Part 5 (2/2)

In truth, Austin's hands were tied-intervene in the dispute and he'd call the entire franchise system into question, potentially opening the Coca-Cola Company up to a flood of labor complaints from other countries. At the same time, if he didn't intervene, he'd abrogate all the goodwill he'd so eagerly sought through c.o.ke's CSR efforts. Even as c.o.ke execs privately decided not to renew Trotter's contract, they declined to break it, instead sending another company exec to investigate the situation. He, too, exonerated the franchisee-and no wonder, since he never even questioned Trotter or set foot inside the plant. Unconvinced, the Guatemalans appealed to the International Union of Food and Allied Workers (IUF), a Geneva-based super-union, which issued a call to boycott c.o.ke in November 1979 and instigated work stoppages at c.o.ke plants in Finland, Sweden, and New Zealand.

As the situation quickly grew out of hand, the company a.s.sured critics that it would not be renewing Trotter's contract when it expired in 1981. Meanwhile, the rampage continued, with four more union organizers killed. Street protests against c.o.ke in Guatemala led to a dramatic fall in the company's market share. Finally, the pressure was too much for c.o.ke to stall any longer. Even though it had repeatedly claimed it could do nothing until the contract expired, company execs flew to Houston in July 1980 to present Trotter with an offer he couldn't refuse-a generous buyout by two handpicked bottling executives, with most of the financing provided by c.o.ke Atlanta, and no questions asked. The new owners approved a contract with the union after the sale.

But c.o.ke's stalling had left eight workers dead-a legacy in Guatemala that would come to haunt the company again in more recent years.

For the time being, however, the company was able to breathe a sigh of relief when it put the Guatemala incident behind it, and could focus again on expanding the company. When Roberto Goizueta took over the Coca-Cola Company in August 1980, he targeted international growth as a critical part of his plan to increase shareholder value and make c.o.ke, as he would later say, ”the number one beverage on Earth.” The yardstick he chose to measure that growth was ”per-caps”-the number of drinks per capita claimed by Coca-Cola in a country in a given year. He salivated as he looked at the numbers. Per-caps in Latin America at the time were just a third of those in the United States; those in Europe, less than a quarter; and in Africa, only 4 percent.

Goizueta's mantra was ”Think globally, act locally,” a phrase first attributed to him and only later appropriated by social activists. Under his leaders.h.i.+p, c.o.ke concerned itself with the minutiae of foreign markets, installing automatic drink dispensers on street corners in Tokyo and slapping thousands of c.o.ke stickers on every available surface in Bordeaux. ”Our success,” Goizueta wrote, ”will largely depend on the degree to which we can make it impossible for the consumer around the globe to escape Coca-Cola.”

Again, politics took a backseat. When activists threatened a boycott of c.o.ke if it didn't divest from South Africa's repressive apartheid regime, c.o.ke brushed them off. It could ill afford to lose the country, which accounted for 70 percent of sales on the continent. When the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Conference (SCLC)-the civil rights group established by Martin Luther King, Jr.-joined the call, however, c.o.ke compromised by moving its concentrate plant supplying the bottlers to black-ruled Swaziland, and establis.h.i.+ng a $10 million fund to support African-Americans administered by n.o.bel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

That mollified the SCLC, even as c.o.ke-and the apartheid government-continued to profit from its South African bottling franchises. For years after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela denied c.o.ke's offers of travel aid, and even required hotels to remove c.o.ke products from his sight during his stay. The company a.s.siduously courted the sainted leader, putting its highest-ranking African-American executive on the case. By 1993, c.o.ke was contributing heavily to Mandela's campaign to be elected president of a new South Africa, and he was flying around on one of c.o.ke's corporate jets. A year later, c.o.ke returned to South Africa, picking up where it had left off by a.s.suming owners.h.i.+p of the company it had contracted with after it departed.

