Santa Ana returned to Mexico penniless, leaving Adams with more chicle than he knew what to do with. One day, the intentor wandered into a candy store and saw a young girl ordering paraffin wax gum.

As Mathews explains, chewing gum has been around on this continent for hundreds of years in the form of chicle, a resin extracted from the sapodilla tree in southern Mexico and Central America.

One thing Santa Anna packed in his suitcase? A supply of chicle: the flavorless, chewy sap of the sapodilla tree, which, like many in Mexico, Santa Anna was fond of chewing. As part of a plan to ...

In Mexico, Mayans and Aztecs chewed chicle. By most accounts, Santa Anna wasn’t interested in marketing chicle for gum but thought it could be developed as a substitute for rubber — for ...