The Coca-Cola Company lent out some of their warehouses so that the military could torture  union leaders or opposers during some of the military dictatorships of Guatemala, Argentina and Colombia, among other countries.  Some say that after the word, “okay”, “Coca-Cola” is the most recognized term in the world.  There have even been movies made about Coca-Cola.  It is the symbol of American society and of an empire that, as in Iraq and other places in the world, ruins highways and roads but does not repair them.  What it does do is make its way to the last community, hamlet or village in the remotest parts of the planet.  Jack Schofield, a British engineer, assures us that a certain amount of Coca-Cola, mixed with gasoline, will prolong the life of a motor by four times, produce 20% more power and reduce the consumption of oil.  At any rate, people use it as if it were the same as purified water because there is no running water or they use it to refresh themselves.  It has been suggested that it be used for people with low blood pressure; to alleviate headaches, indigestion or any other stomach problem.  Coca-Cola can even be sprinkled onto a meat fillet for grilling.  Others say that pants soaked in Coca-Cola do not fade in colour.  Even doctors recommend it as a medicine while others state that it takes 72 hours for the stomach to stop being black after its ingestion.  It is a cause of gastritis in rural communities and even quarrels in the indigenous community of Chamula, Chiapas, where there is competition between the consumption of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola.  And therein lies the key; the weak point of any transnational is the will of the consumer.  Some indigenous communities in Chiapas and down to Honduras have launched a campaign to boycott the consumption of this drink.  The campaign is so conscientious that, even when dying of thirst, Jose, for example, a Honduran campesino, will not grab a bottle of Coca-Cola.  However, there is a dilemma:  what is the alternative?

In some sources we find that one can of Coca-Cola contains the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar for tea; one-third the amount of caffeine as in a cup of coffee and the same amount as phosphoric acid as orange juice.  Until recently, it was the largest consumer of sugar.  Today it is destroying the sugar cane production industry because it is importing the high sugar-content corn sweetener originating from transgenetic corn in the United States to sweeten its drink.  The Coca-Cola Company has also been identified as the company that consumes the most coca leaves in the world.  It requires the importation of more than 500 tonnes of the coca leaves from Peru and Bolivia in order to complete the ingredients of its famous 7X formula.  This is one of the reasons why it is said to generate addiction if consumed in excessive amounts.  The global expansion of Coca-Cola made the aggressive behaviour of the transnational possible, imposing consumption over the cultural traditions of the peoples.  Or, simply substituting traditional cultural drinks with Coca-Cola, even in the most ordinary celebrations of western and eastern cultures.  Let’s look at its expansion process at the beginning of the 20^th century.

THE THIRD COCA-COLA EPOCH

We are back in 1919.  In the month of August the Georgia Bank of Deposits offered its associates the opportunity to purchase a share in the Coca-Cola Company, one share for each share that they had in the bank and only if they deposited $195 (U.S.) per share for a five-day period, with the promise to return $190 (U.S.) one month later.  The shares were sold at $40 (U.S.) each and almost half of them were acquired in Atlanta.  The “Atlanta Constitution” newspaper announced on its front page: “Coca-Cola bought by an Atlanta society.  The Georgia Bank of Deposits acquires the national drink.”  The Candlers were suddenly very rich since they received $15 million in cash and $10 million in preferred shares.  Nonetheless, Asa Candler didn’t know anything about it until his sons signed the option.  He refused to attend the business board meetings where they approved the sale.  He was consumed by sadness.  His wife, Lucy, had died of cancer months earlier and now the magnate, stripped of Coca-Cola, felt betrayed.  The dirty history gets darker.

The company continued to grow.  An original Coca-Cola share from 1919 would be worth 1, 152 shares in 1991, as well it would provide an accumulative dividend of $10 000 (U.S.).  If the dividends of one original share had been reinvested in Coca-Cola, the $40 (U.S.) per share, or just $5 for union members, would be worth almost two million dollars today.  With one of the $100 (U.S.) Candler shares in 1892, today one would have $2 000 million (U.S.).