By 1988, more than three-quarters of c.o.ke's profits came from outside the United States. That year, it topped $1 billion in profits for the first time in history. While it had taken a hundred years for it to reach that mark, it doubled its profits to $2 billion just five years later, in 1993, when it became the sixth most valuable company in the United States. When new CEO Doug Ivester took over in 1997, he wasted no time exploring ways to sc.r.a.pe more profits from foreign countries-including an attempt to pilot a new vending machine in Brazil that would vary its price based on the temperature. ”This is a cla.s.sic situation of supply and demand,” Ivester told a Brazilian newspaper reporter. In hot weather, ”the utility of an ice-cold Coca-cola is very high. So it is fair that it should be more expensive.” The comments resulted in an uproar, not only in Brazil but also in the United States, where they were reprinted and lambasted on late-night talk shows.

Lost in the same interview, however, was a statement at least as outrageous, and with much more lasting implications. Asked about health concerns regarding c.o.ke, Ivester brushed them off. Sugar, he said, was ”a good source of energy, of vitality. . . . We have a very healthy product.” If c.o.ke's contributions to obesity and disease were apparent in the United States, however, they'd become even more of an issue in the developing world, where a balanced diet is hard to come by even on a good day. Nowhere are those negative effects starker than in Mexico, and nowhere in Mexico is it starker than in Chiapas. It's here, just a few miles from Chamula, that the latest call for a boycott against the company has emerged.

Even though Mexico was one of the first countries to see c.o.ke served outside its homeland, it wasn't regularly drunk here until the 1950s, when c.o.ke began the ad blitz to wallpaper the country in red and white. Before then, even the poorest farmers ate a relatively healthy diet of corn and beans. A study two decades later found white bread and Coca-Cola were the two food items Mexico was one of the first countries to see c.o.ke served outside its homeland, it wasn't regularly drunk here until the 1950s, when c.o.ke began the ad blitz to wallpaper the country in red and white. Before then, even the poorest farmers ate a relatively healthy diet of corn and beans. A study two decades later found white bread and Coca-Cola were the two food items campesinos campesinos bought as soon as they could afford them-and sometimes even when they couldn't. ”It is not uncommon, doctors who work in rural villages report, for a family to sell the few eggs and chickens it raises to buy c.o.ke for the father while the children waste away for lack of protein,” wrote Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller in 1974 in bought as soon as they could afford them-and sometimes even when they couldn't. ”It is not uncommon, doctors who work in rural villages report, for a family to sell the few eggs and chickens it raises to buy c.o.ke for the father while the children waste away for lack of protein,” wrote Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller in 1974 in Global Reach Global Reach, one of the first books to look critically at the growing power of multinational corporations.

Along with the proliferation of advertising, c.o.ke followed the same early sales plan that it had in America, with enticements such as branded chairs, tables, and refrigerators for shopkeepers who sold above a certain quota. It also used more aggressive tactics, threatening shopkeepers if they sold any competing brands. In Mexico City in 2002, for example, c.o.ke distributors told a forty-something shopkeeper named Raquel Chavez they'd stop delivering c.o.ke to her store unless she got rid of a Peruvian import called Big Cola. Chavez reported them to the Federal Compet.i.tion Commission, which fined the Coca-Cola Export Corporation $68 million for unfair compet.i.tion. (”You may call the shots everywhere else, but I'm the boss in my store,” she told the BBC.) c.o.ke's sales tactics have paid off in Mexico, however, raking in profits for its Mexican anchor bottler, Coca-Cola FEMSA, and its parent company, FEMSA. The latter company is a member of the Forbes International 500 list, with a value of nearly $6 billion. The company's profits tripled in the past decade following the acquisition of several smaller bottlers, including Venezuela-based Panamerican Beverages (Panamco). Between 2002 and 2007, FEMSA's stock price tripled, from $35 to more than $115 a share. Much of that wealth found its way to Atlanta-since in addition to making money on syrup sales, the Coca-Cola Company owns more than a 30 percent stake in Coca-Cola FEMSA.

