Don Ito Drinking Terere
Calle San Jose, Paraguay 1995
James Patton
One of my neighbors and beekeeping committee members in my Peace Corps
site. Ito was a diminutive man who spoke little and laughed often. We
would form a team to play the local card game, ‘Truco’, which
consisted of bluffs, lies, face signals, and a lot of yelling around many
empty beer bottles. He is drinking the traditional Paraguayan tea, Yerba
Mate, which, when drunk cold (as is often the case in the sweltering Paraguayan
climate) is called Terere. The tea is placed dry into the ‘Guampa’
(here a steel cup) and the perforated filter is used to draw water through
the leaves. The water is often a swamp of fresh plants recently torn from
the front yard and smashed up to release their medicinal properties.
© 2002 The
Fletcher School, Tufts University