Entering into the decade of the 20’s, we enter a time when the company, for the first time, puts propaganda signs on roads and highways.  It enters into radio publicity for the first time.  Its expansion is such that it creates the Foreign Department to co-ordinate its sales in other countries.  At that time Coca-Cola was selling in China and it arrived for the first time in Spain.  In 1920 the largest shipment of sugar ever received in Georgia, 4 100 tonnes, arrived in Atlanta.  In 1921, Coca-Cola had a bad experience in Europe when the soda caused poisonings.  They hadn’t advised the bottlers that the cork stops that were used had to be sterilized and that they had to use distilled water and not alkaline water because the bacteria in the drink quickly reacted on contact with the cork producing a toxic drink.  But the greatest company error occurred in 1923.  Pepsi-Cola was in bankruptcy and it once again offered all of its shares to Coca-Cola.  And again, Coca-Cola refused to buy.  Nonetheless, Pepsi survived the crisis.  Another ten years would pass before the third and last offer to sell Pepsi to the Coca-Cola company would take place, an offer that was again, refused.  In this same year, Robert W. Woodruff was elected president of the Coca-Cola Company.  In this way, he recouped the investment he’d made when he acquired 3 500 shares in 1922.  During his management he was criticized for the low salaries granted to employees while the multi-millionaire watched his fortune grow.

At Christmas 1925, Coca-Cola modified its labour strategy.  To supposedly “motivate” its salespeople, Coca-Cola fired them.  The brand sold itself.  At the beginning of 1926, it contracted them once again as “service assistants”.  In 1926 the Coca-Cola Company contracted the Pinkerton Detective Agency to investigate the bars, they ordered a Coca-Cola and took samples to be chemically analysed to demonstrate possible falsifications.  It is said that they found more than seven thousand falsifications.  When Coca-Cola filed charges, they won every case.  In 1927, five years into his management, Woodruff stated that sales had increased noticeably, going from 64 million litres in 1923 to 87 million litres in 1927.  With money in abundance he took the preferential shares out of circulation leaving Coca-Cola free of debt.  From the $65 (U.S.) in 1923, the Coca-Cola shares had risen to $200 (U.S.) in 1927.  This same year, Asa Candler, the second owner of the Coca-Cola Company, died.

We find ourselves in the year 1928, which marked a special path for the Coca-Cola Company in the world.  At the same time as the sale of the soda in bottles surpassed the sales through dispensing machines, the Coca-Cola Company, from this year forward, would mark like a tattoo, the Olympics Movement with financing and propaganda.  In Coca-Cola’s official publication, the “Red Barrel”, it announced in 1929 that it was already present in 78 countries although it was only being bottled in 27 of them.  Its special edition read: “Few Americans  know that Coca-Cola can now be found in the Plaza de Toros in happy Spain or Mexico; in the stadium of the Olympic Games; in Holland, the land of canals; at the height of the Eiffel Tour; behind the Buddhist temple of Rangoon; in remote Burma and near the Coliseum of historic Rome”.  Coca-Cola found its greatest expansion with the slogan, “The pause that refreshes” and it installed the first illuminated sign at Times Square in the streets of New York.  By 1929, Woodruff would own a 12 000 hectare estate in south-eastern Georgia – a game reserve – and he would frequently travel from his house in Atlanta to his flat in New York or his ranch in Wyoming. 

Seventy-four years ago the great world depression arrived.  In the collapse of the stock market on the 29^th of October, Coca-Cola held fine and its shares didn’t vary much, between $134 and $137 (U.S.), but rather their value increased bit by bit to $200 (U.S.) per share in 1935, making it the highest of the industrial shares.  As with present governments, at this time they did not know where to get money.  The governor of Georgia proposed the revival of an ancient tax on profits.  Woodruff then threatened to move the company to another state before paying taxes.  And that’s what he did, Coca-Cola was transferred to Delaware for a decade until the laws in Georgia were modified.  There was even a company soda to record the moment:  “Delaware Punch”.  During this time a journalist was even paid to write two weekly columns against the tax on the drink; articles that were published in almost 100 rural newspapers.  And naturally, copies were sent to influential businessmen and members of the General Assembly.