The increase in c.o.ke sales was felt directly in Chiapas, where the first crates of Coca-Cola were brought up to Chamula by horse in the early 1960s. At first, the growth of c.o.ke in the region coincided with a welcome decrease in the consumption of homemade alcoholic beverages. Years ago, says City University of New York anthropologist June Nash, the men and boys of the highland villages drank copious amounts of pox pox-the homemade sugarcane rum seen in the Chamula church. In part, the drinking was pushed by the village elders, called caciques caciques-local political bosses who tightly controlled pox pox production and profited from its sale. production and profited from its sale.

When Nash lived in the nearby village of Amatenango in the 1960s, boys and men drank pox pox daily in both religious and civil ceremonies, holding compet.i.tions to see who could drink the most. Not surprisingly, the practice led to rampant alcoholism with serious health and social problems. ”There are problems with Coca-Cola, but nothing compared with the alcoholism, which was debilitating in every way,” says Nash. Some peasants even converted to Protestantism to exempt themselves from having to drink so much. Fearing they were losing control, the daily in both religious and civil ceremonies, holding compet.i.tions to see who could drink the most. Not surprisingly, the practice led to rampant alcoholism with serious health and social problems. ”There are problems with Coca-Cola, but nothing compared with the alcoholism, which was debilitating in every way,” says Nash. Some peasants even converted to Protestantism to exempt themselves from having to drink so much. Fearing they were losing control, the caciques caciques turned to a new drink that was just then beginning to penetrate the market: Coca-Cola. turned to a new drink that was just then beginning to penetrate the market: Coca-Cola.

In many communities, the same caciques caciques who monopolized production of who monopolized production of pox pox retained the concessions to c.o.ke and later Pepsi. In some, such as Amatenango, concessions were granted politically, with officials of the Inst.i.tutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) controlling c.o.ke and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) controlling Pepsi. It was easy enough to subst.i.tute the new drinks for many of the same rituals that previously used retained the concessions to c.o.ke and later Pepsi. In some, such as Amatenango, concessions were granted politically, with officials of the Inst.i.tutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) controlling c.o.ke and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) controlling Pepsi. It was easy enough to subst.i.tute the new drinks for many of the same rituals that previously used pox pox (though in some cases, such as the church in Chamula, (though in some cases, such as the church in Chamula, pox pox is still maintained in limited quant.i.ties). Those owning the concessions of the soft drinks became rich, reaping huge profits in villages with little other commerce or industry, and pa.s.sing the concessions along to family members to create dynasties. Before long, however, the increasing consumption of soft drinks brought its own problems-tooth decay, diabetes, and obesity. ”Ugh, they drink a lot of soft drinks, they really push it,” says Nash. ”They never used to have decayed teeth before, and you can really see it now.” is still maintained in limited quant.i.ties). Those owning the concessions of the soft drinks became rich, reaping huge profits in villages with little other commerce or industry, and pa.s.sing the concessions along to family members to create dynasties. Before long, however, the increasing consumption of soft drinks brought its own problems-tooth decay, diabetes, and obesity. ”Ugh, they drink a lot of soft drinks, they really push it,” says Nash. ”They never used to have decayed teeth before, and you can really see it now.”

In an interview with American anthropologist Laura Jordan, the current owner of the concession to distribute Coca-Cola in Chamula and the surrounding area, Carlos Lopez Gomez, enthused about the popularity of soft drinks for the local people. ”[It is] part of daily life,” he said. ”Like drinking water-every day. Instead of water, they learn to want soda. They want Coca-Cola.”5 A Chamula city councillor for the minority party, the PRD, elaborates further. ”Indigenous people, the number-one thing they consume is Coca-Cola, and the number two thing is Pepsi,” says Cristobal Lopez Perez. So nervous was he about speaking about the beverage, he insisted on arranging the interview in the back room of a local human rights organization. Sitting at a cramped table wearing a cowboy hat and zip-up cardigan over a collared s.h.i.+rt, he paints a picture of cradle-to-grave consumption of which U.S. marketers could only dream. A Chamula city councillor for the minority party, the PRD, elaborates further. ”Indigenous people, the number-one thing they consume is Coca-Cola, and the number two thing is Pepsi,” says Cristobal Lopez Perez. So nervous was he about speaking about the beverage, he insisted on arranging the interview in the back room of a local human rights organization. Sitting at a cramped table wearing a cowboy hat and zip-up cardigan over a collared s.h.i.+rt, he paints a picture of cradle-to-grave consumption of which U.S. marketers could only dream.

