“I’d like to buy the world a coke!” said a famous Coca-Cola ad. And they’ve pretty much succeeded. Almost every community in every single country on the planet has Coke. In 1985, a low-budget comedy called The Coca-Cola Kid featured a corporate guru hired to get Coke into the only community in Australia where nobody had ever drunk the stuff. A comedy, yes, but it portrayed Coke’s actual strategy to saturate the planet with their addictive brew.
What makes it addictive? In 1898, when Coke began bottling in the United States, they added cocaine to Coke — and didn’t stop until 1929. From the beginning, Coke also added 34 milligrams of caffeine to each 12-ounce bottle. Stimulants like cocaine and caffeine make you feel good! Think how you feel if you don’t have your morning coffee. Coca-Cola mass-produced this affordable highly sugared drink, knowing its addictiveness would make it more successful!
It was highly successful. Globally, Coke grew into a respected pillar of capitalism, right up there with Standard Oil, selling what is nothing more than caffeinated sugar water. And in a capitalist economy, if Coke should reduce its sales for the sake of its customers’ health, that would violate its obligations to maximize shareholder profits.
In blind tests of Coke and Pepsi some years back, most people preferred Pepsi, but when the bottles were revealed, presto! People overwhelmingly went for Coke. Coca-Cola had captured brand loyalty, and it is said that in most countries, people can recognize a Coke bottle in the dark just by the feel of its shape.
But what are the health consequences of a diet of heavily sugared soft drinks? In this issue’s interview, Bruce Hobson tells us about those consequences — the epidemic of type 2 diabetes, lower leg amputations, obesity and other serious health issues in Mexico, the United States and numerous other countries. You might think twice next time you walk into 7-Eleven on a hot day.
Bruce Hobson has lived and worked for decades in Mexico. He bears the distinction of being a “deportado” — deported from Mexico! After the Zapatista uprising in 1994, the Mexican government charged that his health work with Guatemalan refugees was “a front for gathering international support for the Zapatista army.” Bruce is a founder and co-coordinator of the Mexico Solidarity Project, living in Guanajuato, Mexico. He’s a member of the socialist organization Liberation Road.
When did the Coca-Cola company first introduce Coke to Mexico, and what was their strategy to get people to drink it?
Coca-Cola began making Coke in 1921, over a hundred years ago. Their market strategists realized that to gain a foothold in Mexico, they’d have to understand people’s traditions. How do you enter a culture where for thousands of years people have been drinking teas, coconut milk and fruit drinks? They decided to present their strange manufactured drink slowly and somehow make it attractive to masses of people.
Of course, it helped to add caffeine, cocaine and lots of sugar. Once you drank it, you wanted more. Even now, without the cocaine, it has two other addictive ingredients, caffeine and sugar.
Pepsi, Coca-Cola’s rival, eager to get in on the action, arrived in Mexico in 1929 and quickly became even more popular. It vastly outsold Coke up to the 1970s.
What then accounts for Coke, becoming the most successful drink in Mexico today?
Back in the 1960s, young Coca-Cola truck driver and future president, Vicente Fox Quesada, began a personal campaign to outsell Pepsi. He once openly bragged that he’d punch the tires of Pepsi trucks and remove their bottles before they could be refilled. In a word, years before Mexico’s neoliberal period, Fox was a small-time gangster for Coca-Cola.
In 1968, Coca-Cola got a leg up by buying a principal sponsorship of the Mexico Olympics. It also invested in a huge advertising campaign, posting signs even in the remotest parts of Mexico. Their logo — in red with their special font — entered people’s subconscious.
Neoliberal economics sparked Coke’s next big jump in sales. In 1988, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the newly elected president, promoted the selling off of Mexico’s natural resources and public energy industry. His negotiations with the United States and Canada culminated in the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, allowing foreign-based companies easier penetration of the Mexican market. As a result, Coke became cheaper.
In 2000, Vicente Fox, rising within the Coca-Cola company from truck driver to national director, was elected Mexico’s first president from the right-wing PAN party. Fox admitted that $7.5 million for his presidential campaign came from a Coca-Cola grant to Vision Mexico, a US-based foundation that his wife, Marta Sahagún, chaired. Vicente Fox’s financial and political success was enmeshed with the Coca-Cola company — it was said he drank 12 Cokes a day.
To boot, Coca-Cola is owned by Fomento Económico Mexicano, or FEMSA, a Mexican multinational beverage and retail conglomerate. It not only operates the largest Coca-Cola bottling group in the world, but also the largest convenience store chain in Mexico, OXXO. You can find an OXXO, and Coke, on every street corner in Mexico. In rural areas, a store with a dirt floor and a wooden counter will have Coke. It’s a national staple, like corn!
Mexico has serious water shortages. Does Coke production affect the availability of purified water to the population?
Almost 85% of Mexican territory is grappling with a serious water shortage, including metropolitan Mexico City, home to nearly 23 million people. Although one state in Mexico actually has sufficient water — Chiapas — one-third of Chiapas communities, largely indigenous, don’t get enough of it.
In the historic capital of Chiapas, San Cristóbal de las Casas, FEMSA has a bottling plant with rights to sell to much of Latin America. Where does the water come from? FEMSA has permits to extract 300,000 gallons of water, or 1.14 million liters, each day from the Huitepec volcano basin, with very little left to the people.
In 2022, AMLO proposed halting beer production in Northern Mexico, which requires massive amounts of water, due to severe water shortages. His proposal highlighted the issue of water scarcity and its pressure on natural resources, but it faced corporate opposition and complex legal and financial obstacles. As with beer, Coke production depends on massive amounts of water. A ridiculous argument I’ve heard is that the beer and soda industries should be applauded because they use purified water.
It’s true, the main way people can get uncontaminated water is from sugary drinks and beer. Different forms of contamination!
So, are you saying that Coke is bad?
Bad doesn’t come close. As a health worker for many years in rural Mexico, I’ve seen how sugar consumption affects people’s health, particularly for poor and working families. We consume too much sugar because it’s in so many products, and sugared drinks like Coke are the most popular ones. In Mexico, as in the United States, Coke is far and away the number one soft drink, although many other brands of sugared drinks are also marketed.
Mexicans drink an average of about 32 oz. a day. I’ve seen kids walking home from the store before school carrying a liter of Coke for the family’s breakfast.
Sugared drinks are largely responsible for obesity — Mexico ranks 25th in the world for obesity levels — as well as for diabetes, heart, kidney and liver disease. Lower limb amputations due to diabetes have skyrocketed. Statistics of early deaths attributed to excessive sugar consumption are greater than deaths caused by smoking and car accidents combined.
Coca-Cola hides these facts, just as the tobacco industry hid the facts about smoking addiction for decades. What did they say? Smoking is a question of personal choice.
So, what is Mexico doing to deal with the health issues related to sugar consumption?
For one thing, President Claudia Sheinbaum has initiated a campaign to promote children’s health nationwide. She announced that beginning in March of this year, comida chatarra, or junk food, will be banned from sale at schools. That includes Coke and all soft drinks. This is a major positive step. But I also understand that people’s habits do not change overnight. Coke is indeed an addictive substance, and sugar and caffeine can satisfy an actual felt need.
For example, do I avoid Coca-Cola? In Mexico, my comrades and I call Coca-Cola Aguas Negras del Imperialismo Yanqui — sewer water of Yankee imperialism — and we laugh.
But when we’re on a long drive, Coke keeps my eyes glued to the road and conversation going, and I love it. Now isn’t that a contradiction!