The political pressure of the Coca-Cola Company went even farther.  To expand, the company needed to import more coca leaves but the United States Congress only permitted the entrance of 90 tonnes of coca per year.  In the year 1931, Woodruff dedicated himself to lobbying congress and with the help of the senator of Georgia, Walter George, he managed to bring about a project that allowed the importation of additional coca leaves so long as the company was responsible for destroying the alkaloid.  Just in case, Woodruff had travelled secretly to Peru to try to install a factory there.  Nonetheless, with his lobbying and his discreet financial support to anti-narcotics organizations and congressmen, he achieved his objectives. 

Greater profits, paying fewer taxes, allowing greater consumption of coca, installing itself wherever there was the most water, paying little to the workers and having the Olympic Games forever linked to Coca-Cola, were not enough.  In 1931 it managed to enter into religious feeling and the religious heart of the entire western world whose commercialization would establish the business in the most distant of cultures.  We are referring to the figure of Santa Clause or Pere Noel, as he is known in the Nordic countries.  Nobody remembers now but this character was represented in the colours of green, blue, black and yellow.  The reinvention of Santa Claus was thanks to Haddom Sundblom of Swedish origin, who, for many years, was an illustrator for Coca-Cola even though he didn’t like the drink.  Sundblom thought to represent the character as a jolly and affectionate grandfather, with a big beard, good-natured and chubby, happy and dressed with a belt, hat and black boots.  And something essential:  with the trademark Coca-Cola colours.  Since then we’ve all swallowed it.  Every child has waited for Santa Claus below the chimney of his house if he had one or, if he didn’t, he imagined one, so that Santa would leave some gifts.  For the past decades it has been difficult for many sectors of society to conceive of Christmas without this character and without Coca-Cola.  Rich or poor children; from the north or the south; Catholics or Evangelicals, can have their photo taken seated on the lap of the Santa Claus that circulates the streets of New York or in front of the Coca-Cola Christmas tree that the company installs in front of the Cathedral of San Cristobal de Las Casas, in Chiapas, where the company also sets up a nativity scene with a Coca-Coal star while the bishop is unable to do anything. 

But let’s return to the decade of the 30’s.  The Board of Directors of Coca-Cola was not satisfied with the presidency of Howard Candler, son of Asa Candler, who was the second owner of the trademark.  So, the company presidency was offered to Robert Woodruff, son of Ernest Woodruff, then-present owner of Coca-Cola, even though his father did not agree with the idea.  But Robert, as vice-president of the White Motor Company, earned $75 000 (U.S.) plus commissions, while Coca-Cola offered him an annual salary of $39 000 (U.S.) and Walter Teagle was offering him the presidency of Standard Oil with an annual salary of $250 000 (U.S.).  So Robert, who at the time was 33 years old and not stupid, decided to price out his services and he made a counter-offer to Coca-Cola:  he would accept the presidency on the basis of a salary plus 5% of all the annual increases in business sales and the condition that he would have full powers without opposition from his father.  Obviously, Ernest Woodruff rejected his son’s idea, but it was finally accepted and Robert Woodruff assumed the presidency of the Coca-Cola Company in 1932 where he would remain for decades.  During his management he converted the business into one of the largest transnationals in the world.  In 1933 Pepsi-Cola for the third and last time wanted to sell the company to Coca-Cola but the company decided against it.  It would regret this decision even to this date.