”When a child is born, they give soda. When a woman is married, they give soda. When someone dies, they give soda,” he says. The amount is directly related to the wealth of the family, ranging from three or four boxes up to one hundred depending on the occasion. No event, however, matches election time, when all candidates buy astounding amounts of c.o.ke for their supporters. For Lopez's council election, he bought five trailers, each with 180 boxes, totaling more than 20,000 bottles for just one candidate. On election day, he says, people bring straps to the polling booth to cart home the expected case of soda. ”Whoever gives Coca-Cola has more of a possibility of winning,” he says. ”If you give another kind of soda, it's not as good.”

No one is obligated to buy soda, says Lopez, but not not buying it is the easiest way to acquire social stigma in the village. Families who serve the locally made corn beverage buying it is the easiest way to acquire social stigma in the village. Families who serve the locally made corn beverage pozol pozol at parties are looked down upon. ”People say, 'They shouldn't have invited me. I can make that at home.'” Lopez is one of the few people in the village who is critical of all of the soda consumption, which he blames for the poor health of the community. ”There are many headaches, people have gastritis, they have sugar in the blood [diabetes],” he says. ”We are just beginning to realize that this is not nouris.h.i.+ng for our bodies, that it is making us sick.” Asked if he's tried to broach the subject with his neighbors, he sighs. ”It is not possible to change people today or tomorrow. I don't know when this is going to end. To change the mentality of people is very difficult.” at parties are looked down upon. ”People say, 'They shouldn't have invited me. I can make that at home.'” Lopez is one of the few people in the village who is critical of all of the soda consumption, which he blames for the poor health of the community. ”There are many headaches, people have gastritis, they have sugar in the blood [diabetes],” he says. ”We are just beginning to realize that this is not nouris.h.i.+ng for our bodies, that it is making us sick.” Asked if he's tried to broach the subject with his neighbors, he sighs. ”It is not possible to change people today or tomorrow. I don't know when this is going to end. To change the mentality of people is very difficult.”

Health problems in the villages of Chiapas have been exacerbated by recent changes in patterns of physical activities by the peasant population. As mining and oil interests have taken up arable land, men from the villages have increasingly gone to the United States to find work, leaving behind women and children to live a more sedentary lifestyle-using their money transfers from America to buy more junk food. Local indigenous health coalition COMPITCH has done surveys of communities in the highlands and jungles of Chiapas, finding that problems with obesity and diabetes are greater in communities closer to the roadways plied by delivery trucks for Coca-Cola and other processed foods. ”We can't blame Coca-Cola,” says the group's Juan Ignacio Dominguez, ”but we can situate Coca-Cola as a detonating component. When we put together all these social factors, Coca-Cola is the last drip that makes the cup overflow.” He shakes his head. ”There is something that makes Coca-Cola really formidable for us. Maybe it has to do with the sugar,” he says, laughing. ”We are a very sweet culture.” in the villages of Chiapas have been exacerbated by recent changes in patterns of physical activities by the peasant population. As mining and oil interests have taken up arable land, men from the villages have increasingly gone to the United States to find work, leaving behind women and children to live a more sedentary lifestyle-using their money transfers from America to buy more junk food. Local indigenous health coalition COMPITCH has done surveys of communities in the highlands and jungles of Chiapas, finding that problems with obesity and diabetes are greater in communities closer to the roadways plied by delivery trucks for Coca-Cola and other processed foods. ”We can't blame Coca-Cola,” says the group's Juan Ignacio Dominguez, ”but we can situate Coca-Cola as a detonating component. When we put together all these social factors, Coca-Cola is the last drip that makes the cup overflow.” He shakes his head. ”There is something that makes Coca-Cola really formidable for us. Maybe it has to do with the sugar,” he says, laughing. ”We are a very sweet culture.”

