Julia Sarreal

Trained as a historian of Latin America (M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University) with a background in economics (B.A. from Swarthmore College), I have diverse interests in food, drugs, commodities, capitalism, business, and ethnohistory.

My second book, Yerba Mate: The Drink that Shaped a Nation (University of California Press, 2023) is the first to explore the history of this iconic beverage in Argentina from the precolonial period to the present. From yerba mate's Indigenous origins to its ubiquity during the colonial era, from its association with rural people and the poor in the late nineteenth century to its resurgence in the last years of the twentieth century, Yerba Mate documents yerba mate's consumption, production, and cultural importance over time. 

My first book, The Guaraní and Their Missions: A Socioeconomic History (Stanford University Press, 2014) integrates quantitative and qualitative analysis to expose the daily experiences of the Guaraní Indians residing in Catholic missions during the eighteenth century. Socioeconomic in focus, my work takes a new approach to ethnohistory. It was translated into Spanish and published as Los guaraníes y sus misiones: Una historia socioeconómica (Prometeo Libros, 2018).

My interest in Latin America was sparked when, as an undergraduate, I took a year off from college to live in and volunteer at the Salvation Army homeless shelter in Mexico City. After returning to Swarthmore College and completing a bachelor's degree in economics, I spent two years working in finance with Price Waterhouse LLP in New York City. I then joined the Peace Corps and moved to Curuguaty, Paraguay where I taught at a local university and worked in rural development before going to graduate school.

While conducting research for Yerba Mate: The Drink that Shaped a Nation, I created a personal website about work and life: http://materesearch.weebly.com/. Offshoots of this research are: "From South America to the United States: Guayakí and the Transformation of Yerba Mate" in Enterprise & Society about the marketing of yerba mate as a healthy energy drink in the United States "The Rural Woman Speaks in 1970s Argentina" in Latin American Research Review; and "Trabajadores de la yerba mate o los esclavos blancos en los bosques del nordeste Argentina al principio del siblo XX" in Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana Dr. Emilio Ravignani.