Ernest Woodruff initiated the expansion of the transnational.  He managed to have Coca-Cola penetrate the education sector, in all of the colleges.  A bottler in Texas decided with pride that, “the kids should play basketball at the parks with Coca-Cola balls, they should use Coca-Cola erasers, consult Coca-Cola thermometers, and write their notes in Coca-Cola notebooks”.  However, some school directors were not so willing to accept free publicity.  Woodruff, at a special dinner with his directors, told them that the success of Coca-Cola tended to strengthen “financial independence” (a characteristic of multinationals).  One of them delivered a brief discourse titled, “Tomorrow”: “There will be animosities and afflictions.  Men will feel extremely irritated, and their feelings will be put to the test (…) wars could arise.  We can survive them.  Revolutions could break out.  And we will remain.  The four horsemen of the apocalypse could ride on the Earth and return and Coca-Cola will continue to exist.  The theme of lasting, he concluded, was that Coca-Cola is not the yesterday, it is the tomorrow.”  Coca-Cola managed to root itself so deeply in gringo culture that in 1938 it was named, “the drink of excellence of the United States”.

But the talents of Robert Woodruff went even farther.  He easily thwarted governments and competing businesses.  Bit by bit he took over the original bottling companies, one after another.  Nonetheless, he did make what would be his historical error.  More than 40 years had to pass before Pepsi-Cola would, after offering its sale to Coca-Cola, manage to strengthen itself in the market.  In the thirties it consolidated itself and since then it has been in legal disputes with Coca-Cola.  In 1939 it had legal disputes in 24 countries.  Pepsi brought up charges in the patent office alleging that “Coca” and “Cola” were descriptive terms and could not be registered exclusively.  Walter Mack, the president of Pepsi, received a telephone call from a widow of a Coca-Cola imitator, who told him:  “Coca-Cola is going to eliminate you from the industry.  My husband was also right but they eliminated him.  I still have a photocopy of the cheque that they gave him.”  Mack asked to borrow the photocopy, which revealed that Coca-Cola, through bribery, had achieved victory for the amount of $35 000 (U.S.).  Given this proof, the lawyers for Coca-Cola requested a recess of three days.  Then Robert Woodruff phoned Mack asking him to have lunch with him.  The Coca-Cola magnate said to him: “I’ve been thinking.  This dispute between us isn’t good for anybody (…).  Don’t you think that we should come to an agreement?”.  And they did.  Woodruff signed a deal in which Coca-Cola would recognize the Pepsi trademark in the United States, now that the company was owner of all the names that included “cola”.

In 1939 World War II began and while Europe was fighting war, the Coca-Cola Company was gaining strength discerning information about the economies of other countries, their politics and even their cultures.  At the time, the Coca-Cola men in Germany were selling almost 4.5 million bottles a year.  Forty-three factories were in operation and another nine were being built.  Marshall Goering permitted the importation of the secret ingredient 7X in order to produce Coca-Cola, though he actually intended to nationalize the company and expropriate the formula.  At the time, then publicist William C. D’Arcy (1942), suggested: “Coca-Cola is not the fundamental necessity, as we would like it to be.  It is an idea – it is a symbol – it is the trademark that distinguishes an inspired talent.”  The war united politics with trade.  At the beginning of 1940, the governor of Georgia requested special treatment for the soda companies and it was approved by unanimous vote:  “what is good for Coca-Cola said the governor, if good for Georgia”.  In that way, Coca-Cola returned from Delaware to its birth city after exempting itself from the taxes that had caused it to flee, this, in the same year the company had an advertising budget of $10 million (U.S.).  Nonetheless, there was another problem that it would have to avoid.  The United States Congress had approved a plan to prohibit the importation of coca leaves that were not for medicinal use.  But the war solved all the obstacles for Coca-Cola. 

THE FOURTH STEP:  COCA-COLA ON THE WAR FRONT

The allied countries were desperate and they wanted the Gringos on their side, with their money and their help to fight against Hitler and his German forces.  Japan’s bombing of the American islands of Pearl Harbour in 1941, not only helped get the United States to enter into World War II and in doing so it would get out of the depression that had begun in 1929 by reactivating the economy and basing it on the growth of the military industry, but it was the key moment allowing the transnational Coca-Cola to arrive to the most unsuspecting corners of the world, to the most remote soldier on any war front.  The president of the Coca-Cola Company, Robert Woodruff, “The Boss”, decided to launch a patriotic and commercial campaign for the trademark:  “We endeavour to have every man in uniform receive a bottle of Coca-Cola wherever he is and at any cost to the company.”  In this way Coca-Cola put into motion its most ambitious plan with the goal of building bottling plants that would supply the United States army.  Among the military, the personnel of the company was known as “Colonel Coca-Cola”, now that they used military clothing and they had military rank according to their standing in the company.