In fact, he may not be far off. Research by the Chiapas-based medical NGO Defensoria del Derecho a la Salud (Health Rights Defense) has found the taste for sugar is established at a very early age, with most women in indigenous villages serving their children soft drinks even below the age of three. ”These three years in many ways define the future of the child, and it is when malnutrition and diabetes can be prevented,” says the group's director, Dr. Marcos Arana. ”If babies are exposed to a high intake of sugar, they will be conditioned to depend on sugar for the rest of their lives.” While breast-feeding is still the norm for younger children, says Arana, there are still instances of mothers putting Coca-Cola into baby bottles.

Anecdotally, Arana says he has seen a steady increase in obesity and diabetes in the communities he serves. Official evidence, however, is hard to come by. While government statistics show Chiapas has the highest rates of obesity in the country, for example, it has one of the lowest rates of diabetes, which Arana says is due to an underdiagnosis of the disease. Compounding the problem is the lack of safe drinking water at homes and schools in highland communities. ”The teachers know this and sometimes they are convinced by Coca-Cola to promote the consumption of soda in schools among the children,” says Arana. As in the United States, many schools still have exclusivity contracts with c.o.ke or Pepsi-and despite phasing out sugary beverages in schools in the United States, they are still frequently sold here. ”They do in other countries what they would not do in the United States,” sighs Arana, a statement that represents a lot about c.o.ke's strategy around the world. Because the company's franchise bottlers aren't directly owned by the company, they don't have to live up to the same standards.

In addition to contracts in schools, c.o.ke also drives up soda sales by selling beverages for a cheaper price in indigenous communities. In the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, for instance, a liter of c.o.ke sells for 10 pesos (about 90 cents), while just up the mountain in Chamula it is sold for half that. In the same shops, a 1.5-liter bottle of c.o.ke's water brand Ciel costs 10 pesos, making c.o.ke actually cheaper than its main ingredient. The most logical explanation for the difference is that the company is hoping that the taste for sugar will result in more sales over time.

Arana is part of a group of doctors who pushed for a soda tax to curb consumption nationwide. In 2002, in fact, the country imposed a 20 cent tax on all soft drinks made with high-fructose corn syrup, affecting c.o.ke and Pepsi but not local sodas made with sugar from sugarcane. (The rumor persists that c.o.ke in Mexico is made completely with natural cane sugar, which the Coca-Cola Company does nothing to dispel. However, that hasn't been the case for a decade, since the North American Free Trade Agreement flooded the market with cheap corn, and Mexican bottlers began using cheaper HFCS. In past years, Coca-Cola FEMSA has used up to 60 percent HFCS in Mexican c.o.ke. By 2009, that ratio was down to 30 percent, but with plans to raise it because of an increase in sugar prices.) When the tax was pa.s.sed, however, the United States promptly filed a dispute on c.o.ke's behalf in the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing it was discriminatory against American products. The WTO ruled in the favor of the United States in 2005 and again in 2007, after which Mexico repealed the tax. An effort by Mexican president Felipe Calderon to impose a 5 cent tax on all soft drinks failed in the legislature, amid heavy lobbying from soft drink companies. Arana is hopeful that in the future another tax might succeed-or if not, then at least the government might be able to pa.s.s a law outlawing the selling of soft drinks at different prices, or prohibiting exclusive school beverage contracts.

The health issues surrounding soft drinks, however, are not the only issues here that have led to a backlash against the company. Down the mountain from Chamula and the highland villages, residents of the city of San Cristobal have raised questions about how the company produces the drinks themselves.

