In many indigenous communities of Chiapas the wave of the boycott against Coca-Cola is rising.  This began many years ago in a silent but alarming way because of the expulsions it has since caused.  When, in these communities, it is proposed to stop drinking the soft drink the immediate question is: What is the alternative?

It is difficult to find an alternative because this also means purified water that the government does not bring by other means.  Nonetheless, we consider that to encounter alternatives, the first step is to stop drinking Coca-Cola.  But so it is in everything.  The consumption habit of a product feeds the need for its production and everything that comes with it.  In this case the use and control of water, the ingredients and all its productive chain.  In other words, we feed the same capitalist system, its system of production but, at the end, of consumption.  A system reproduces itself if there is consumption.  The cycle can be broken for a moment and it is then that the consumer has the last word.  If there is no consumption, there is no production.  In other words, the consumer has the power to change reality by changing his/her consumption.  The same Coca-Cola FEMSA says in its document, “System of Quality Coca-Cola, Evolution II, Political Principles and Norms, September 1999”: “By perfecting our system, we continue to reduce costs.  By doing so, we increase our customer satisfaction, which is vital to increasing sales.”

Chiapas is one of the Mexican states that consumes the most soft drinks and at the same time is first place, together with Oaxaca and Guerrero, for greatest poverty and malnutrition.  But it would be difficult to find alternatives if soft drinks are always at hand and sedating us from thinking of other possibilities.  In some communities they have launched the prohibition of Coca-Cola and recuperated the consumption of pozal, a drink made from maize, which will have a favorable impact on the production, consumption and value of maize in those same communities.  On the other hand, for a person living in an urban environment that has taken on the boycott, the response has been to go to the market and buy lemons, papaya, watermelon, oranges and other fruits that come from rural communities that they did not consume before, in order to give flavor to the water that they drink daily with their food instead of Coca-Cola.  This, in another way, allows for the recuperation of indigenous and rural production, increasing value and circulation for their products.

But in the urban population we are confronted with another obstacle: consumption in the mega-stores.  This is the case of supermarkets like Sam’s Club, Chedraui, Gigante, amongst other stores that Wal-Mart is slowly taking over.  This is what happened to Chedraui in San Cristóbal de las Casas this year.  In its inauguration, the majority of the people ran to buy at the store that was already overflowing with customers.  Meanwhile, the indigenous people and peasants were waiting in the open-air market for their usual buyers.  For some of the “original” ladinos full of discrimination and spite for the indigenous (even though the ladinos live off the indigenous because tourists come to see the indigenous, not the ladinos), they were filled with joy that they would no longer have to go to the “dirty indigenous market.” 

But the worst part is that many indigenous people also filled this store to buy products that come from Mexico City and these, in turn, from the United States, thanks to NAFTA.  So, everyone left with their bags full of potatoes, tortillas, tomatoes, meat and many other items that they used to buy in the local open-air market.  What to many signified the arrival of “development” to San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, for others will mean fewer sales of products from their land and an acceleration of the rural and indigenous migration to the city and more to the United States.  Many will say that it does not affect anything, but those who now shop in Chedraui used to shop somewhere else.  And even though we get sick chickens, meat frozen for years and full of hormones, milk with excrement and flies, corn-fed cows and cornmeal mixed in the flour for the tortillas, and other products that the United States empire has cast off, people still believe it is better because it is from the U.S.

Food determines and marks cultural norms.  The indigenous Maya have their festivals timed with the cycle of maize sowing.  Their drinks were once made from maize.  Even clothing reflects the maize and biodiversity of the region.  For example, the women have on their dresses drawings and colors of the flowers and reflecting the live color of the mountains, not camels from the Saharan desert.  The Chinese plant rice and their culture, life, parties, drinks, etc., are built around rice and its production dates.  If the indigenous people that plant maize stop doing it and plant, for example, African palm, eucalyptus, rubber, cantaloupe, watermelon or some other product for export, they will change their rhythms of life, festivals, symbols, etc.  They will no longer have time to celebrate local holidays that are built around the life cycle of corn because other products they are growing will simply not give them time.  Clothes change and consumption does, too.  Now we see many people reflecting what they eat in what they wear, such as t-shirts advertising McDonalds, Sabritas brand snacks, and other products.

The 1998 Human Development Report indicated that there are “world elites” and “world middle classes” that have the same style of consumption, showing a preference for “global brands.”  As even the UNDP pointed out the dangers that the processes of globalization contain for consumer rights, it is impossible to negate the hegemonic imposition of a globalized culture of consumption has negative effects on the condition and welfare of minority or indigenous groups.  Fleur Johns noted in relation to the Aboriginal communities of Australia, “without a positive right to determine their own cultural future, the Aboriginal communities do not have any international means to oppose the progressive processes of homogenization and cultural expropriation.”

THE EXPULSION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE FROM THEIR COMMUNITIES

In addition to the Coca-Cola advertising that invades the landscape throughout Chiapas, using indigenous culture and photographing them for their publicity, Coca-Cola also puts its stamp on other scenes: the expulsion from their lands.  So, a community of Teopisca receives more families who were ejected from the indigenous county of Mitzitón for the imposition of Coca-Cola than for any other reason.  Let’s review the story.

In the county of Teopisca Manuel said that “we are not alone anymore in this, we have been against this soft drink that caused so much division in the community we lived in.  We were a group of families that suffered many arguments in the community of Mitzitón where we were run out by the leader and we were all obligated to buy the soft drink from his store, this so he could sell 20 boxes per week.  Sometimes we had to do what he said because he pressured us and said that if we did not buy from him, we would be responsible for closing the community store and he would not sell us the other things we needed (salt, sugar, medicine, among other things).”