Thus, Coca-Cola shifted its personnel to the battlefronts.  From New Guinea to the Mediterranean, the company followed the American soldiers through all of the continents, except Antarctica, supplying them with more than 10 000 000 bottles and installing 64 factories.  The assembly costs were paid for by the government.  Coca-Cola sent out a contingent of 248 men throughout the world.  The technicians that installed the factories behind the front lines were considered to be as important as the mechanics that repaired combat vehicles and planes.  In 1941, an army Health Inspector prayed to his superiors to send Coca-Cola to his soldiers, now that the lack of the drink was considered to be the greatest calamity the troop suffered.  It may seem that we are exaggerating but we aren’t.  The French cannot live without their wine, nor a Mexican without his tequila, an indigenous person from Chiapas without his posh, an Uruguan without his mate, a Bolivian without his chicha, a Russian without his vodka nor a Scot without his whisky.  Hence, a Gringo soldier without his Coca-Cola.  In fact, in the cards of the American soldiers on the war front, incredible things are narrated.  For example:  “Today is a special day.  We all received in the stock supplies a bottle of Coca-Cola.  This might not seem too important, but if you could have seen all of these individuals who have been sailing for more than twenty months, hold their bottle close to their chest, running toward the stock supply store … and just looking at it … they didn’t know what to do.  Nobody has yet drank their Coca-Cola, because after they have it will be all gone, everything will have passed (…)”.  (Soldier Dave Edwards in a letter to his brother, Italy, 1944).

Another wrote:  “… If somebody were to ask us why we fight, I think that half of us would answer:  for the right to buy Coca-Cola in peace.”  (Soldier Tim Dorsey in a card addressed to the company, France, July 1944.)  In the same year another card said, “… you would have thought that your son had his head out in the sun for too long, but two days ago we walked 16 km to buy a case of Coca-Cola and then we had to carry it another 16 km to return to the company.  You can’t imagine how good it tasted …” (Soldier Allan Davidson to his parents, Normandy, 1944).  However, to some historians of the trademark, the true Coca-Cola addict was Ike Eisenhower, who, in addition to becoming president of his country, was also president of a Coca-Cola bottling plant.  A path similar to that of current Mexican president, Vicente Fox.

In 1941, Coca-Cola created its Sprite soda.  A year later, when the war worsened, Coca-Cola stopped importing to Germany.  The Germany business owners of the bottling factories, among them, Max Schmeling, world boxing champion, had to find another way to keep their factories running.  After going in thousands of circles, they invented a new soda that today is known as Fanta, born under the Nazi regime.  In Nazi territory, during full battle and making Coca-Cola a trademark “non grata” (not welcome), the bottlers dared to include the phrase, “a product of Coca-Cola Gmbh” on its labels, and in doing so having a certain amount of quality guaranteed on the face of it to the national consumer.

But Coca-Cola did not cease to increase its profits.  In 1943 it sold more than 3 million boxes, although the majority of the time it was used to sweeten teas given that sugar was rigorously rationed.  For its part, to maintain an equilibrium with the Nazi government, bottlers were obliged to lend out their delivery trucks for the transportation and delivery of water.  To avoid having the Fanta bottles destroyed during the continuous aerial raids, they were stored in caves and mines filled with water to resist the vibrations.  But despite all the efforts to save the bottles, nothing could be done to preserve the factories.  The 43 bottling factories were destroyed.  Toward the end of the war, the Nazi government urged the company, under threats to deport them to concentration camps, to change their name within two days.  Curiously, Hitler committed suicide days later.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS...

