In the county of Chenalhó in Chiapas, at the moment in which there were 10,000 people displaced by the paramilitaries and the army in the context of the massacre of indigenous people in the community of Acteal, when hunger and malnutrition punished the region, “To help the diet of the indigenous peoples, Coca-Cola gives away bags of beans in exchange for soft drink lids.”  “The presence of said soft drink is so striking that a group of notable people, amongst whom were Pablo González Casanova, Alfredo López Austin, Ofelia Medina, Samuel Ruiz Garcia, Raúl Vera, Juan Bañuelos and Victor Flores Olea, wrote a letter last August to the President of the Republic in which they asked: “Mister Vicente Fox, we want to know if the National Development Plan includes the idea that the nutrition of the Mexican people is based on the consumption of Coca-Cola.  This question, at first outlandish, originates in the fact made clear by the aggressive and limitless advertising that makes this drink and in the price that is charged to indigenous communities of Chiapas, 2 pesos, in contrast to the 5 that it costs in stores in any other store in the city of the Mexican Republic.”  (Hermann Bellinghausen, “Aggressive Campaign of Coca-Cola from Chenalhó to Acteal,” La Jornada, Saturday, November 3rd, 2001.)

Years before, in the middle of the rising wave of inconformity against the price raise, Coca-Cola/FEMSA raised prices by 7% for all soft drinks in its line.  Meanwhile, in 2000, with the new price liberation in Mexico, milk prices rose by almost 50% and its consumption dropped to 20%, according to the Federal Consumer Agency (PROFECO).  For its part, the Mexican Association of Studies for the Defense of the Consumer (AMEDEC) confirmed that almost 83% of the population did not include milk in its diet due to its high price, and revealed that annual sales of milk represented almost half of what the country spent on drinks.  According to AMEDEC, the consumption of soft drinks “constitutes the gravest distortion of our dietary habits, on that moreover brings the ingestion of empty calories, with no protein, vitamins or minerals.”

The authors of the book Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations, Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Miller, wrote in 1974 that Coca-Cola was responsible for rising malnutrition in Mexico and affirmed that Mexican families often sold their eggs and chickens to buy Coca for their father.  Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Co have frequently been targets for the anti-North American sentiment.  In 1974, for example, some Mexican Coca-Cola plants were bomb targets.

The multinationals of the food sector are dedicated to producing food with low nutritional value and high economic benefit.  The networks of distribution of the soft drink industry work to perfection, assuring easy access and availability of their products at any hour and in any place, through the soft drink distributors, for example in institutes, high schools, universities and other public places.

COCA-COLA PRESSURES YOU TO BUY

Under a contract signed in 1997, the Colorado Springs high school will receive 8.4 million dollars over ten years to sell 70,000 boxes of Coca-Cola products per year.  The company pressured 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.

COCA-COLA BEHIND LAND PRIVATIZATION

In 1985, it appropriated 78,914 hectares of land in Belize for a mega-plantation of citrus fruits to be processed in Florida.

COCA-COLA BENEFITS FROM FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS

When NAFTA took effect, industries of Mexico, among them Coca-Cola, initiated the importation of high fructose corn syrup from the United States at lower prices and subsidized by the United States government.  In this way, they stopped buying sugarcane from Mexican producers, which aggravated the rural crisis and increasing migration to the neighboring country, increased the sugar sector’s debt and left 600,000 tons of sugar at a standstill.  In 2000, NAFTA established that surplus Mexican sugar would enter the United States market, but this closed the door.

The Mexican legislature then placed a tax on high fructose corn syrup against the wishes of President Vicente Fox, who was also president of Coca-Cola in Mexico.  In March 2003 the National Chamber of the Sugar and Alcohol Industry studied the possibility of placed a demand against Coca-Cola and other bottlers for adulterating the sucrose sweetener with high fructose syrup from transgenic corn in the United States, in order to evade the payment of 20% that was imposed on drinks processed with fructose (La Jornada, March 21st, 2003).  In December of the same year legislators approved a tax of 20% on mineral water, soft drinks, hydrating beverages, syrups and concentrates that use 70% of the fructose; and 30% of these are free of the tax (Fourth Power, December 9th, 2003).  The United States interposed a complaint to the World Trade Organization with the aid of China, Canada, the European Union and Japan.

COCA-COLA DISPLACED THE INDIGENOUS POPULATION

In Chiapas, in Teopisca county, Manuel said that “we have been against this soft drink (Coca-Cola) for three years that has caused 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 cartons 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).”