Then, the population began to reject Coca-Cola consumption.  “After many occasions on which we fought to not have this imposed upon us, for example in every meeting of the council of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), all of us that were on the council had to cooperate to buy eight or nine boxes of Coca, for us it was very difficult to get money, sometimes every fifteen days or every month to be giving money for this devil’s soft drink, because we only fought because we did not all agree to buy Coca.”

But someone helped Manuel open his eyes.  The catechist of the community “began to talk to us about his work against this Transnational.  We were talking with the catechist who sometimes helped us with the Word of God for three years, and I even went to talk to the agent of the pastoral and the priest and he listened to us that we were not in agreement with drinking Coca.  We were still very angry about this, because in the community where we lived in Mitzitón the only person who got rich was Mr. José Sántiz, the county authority, who had as his charge the community store; it was an agreeable arrangement for him because the Coca Company gave him a refrigerator, chairs, tables, advertisements and other gifts.”

Manuel recounted that “because of this we formed this community, well it already existed, but there were very few families living here in this place.  Now we seem to be about 60 families that have left Mitzitón because they were threatening us that if we did not buy more soda, they threatened to beat us; they burned the house of one of my friends because he did not back down, not like those of us who put up with it, and he opposed it and because of that one day when he went to San Cristóbal they burned his house and when he returned he was crying and very sad because he had lost everything.  After that they threatened all of us that were opposed to buying soft drinks.  We thought the best thing would be to leave the community and we came here to this community, where we all live in peace but we do not drink Coca-Cola, just other drinks like Pepsi or juice, but juice is very expensive, so we more often drink pozol that God and Mother Earth give us.  The doctor who worked in Mitzitón realized everything that had happened to us, she treated us, we had stomach pains, the children did not want to eat, because Coca-Cola made them sick and causes gastritis.  Now we are better and we do not have problems amongst ourselves.”

In another indigenous region of the highlands of Chiapas the indigenous leaders who control Coca-Cola distribution threatened the company that they would not let it enter if it took away their business of receiving and distributing the soft drink in their communities and their stores.  Coca-Cola sought to bring the soft drink directly to the stores and not leave it in rural warehouses for distribution, and in this way save the money they were paying on commission.

In the indigenous county of Chamula, Coca-Cola has a huge market.  Its strategy was to invade the cultural, political and economic life.  Coca-Cola has become a substitute for “posh” (a fermented maize drink) in the prayers in the temple.  This is the drink of festivals and any event of the indigenous authorities in the region.  It is used as medicine and its bottle is a vase for every ritual, including weddings, feasts of the patron saint, or to venerate the dead.  The authorities also control the sale of Coca-Cola while Pepsi Cola looks for a way to introduce its products.  Nonetheless, this is what happens everywhere.  In the westernized culture there are no wedding parties, quiceñeras (traditional celebrations for a girl’s fifteenth birthday), or business parties; or in dances, restaurants, or bars; in informal meetings, in popular marches, in meetings of NGOs that call themselves progressives, in acts that are supposedly very cultural and of intellectual importance, etc., that do not understand if there is no Coca-Cola.

There is one more example.  Areli Carreón of Greenpeace Mexico shares with us the story of Marco Antonio Tafolla, of the indigenous community of Xoxocotla, in the state of Morelos, who tells of how they got Coca-Cola out of their community.  “Xoxocotla is an indigenous community in the state of Morelos where it is easier to find beer and soft drinks than milk.  One day, the Coca-Cola Company advised store owners that if they wanted to keep selling their products, they would have to stop selling the drinks of Pepsi and Boing.  No one in the community liked this: ‘Who does Coca-Cola think it is to decide what we can sell and what we are going to drink?’ everyone said.  They met in the plaza and in an assembly decided that this company would not enter in their community.  From then one, every time one of the trucks arrived they got together to impede its access to the community.  The company not only renounced its (illegal) aim to make sales of its product conditional on their exclusivity, but it also had to apologize publicly and finance the painting, awnings, refrigerators, tables and chairs of all the stores in Xoxocotla in order to be able to sell its products again.  Even then, many in Xoxocotla stopped drinking Coca-Cola.”

This problem is not exclusive to indigenous communities.  Under a contract signed in 1997, the Colorado Springs school will receive 8.4 million dollars over ten years to sell 70,000 boxes of Coca-Cola products per year.  The company pressured the school administrators to increase sales, giving them greater and unlimited access to machines and allowing the students to drink in class.  The company said that it was planning to extend this model throughout the nation.  (The Nation, September 27^th, 1999, from www.geoties.org)

In another indigenous community in Chiapas they decided not to drink Coca-Cola and seek ways to increase the value of their products that the free trade agreement had taken from them because they could not compete with the highly subsidized gringo products.  Before they looked outside, and now their challenge was to look inside.  Before they saw everywhere the oranges thrown aside and going bad, the lemons forgotten like rugs on the back porch, the pulp of mangoes squandering and the infant malnutrition in every home.  Now these products are beginning to have value again; the value which the community wanted to give them.  Now they have posed the challenge of how these lemons signify lemonade that can be sold in schools, the oranges can be sold with hot chilies and lemon instead of junk food.  These alternatives are possible, as small as they might be, to combat the neoliberal spirit that we carry inside.  It is possible to have healthy food on the table.  It is possible to live without Coca-Cola (it is incredible that it has to be said).

“For a healthy, just, equitable world in harmony with nature.  The alternatives to Coca-Cola are the promotion of an internal market, consuming drinks made of fruit bought from producers in your bioregion”: www.raj.org.mx

For more information: www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/0/c9d4170921a4d7cc802567c40035d979?OpenDocument; www.raj.org.mx; The Nation, September 27^th, 1999 in www.geoties.org; CIEPAC, www.ciepac.org; COMPA, www.sitiocompa.org

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