Selling Guarana: Commercial Advertising and the Rise of Brazil’s National Soft Drink Industry

Guaraná, a caffeine-rich plant native to the Brazilian Amazon, is the namesake of Brazil's "national" soda. Yet few works have examined the transformation of guaraná from Native American cultivar to mass-consumed beverage and multibillion-dollar industry. Like other processed foods, Brazil's soft drink industry is the product of twentieth-century transformations: urbanization, industrialization, mass consumption, and "modernization" of the family. This paper looks at the role of the advertising industry in plotting the early rise of the soda -- namely, the narrative and images utilized to transform an exotic/luxury good into a daily staple. Through analysis of print media advertisements from the 1920 to 1950s, I discuss the gendered, racialized, and classed images that were intrinsic to the soda's early marketing. As commercial advertising can be said to reflect as much as impel broader societal discourses and cultural trends, the paper looks at the larger historical debates (and divides) surrounding the meanings of modernity in Brazil to explain the soda's popular appeal.