimarrona are not common terms in Latin American Spanish nowadays. During several hundred years of Conquest and chattel slavery, however, the words have been used as dehumanizing labels for those indigenous peoples who fled from the onslaught of Spanish and Portuguese conquest, and later for African slaves who escaped from forced labor. The origins of the words are decidedly Latin American, but how the term came to be used in these contexts is not entirely clear. It becomes even more confusing to consider that in both Guatemala and the collective region of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, the term cimarrona now refers to two distinct beverages: one, a kind of lemonade, the other, a preparation of yerba mate.
Etymologists have delved into the confusing origins of the word cimarrón. It was first used in the early 1500s on the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola describing two scenarios—either domesticated plants and animals that had found their way into the mountains, becoming wild again, or indigenous peoples who had fled into the mountains for refuge. The scholarship is inconclusive as to which usage came first, with some suggesting that the word has roots in the Spanish cima for “mountain peak” while others say it was an indigenous word for domesticated plants gone wild. When slavery was more formally established, it leant its meaning to those individuals who escaped.
Most dictionaries of Spanish in the Americas note that cimarrona is also a regional term in the Rio de la Plata area of present day Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil that stands for bitter yerba mate prepared with hot water. Yet no dictionaries record the Guatemalan usage of the term that refers to a salty and bubbly lemonade.
A couple of blocks from the center of Antigua, Guatemala, Pachamama Blends offers up an array of teas, coffees, chocolates, spices, and herbs. The basic idea is that Guatemala has a lot to offer in the way of drinks, especially healthy ones. For decades, the high elevation region around the city of Cobán in northern central Guatemala has produced black tea. The country is renowned for its coffee grown in volcanic soils at elevation, especially around Antigua and more historically on the Costa Cuca developed by German investors in the late 1800s. Chocolate beverages have deep roots in indigenous gastronomy and agriculture.
The shop mixes and matches herbs with these Guatemalan products. Blends of coffee pulp with hibiscus, loquat leaf, licorice root, ginger, and lemongrass promise to help the heart beat. A mix of cacao shells with local coffee smells of unrivaled mocha. Then there is the dairy-free leche dorado, or golden milk, that they brew in front of me.
A pile of herbs and Guatemalan green tea go into the pot. Cardamom, turmeric, fennel, ginger, cloves, cinnamon. When served hot, the drink is calming and spicy, but the blender takes another step. In a cocktail shaker with ice, she mixes salt, lime juice, and the dairy-free leche dorado blend. This is a complex take on the cimarrona, a typical Guatemalan refreshment. With the depth of the flavor of the herbs and spices, it serves well as a non-alcoholic cocktail with piquancy from the salt and complexity from the tea blend. But the cimarrona is not always so complex—and it’s not always alcohol-free either.
The cimarrona that most Guatemalans know is not a complex beverage. The drink calls for a pinch of salt, the juice of a lime, and mineral water, almost always served with ice. It is salty and tart and slightly effervescent. Each of these sharp qualities bites at the tongue with a differently honed blade—the salt slakes phlegm, the bubbles buffet the palate, and the citrus encourages salivation—this is how the cimarrona quenches.
Really, the cimarrona is just a limeade with salt instead of sugar, but it is also a staple hangover cure in Guatemala. That is, cimarrona is a sort of electrolyte beverage that can help to rehydrate and quench thirst on a hot summer day. It is homemade Guatemalan Gatorade.
Still, the connection between the name cimarrona and the other usages of the Latin American term is a mystery. In Guatemalan history, cimarrona would have been used to refer to escaped African slaves more than anything else. Perhaps the drink is related to this history. Otherwise, it is possible that a wild plant or herb was once used to prepare a similar beverage that would have been called cimarrona due to its wild ingredients.
At a pub in the heart of San José, Costa Rica, I also found a cocktail called cimarrona, but it was prepared with sugar instead of salt.
The more well known cimarrona drink is that in Argentina and Uruguay. Bitter yerba mate, an infusion of the plant Ilex Paraguariensis, may be called cimarrona (and in southern Brazilian Portuguese chimarrão.) Several modern Argentine businesses focused on the mate industry have taken up the old school name cimarrona as part of their brand.
It is difficult to say, but it could be possible that mate cimarrona was once harvested from mate trees that are not grown in formal plantations, perhaps changing the balances of chemicals in their leaves towards the bitter. Perhaps, as well, the gaucho/cowboy culture of the region made the term more common thanks to horses that ran off and became cimarrón. Rolando A. Laguarda Trías, an Uruguayan historian, wrote about this issue in his 1958 Historia de un caso de simbiosis léxica : cimarrón y bagual.
The question of how the term cimarrona came to mean two very distinct beverages may be unanswerable. It seems most likely that herbs were made into infusions and some of those herbs were hierbas cimarronas, thus making the drink cimarrona as well. That is to say, wild herbs were made into drinks and then the drinks were called wild too. Afterall, the escaped slave and fleeing indigenous meanings of the term are hard to reconcile with fairly benign beverages.
Ultimately, if a night out gets away from you in Guatemala, a cimarrona in the morning will help to quench your thirst and rehydrate.
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