-          Today, Coca-Cola’s greatest output machine is in Germany.  It has a capacity for 864 cans (although in 1946 in the United States there was a cold-storage machine with greater capacity containing 1 098 bottles).

-          In 1923, Coca-Cola was sold in every non-alcoholic bar in the United States and according to company standards it should be served at 0°, with crushed ice, in a bell-shaped Coca-Cola glass and with a mark indicating the level of the drink.

-          In 1924 the “standardization” of the product and its outside image began.  Employees wore a uniform, a striped white and green bottle shirt and green pants; and the trucks were to be yellow and red with black tires and fenders.

-          During the 30’s, the commercials by famous actors began: Claudette Corbert, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Carole Lombart, Loretta Young, the movie Tarzan  and Olympic swimmer Johnny Weismuller, Maureen O'Sullivan; Spencer Tracy and Joan Crawford who later would marry the president of Pepsi-Cola.

-          In the 30s, the Delta Airlines airline company was the first to serve the drink to its passengers.  Its Fokker planes carried the Coca-Cola logo on its wings.

-          Among the criteria for using the trademark in publicity in the 30s were:  the trademark Coca-Cola could not be separated into two lines; the phrase, “registered trademark” always had to appear on the signature stroke of the first “C”; it could not be expressed or implied that Coca-Cola could be a drink for children of a young age.

-          General McArthur signed the first bottle produced in the Philippines plant.

-          The hero of Bataan, General Wainwright, was photographed in full force with the three most American symbols:  a baseball bat, a hamburger and a Coca-Cola.

-          In 1930 the company created the Coca-Cola Export Corporation.   The first refrigerated Coca-Cola machine appeared. 

-         In 1935 the first automatic bottle dispensing machines for offices and factories were made. 

-          In 1937 the first keg dispenser with a spigot was presented at the Chicago World Fair. 

-          In 1942 Iceland was the first European country to have a bottling factory installed in wartime, and it won the record for consumption per capita of any country in the world including the United States.  Today the United States and Mexico are the greatest world consumers of Coca-Cola.

-          In 1942 Otto Dietrich, press chief of the Nazis, declared that, “the Americans haven’t given anything else to the world except for chewing gum and Coca-Cola”.

-          The first bottle distributed in full wartime came from the bottling plant in Oran, Algeria during Christmas 1943.

-         Soviet soldiers said of Coca-Cola: "ETO ZDOROVO" (It’s magnificent!).

-          During the war, a bottle of Coca-Cola cost 5 cents; but it rose to a price between $5 and $40, which is an increase of 100-800%.

-          It is said that Mary Churchill, daughter of the British Prime Minister, baptized the Marina Real destroyer with a bottle of Coca-Cola; and that in the battle of Bulge, a priest, given the lack of wine, consecrated with Coca-Cola.

-          In the first months of 1945 a group of German prisoners, arriving in New York and seeing the advertisements for Coca-Cola, were surprised because they thought that it was a German trademark.

-          The radio transmissions of the Japanese Empire proclaimed that, “with Coca-Cola we have imported the bad germs of American society”.  A few years later, Japan would be the greatest consumer of the drink in the Asiatic countries.

-          The China of 1949, governed by Mao Tse Tung was isolated behind the “Bamboo Curtain”.  This event caused terror in the company given that one of its basic ingredients for the secret formula 7X was the cinnamon from China.  However, Coca-Cola carried on with its business with the Chinese via London.

Sources: Luis Capilla, “Multinationals, the Voracious Planetary Octopuses”; Coca-Cola Company; Joan Bonet; Tanga Word; CokeWatch; Polaris Institute; Mark Pendergrast, “God, Country and Coca-Cola”; Alison Gregor, “Coca-Cola: The Global Religion”; “Coca Cola, A Business Story of Terror and Crime”, Sinaltrainal/Rebelión, September 3, 2002; The Swiss Support Group, “Colombia Never Again”; Sinaltrainal; Information Bulletin on Trade and Development, No.10, April 2002, Guatemala.

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