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Geckos scamper underfoot during the steep climb up Huitepec, a dormant volcano on the outskirts of San Cristobal de Las Casas. The path weaves its way through a forest of ancient-seeming oak trees, all twisted trunks and gnarly burrs with moss and vines clinging to their sides. It's easy to see why the mountain holds a special place in the folklore of the indigenous Maya, many of whom still believe the spirit of the place watches over them. Unlike the dry, piney hills around, Huitepec is lush and green, supporting not only white oaks but also a fragmentary cloud forest with an array of wildlife, including more than one hundred species of birds, squirrels, deer, and coyote.

The largest mountain in the hills encircling San Cris (as the munic.i.p.ality is known), Huitepec collects water from the rains that blow through the valley, then percolates the water through the volcanic soil and limestone into a huge underground aquifer that serves as the major munic.i.p.al water source. The apparent abundance, however, is an illusion-hiding a chronic shortage of water that plagues the surrounding communities. ”During the dry season there is huge water scarcity here,” says Erin Araujo, an American graduate student who has studied the water table, pausing for breath in a clearing near the top of the mountain. ”Most people get their water only from the munic.i.p.al water supply, and during the dry season all of the rain that replenishes the aquifer has dried up.” At those times, residents of San Cristobal are rationed-some limited to only a few hours of water a day in outlying communities, even as residents in the city center are allowed twenty-four-hour, seven-day access.

Even more egregious to some residents is the presence of a Coca-Cola bottling plant on the other side of the mountain, which always seems to have enough water for its beverages. c.o.ke's presence at the foot of Huitepec dates back to the late 1980s, when it first established a bodega here. Soon Coca-Cola FEMSA moved its bottling operations to San Cristobal from the state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, to take advantage of the more abundant water supply there. By 1994, the plant was churning out five thousand cases a day, ramping up production year after year. By 2004, it had doubled that to ten thousand cases a day, serving not only the entire state of Chiapas, but also part of the neighboring state of Tabasco. By 2008, it was serving part of Oaxaca as well.

According to government statistics, the company has the right to extract up to 500 million liters a year from the aquifer-an amount translating to 1.37 million liters a day. Coca-Cola FEMSA denied a request for an interview, asking that questions be transmitted through the Coca-Cola Company, which in turn directed them back to Coca-Cola FEMSA. A company spokesperson, however, defended the company's water usage to Laura Jordan, an American anthropologist who wrote her thesis on c.o.ke and corporate social responsibility in the Highlands in 2008. The plant's human resources director, Graciela Flores, told Jordan the company takes no more than 2 percent of the total water consumed by ”all of San Cristobal”-at the same time providing a number of well-paying jobs to the community.

Those who live in the vicinity of the plant, however, see things differently. On the other side of the mountain, the c.o.ke plant squats in a ma.s.sive gray installation beneath Huitepec's bulk. On the rutted dirt road behind it, an elderly woman named Maria de la Asuncion Gomez Carpio sells fried snacks to school kids. ”The water here used to be very abundant, but all of the springs here dried up since the plant came here twenty years ago,” she says. Now she says residents in her neighborhood, which sits on one of the richest aquifers in Mexico, get water brought in by tanker trucks called pipas pipas-pipes-at the cost of $240 pesos ($22) a month.

Asked about employment the company provides to locals, she laughs. ”No, they don't give employment to people with low education; you have to be educated to work there.” Meanwhile, she says, the company has refused requests for a.s.sistance in repairing the road behind the plant. ”They provide no benefit. On the contrary, they take from us.” The story is repeated by several other residents in the vicinity of the plant, including Rosa Maria Reazola Estevane, who lives in a nice house at the top of the hill. ”There used to be a lot of water,” she says. ”Now there is a scarcity. They are not paying anything, and they are just taking our water away. I am really p.i.s.sed off about it. I want them to leave.”

From the looks of things, the company isn't just taking-it's also leaving a foul-smelling stream that flows from one side of the plant. In the central Mexican state of Tlaxcala, the outspoken mayor of the town of Apizaco, Reyes Ruiz, accused c.o.ke of polluting the land with a milky effluent that killed trees in a river a short way from the plant. In addition, as in San Cristobal, he has accused c.o.ke of decreasing the local aquifer and drying up farmland. FEMSA has denied the charges, pointing out that it stays within the 450 million gallons allowed by the National Water Commission, and that the plant accounts for less than 1 percent of the total water usage in the region. ”We comply with the law,” Marco Antonio Dehesa, project engineer with Coca-Cola FEMSA, repeatedly told researchers with the American nonprofit Gra.s.sroots International.

