Everything revolves around guarana in this town deep in the Brazilian Amazon, where cultivation of that fruit – said to be a token of the generosity of one of the indigenous deities – provides a livelihood for hundreds of families.
Maues, a sprawling municipality of 60,000 people nestled between rivers in the world’s largest tropical rainforest, can only be reached by air or the Amazon. The second option entails a day-long voyage from Manaus, capital of Amazonas state.
Guarana seeds are roughly twice as rich in caffeine as coffee beans.
While indigenous people in Brazil and Paraguay continue to crush seeds into a powder for medicinal purposes such as reducing fatigue and alleviating aches and pains, 70 percent of the 400 tons of guarana produced annually in Maues end up in soda and energy drinks.
The first known use of guarana dates from pre-Columbian times, when the Satere-Mawe people turned the annual harvest of the plant they knew as warana (“fruit like the eyes of the people”) into a grand festival.
The crop was adopted by the Guarani people, who called the plant “guarana.”
One of the estimated 2,500 guarana growers in Maues is Ester Master, 49, one of the few women to attain the status of overseer, whose extended family produces roughly seven tons a year.
Toiling in temperatures as high as 40 C (104 F), growers harvest the fruit by hand using scissors. They peel away the skin and wash the seeds on the riverbank before roasting them in an enormous pan.
Ester’s personal involvement with the fruit goes back decades to the time her father decided to move the family from the temperate southern state of Parana to steamy Amazonia with plans to grow guarana.
Her dad grew disillusioned with the low prices the fruit fetched then and with the fragility of the guarana when cultivated in the traditional manner by planting seeds, a technique since abandoned in favor of planting more-robust cuttings.
But Ester Master was determined to make the venture a success.
“I like this life, it’s beautiful,” she said. “I go on thinking that I will grow old harvesting guarana.”
Two years ago, Master’s family began selling the seeds directly to Brazilian beverage giant AmBev, makers of the Guarana Antarctica line of soft drinks.
Under that arrangement, AmBev donates guarana cuttings to the participating growers.
The deal with AmBev was made possible by the Guarana Alliance of Maues project, which has also helped growers get their produce certified as organic, allowing them to charge twice as much in comparison with guarana lacking that certification.
“We don’t use chemicals here,” grower Jackson as he roasts seeds, emphasizing that guarana is part of his culture.
He recounts the Satere-Mawe legend that finds the origins of guarana in the love between a man and wife who were graced by the god Tupã with the birth of a son who brought peace and joy to the jungle.
But the son’s vitality awakened envy on the part of Jurupari, god of darkness, who transformed himself into a snake and killed the young man.
Tupã told the grieving parents to bury their son’s eyes in the soil and await the emergence of a new form of life in the form of “fruit like the eyes of the people.”
Roughly 10km (6mi) from Maues site the Santa Helena farm, an expanse of 1,070 hectares (2,642 acres) where AmBev grows guarana for the cuttings it distributes among local producers.
Roosevelt Hada Leal, a 41-year-old agronomist who works at Santa Helena, notes that climate change is already having a negative impact on the guarana industry.
The flowering phase came much later than usual this year, while heavier-than-average rainfall diminished the quality of the fruit.
“Climate is everything,” he said.