COCA-COLA INVADES CULTURE

Santa Claus does not exist; he is an invention of Coca-Cola in 1931.  Formerly, the Russians celebrated the festival of Saint Nicolas, patron saint of Russia, but in the communist period the celebration of religious festivals was practically prohibited.  The authorities created Ded Moroz to replace Saint Nicolas (a tall, skinny man with a long white beard who lives in the jungle).  This “father winter” has a long cloak that in Soviet times was blue but currently is red with gold.  Ded Moroz travels in a troika, a Russian sleigh, tied to six horses.  Meanwhile, the Italian children were visited by a good witch named Befana who gave them presents.  And in this way each culture had its own history of a character who gave presents to children.

In the indigenous county of Chamula, Coca-Cola has achieved with its strategy that the soft drink invades 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.  But the same thing happens in Ladino and western cultures.  In 1999 we, the Mexicans, gave the Coca-Cola Company 10% of its world profits, and on average each Mexican consumed 431 eight-ounce glasses, which add up to more than 16,000,000,000 box units.  Monterrey, the second-largest city in the country located in the northern state of Nuevo León, consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other city in the world.   Monterrey is also where the headquarters of FEMSA, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in Latin America and the Caribbean, is located.  But in any place you can find a person who consumes more than 10 bottles daily of Coca-Cola.

At the entrance of the city of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, where the foreigners control almost 90% of the real estate of the historic center, a lettered sign says: “Welcome to San Miguel de Allende, Coca-Cola territory,” which was a territory of the indigenous Chichimecas until the end of the 16th century, and now is Coca-Cola territory at the end of the twentieth century.

On December 12th, a day profoundly religious for Mexicans because it is the day in which the Virgin of Guadalupe, in the Chiapan capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Coca-Cola organizes the “Coca-Cola Nativity Caravan” throughout the city with the slogan “Illuminating the streets this Christmas,” with illuminated, allegorical cars and distributing gifts.

COCA-COLA SELLS CONTAMINATED WATER

In San Cristóbal, Chiapas, in the year 2000 the results of the tests of the “process water” conducted by the Kampe laboratory that Coca-Cola Femsa contracted, registered double the level of permitted lead for legal sanitary norms, but the production did not stop.  Then, consumers reported that the Agua Ciel of Coca-Cola found slime inside a closed bottle.  It was verified that two lots of the Agua Ciel product of the Villahermosa Plant had growth of fungus, due to which they had to recall the bottles from stores.  At the end, they had to exchange approximately 100 boxes of Agua Ciel in stores of San Cristobal; some shopkeepers complained because Coca-Cola personnel asked them for contaminated bottles but did not give them any new ones in exchange.

The Coca-Cola factory in Plachimada, India, has contaminated the ground, water and air since it arrived in 1998.  The wells have dried up and the little that there is in the community with 2,000 families is no longer good for drinking.  Coca-Cola illegally extracts water from six wells and in other dry wells it throws it its contaminated residues.  Faced with this, Coca-Cola began to distribute water in trucks for the communities.  The authorities have arrested more than 300 people opposing Coca-Cola.  In October 2003, the government threatened to cancel the well operation.  In January 2004, hundreds of protesters marched in India in protest against Coca-Cola for the contamination of water and the presence of pesticides in their drinks.

In 1999, the countries of Belgium, France, Holland and Luxembourg took all Coca-Cola products off the market (Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Light, Caffeine-Free Coca-Cola, Caffeine-Free Coca-Cola Light, Sprite, Sprite Light, Nestea, Nestea Splash, Acuarius in lemon, orange and grape flavors, Bon Aqua and Kinley tonic) because there had already been 200 cases of contamination registered.  There was an excess of CO2 in the bottles and the presence of fungicides.  There were cases of poisoning and excessive destruction of red globules in the blood, which can cause anemia, renal insufficiency and, in extreme cases, death.

COCA-COLA CREATES MONOPOLY

With the purchase of the bottlers Panamanian Beverages (Panamco), FEMSA of Mexico became the biggest Coca-Cola bottler in Latin America, and the second largest in the world, after the United States.  Coca-Cola FEMSA announced that it would sell half of the Coca-Cola soft drinks in Mexico and represent 40% of Coca-Cola sales in Latin America.  Now it bottles, distributes and sells products with the registered Coca-Cola brand name in nine countries in Latin America.