For all of the water that it takes from communities such as Apizaco and San Cristobal, however, Coca-Cola FEMSA pays them nothing for the privilege. That's because the company has negotiated contracts for the water extraction directly with the federal government in Mexico City, thanks to a law pa.s.sed with the help of a former c.o.ke executive who happened to be Mexico's president. Whatever influence c.o.ke has had with U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Carter, c.o.ke FEMSA surpa.s.sed it in the unprecedented access to the halls of power it had through former Mexican president Vicente Fox. Back in the 1970s, Fox was director general of Coca-Cola Mexico, a division of the Coca-Cola Export Corporation that is fully owned by the Coca-Cola Company; during his tenure, he boosted c.o.ke's sales to topple Pepsi as the nation's best-selling soft drink.

”Working at Coca-Cola was my second university education,” Fox told The New York Times The New York Times in 1999. ”I learned strategy, marketing, financial management, optimization of resources. I learned not to accept anything but winning.” Nicknamed ”The Coca-Cola Kid” during his campaign, Fox used focus groups and heavy television advertising he learned from his c.o.ke days to win. He also drew heavily upon his former c.o.ke connections, including hiring a former c.o.ke executive as his finance director who raised millions from c.o.ke bottlers and other businesses to put him on top. After he became president in 2000, Fox had no compunction about helping out his former employer. He appointed another former c.o.ke director general, Cristobal Jaime Jaquez, national water commissioner; together, they pushed privatization of much of the country's water network and sold extraction rights directly to big agribusiness and other corporations. in 1999. ”I learned strategy, marketing, financial management, optimization of resources. I learned not to accept anything but winning.” Nicknamed ”The Coca-Cola Kid” during his campaign, Fox used focus groups and heavy television advertising he learned from his c.o.ke days to win. He also drew heavily upon his former c.o.ke connections, including hiring a former c.o.ke executive as his finance director who raised millions from c.o.ke bottlers and other businesses to put him on top. After he became president in 2000, Fox had no compunction about helping out his former employer. He appointed another former c.o.ke director general, Cristobal Jaime Jaquez, national water commissioner; together, they pushed privatization of much of the country's water network and sold extraction rights directly to big agribusiness and other corporations.

Coca-Cola FEMSA, the anchor bottler in Mexico and the owner of the Chiapas plant, was one of the big winners of the new policy, according to an investigative news report in 2003. In all, FEMSA negotiated twenty-seven concessions to extract water from aquifers and rivers, along with another eight concessions to dump waste in public waters. For all of these, it paid a reported $29,000 in U.S. dollars-a pittance compared with its $650 million in annual profits. According to San Cristobal's former right-wing mayor, Victoria Olvera, the company has continued to pay next to nothing for the community's water, with an outlay of only 1.75 million pesos ($150,000) annually-or as little as three-hundredths of a cent per liter-to the federal government. ”Nothing for the munic.i.p.ality. Nothing,” Olvera told anthropologist Jordan. ”They say, 'We generate employment. ' But there is not as much employment as the damage they cause us, and they could be doing us so much good if they could could pay that tax.” pay that tax.”

Even more than its effect on health of the local community, resentment over water use has turned many in the environs of San Cristobal against the company, making it a symbol of greed in an environment already hostile to American capitalism. Like France in the 1950s, Chiapas has become deeply distrustful of the motives of American corporations. After all, it's the home of the most famous revolution in the last twenty years.

