‘I don’t know how I will eat.’ For the workers behind Argentina’s national drink, Milei’s reforms are turning sour

Sonia Lemos doesn’t know how she will put food on the table until the next harvest, two months from now.

Sonia Lemos doesn’t know how she will put food on the table until the next harvest, two months from now. Lemos, 42, is a seasonal worker from northern Argentina. Six months a year, she harvests yerba, the leaves of a native South American shrub that are the basis of Argentina’s national beverage, mate.  Few other drinks permeate the Argentinian way of life as does mate, an infusion of dry yerba leaves that is meant to be drunk slowly and, most importantly, shared with friends or relatives. When Argentina’s national team traveled to the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar, The New York Times reported that they carried with them over 1,100 pounds of mate for the month-long tournament. Both a social activity and a caffeine-fix, mate dates back to pre-Columbian times, when the leaves were hand-picked in the same manner as Lemos has been doing for the past 30 years. “When I was a child, we were poor. My mom and dad were also farmworkers and I left school at 12 and joined them,” she told CNN, a common story in Misiones, where the vast majority of mate production takes place and one of Argentina’s poorest provinces. It is hard work, but Lemos paints a positive picture of it. While her family has never grown rich, she dreamt of sending her four children to school to find a better life.