The Mexican government, through the Federal Commission on Competition (CFC), has rejected exclusive contracts that prohibit a Coca-Cola seller from selling another brand of soft drink.  In 2000, Pepsi-Co accused Coca-Cola of monopolistic practices in the Mexican soft drink market.  The local soft drink makers Aga and Mundet joined the accusation before the authorities.  Coca-Cola was reproved by the CFC for forcing agreements of exclusivity at points of sale.  It was then calculated that of the 900,000 points of sale in Mexico, Coca-Cola had exclusivity in 100,000.  It also maintained 41 exclusivity contracts with companies that would only distribute Coca-Cola products, such as Azteca Stadium, the Interamerican Training Corporation (CIE) in its shows, and McDonald’s, among others.  At this time, Adriana Medina Balladares, sub-director of corporation communication of Coca-Cola Mexico indicated, “It is important for us to have permanent presence of our brand in places where there are great concentrations of people or in establishments where consumption is important.”

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.

The University of Montana in the United States signed in 2002 a contract of exclusivity with Coca-Cola for 4.3 million dollars, which provoked a boycott campaign against the consumption of Coca-Cola amongst students and professors.  With the city authorities of Lancaster, Philadelphia, and Coca-Cola signed an agreement that gave the government a percentage of profits for advertising Coca-Cola as official drink of the city.  In Colorado Springs, schools signed a contract with Coca-Cola in 1997 to obtain a percentage of profits if they sold 70,000 Coca-Cola products per year, but the low sales obligated the schools to start a Coca-Cola consumption campaign to the point where they were allowed in classrooms.

The European Commission investigated Coca-Cola in 1999 for alleged illegal practices in Germany, Austria and Denmark, including offering companies incentives that are illegal because they harm competitors.  Among these incentives was to give prizes to stores that sold the most Coca-Cola, or filled their shelves to the maximum with Coca-Cola, and giving discounts for exclusivity.  “The dominant corporations cannot expel their competitors, pressuring their clients to buy less from their competitors,” said the European Competition Commission.  The same European Union announced in February 2004 that it would press charges against Coca-Cola for unfair competition: the United States multinational will face in June the accusations of the European Commission, which accuses it of signing exclusivity agreements with supermarkets so that its products appear in the first row.

COCA-COLA AND THE FOBAPROA

The Coca-Cola bottlers have benefited from the most scandalous bank fraud in México.  Miguel Fernandez Iturriza of Argos Group appears in the lists of FOBAPROA.  The Argos and Zaragoza groups are two of the most important in the entity.  Argos is the Coca-Cola bottler for Juarez, Sonora, Baja California and Sinaloa, and is a big construction company in Ciudad Juarez.  According to the Democratic Revolutionary Party of Mexico, it is in a little more than 228 million pesos of debt “that could be as much as 325 million.”

COCA-COLA DISCRIMINATES AGAINST ITS WORKERS

Even though in the Ethics Code of FEMSA Coca-Cola in Mexico it says that “No one will be discriminated against for reasons of sex, civil status, age, religion, race, physical capacity, political preference or social class,” a man who worked in Quimiproductos in San Cristobal, Chiapas, was fired because he suffered an epileptic attack in the plant.  There they also require pregnancy tests of female workers seeking employment.  One worked said that, “I worked as a secretary, and because I did not accept invitations to go out with the plant manager, he had me working until late at night.”

In Africa they have refused to give HIV/AIDS treatments to workers and their families, when the company has decades of making money thanks to the cheap labor of 100,000 Africans that work in plants on the continent, for which Coca-Cola is the largest private employer in Africa.  According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), 20,000 people infected with AIDS are workers.

In November 2000, Coca-Cola settled a lawsuit, paying a record $192.5 million dollars to 2,000 black workers.  The company was accused of racial discrimination for deliberately denying African Americans adequate payment, promotions and evaluations.  Personnel stated that Coca-Cola paid its workers of color around $27,000 per year, less than half that of white employees, and limited opportunities for workers of color to internal promotions.  In January 2002 a Coca-Cola worker filed a lawsuit against the company for racial discrimination.  The lawsuit was filed because the company “treated him/her in less favorable terms and conditions than that of white employees in the same situation.”  The employee accuses the company of denying other black employees opportunities for promotion.