They came out of the jungle on New Year's Day, 1994, wearing black ski masks and carrying a.s.sault rifles as they took control of the main square of San Cristobal de Las Casas. For years, San Cris has been a laid-back tourist town, blending Maya and gringo culture in the cafes and street festivals. Now the tourists locked in their hotels had no idea what to make of the hooded revolutionaries in their midst. Finally, their leader identified himself as Subcomandante Marcos. His comrades, he said, were Zapatistas, after the revolutionary peasant leader Emiliano Zapata, and here to demand land and rights for the indigenous people. It was no accident that the revolutionaries appeared on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented in the United States and Mexico, since Zapatistas saw the free-trade deal as a continuation of the policies that had allowed privatization and sale of their land to ranching, mining, and natural gas interests. out of the jungle on New Year's Day, 1994, wearing black ski masks and carrying a.s.sault rifles as they took control of the main square of San Cristobal de Las Casas. For years, San Cris has been a laid-back tourist town, blending Maya and gringo culture in the cafes and street festivals. Now the tourists locked in their hotels had no idea what to make of the hooded revolutionaries in their midst. Finally, their leader identified himself as Subcomandante Marcos. His comrades, he said, were Zapatistas, after the revolutionary peasant leader Emiliano Zapata, and here to demand land and rights for the indigenous people. It was no accident that the revolutionaries appeared on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented in the United States and Mexico, since Zapatistas saw the free-trade deal as a continuation of the policies that had allowed privatization and sale of their land to ranching, mining, and natural gas interests.

While the Zapatistas stemmed from the Marxist revolutionaries once common in Latin America, they didn't espouse the traditional communist ideology with a top-down command structure. Instead, they supported autonomous village groups that could stand outside Mexico's notoriously corrupt political structure. After clashes with the army in which several hundred people-mostly Zapatistas-were killed, the group renounced violence. Soon the tourists came back, and in greater numbers, as the Zapatistas became a cause celebre among lefty activists. Peace was short-lived, however, as the army raided several Zapatista bases, and paramilitary groups staged ma.s.sacres in several villages known to sympathize with the rebels.

When Coca-Cola Kid Vicente Fox won the presidential election in 2000, he tried to negotiate with the Zapatistas, compromising on a new law to protect indigenous rights and demilitarize Chiapas. After the law had been weakened, however, Marcos rejected it as a joke and the Zapatistas went back to the jungles, where they've remained ever since. Strangely enough, while the Zapatistas have fought exploitation by other foreign multinationals-most recently drug companies they accuse of driving them off their land in search of new medicinal plants-they've had no problem with c.o.ke. Even as Marcos has barred drugs and alcohol from rebel-controlled areas, he has encouraged consumption of Coca-Cola, whose trucks have reportedly been the only traffic allowed through the front lines during skirmishes with the army. ”We have a way to get rid of c.o.ke,” he once joked. ”We will drink every last bottle.”

The revolutionary spirit the Zapatistas kicked off, however, has spurred others to take opposition against the Coca-Cola Company, especially in San Cristobal, where c.o.ke's presence on Huitepec, the sacred mountain of the Maya, is too egregious for some to ignore. Since 2006, Zapatista rebels have manned a ”peace camp” on Huitepec to guard its forest against cutting by logging interests. The real opposition to c.o.ke, however, has come in the city, where a coalition of neighborhood groups under the acronym COCIDEP (Comite Ciudadano para la Defensa Popular) has protested the water rationing faced by residents of outlying neighborhoods, refusing to pay for water and illegally turning their water back on when the water company shut it off. The group has also argued that c.o.ke's consumption should be limited, especially during dry season when there is scarcity. ”We know Coca-Cola is extracting ma.s.sive amounts,” says Cesar Morales, one of the group's leaders, as he sits in the back room of a local cafe. ”They don't ask for public consent. All of the water is from underground-it's the same-so when you open one well, it affects the whole community.”

Since c.o.ke FEMSA has negotiated a twenty-year contract directly with the federal government, however, COCIDEP has had no legal say-so to limit the company's extraction. Frustrated, the group has joined a local boycott of the company, urging its members to drink fruit juices and traditional indigenous beverages such as pozol pozol. While boycotts of c.o.ke may have worked for New York Jews in the 1960s or s

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