Racial discrimination is nothing new for Coca-Cola.  In 1950, Coca-Cola did not have a director of color, even though Georgia is a southern state that has a black majority.  They had to wait until the middle of the decade for Ebony magazine, edited by and for people of color, in which the black race appeared for the first time.  In February 1961 the owners of Woolworth’s, in Greensboro, United States, refused to serve Coca-Cola and hamburgers to four black students, provoking protests.  Shortly thereafter, the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) demanded that blacks appear in Coca-Cola advertisements.

COCA-COLA FIRES AND KILLS WORKERS

Coca-Cola cannot be understood without the neoliberal process, the voracity of transnationals for the resources of developing countries, the processes of Structural Adjustment and, among them, the labor reforms that affect the rights of workers such as: freezing salaries; eliminating worker unions; eliminating collective work contracts; eliminating social loans (credits for housing, health, etc.); firing older workers and with these the processes of future indemnities; eliminating retirements and pensions; eliminating profit-sharing; converting all work into temporary labor; appropriating workers’ savings and keeping them in banks to the benefit of the banks; lowering costs for equipment necessary for worker security; using massive layoffs; extorting workers, demanding extra hours without pay, or threatening to give the job to another employee who needs it; these among many other actions affect the workers.

The case of thousands of workers fired by Coca-Cola in Columbia is well-known, with intimidation and threats to union organizers, even assassination by paramilitaries.  In 2003, more workers were killed in a Coca-Cola factory in Bolivia.

In Tapachula, Chiapas, FEMSA bought the bottler Tacaná in the year 2000 and they immediately closed the plant and fired all the manufacturing employees.  In recent years there have been layoffs in Columbia of more than 10,000 Coca-Cola workers who were replaced by temporary workers.

COCA-COLA AGAINST THE UNION ORGANIZERS

Members of the CROC union, controlled by Coca-Cola and accused of corruption, assaulted workers at a bottling plant in Villahermosa, Tabasco, with sticks to keep them from affiliating with the National Union Benito Juarez.  The Coca-Cola Human Resources Manager, Hector Mendoza, ordered chains placed on the entrances of these installations and did not let any worker leave until very late so that they were not witnesses to the beating and did not unite with the dissidents.  The dissident workers were impeded from using their right to vote in the union by the plant’s security personnel, such that they were thrown inside and beaten mercilessly.  During this time, some hundred people blocked the road leading to the plant, demanding that the Governor seek reparations from Coca-Cola for the damage suffered and that the company reintegrate the fired workers, reestablishing the rule of law and respect for human rights.

In Chiapas since the beginning of the System of High Performance in the FEMSA bottling plant, they have fired at least 25 people, the majority trusted workers.

In 2001, in the United States Coca-Cola paid $20.2 million to settle a demand of 1,100 workers who asserted that the company cheated them out of pay for extra hours.  In 2002, nine Coca-Cola employees denounced the company for cheating workers out of more than $200,000,000 in pay over a period of four years.  In the workers’ complaints, they allege that the company has bosses who manipulate the electronic clock-in system to eliminate hours worked.  Other workers affirmed that they were pressured not to seek payment for the extra hours to their bosses, who would scold them and put them down.

COCA-COLA POLLUTES THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE PEOPLE

A Coca-Cola plant in Chiapas produced an ammonia leak that affected neighboring houses.  Earlier, in 1998, in Mexico City, the Coca-Cola Export Corporation was one of two plants that did not comply with the program to reduce by 30% or more their industrial activities in response to the environmental emergency.  In Panama it polluted the Bay, for which it was fined.  In India it polluted peasants’ lands with its waste and its government also sanctioned Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Co and Nestle for having painting advertisements on the walls of the Himalaya and through a pass considered of great ecological value.  The fine was 4,000 Euros for the charge of “commercial vandalism.”  The judge’s ruling indicated that none of the companies asked permission and that the damages were “irreparable.”

COCA-COLA FINANCES WAR

In March 2003 in Europe unleashed a boycott campaign against U.S. corporations that were involved in financing the war on Iraq or for representing the North American economy that was profiting from the war.  In the city of Bayonne, France, the workers in the Triki bar emptied out the Coca-Cola bottles into the street sewers.  In Berlin, Germany, many restaurants stopped selling Coca-Cola.  This campaign against U.S. transnationals was against Budweiser beer, Marlboro, McDonald’s, Kodak, Starbucks, and Dunkin´ Donuts, among others.

In October 2003, the government of Iran fined the Coca-Cola Company 7,250 million dollars for not meeting its obligations under a contract signed in 1993 with an Irani company to invest 15 million dollars, as well as appropriating all of the property of the Irani company.  Coca-Cola Company argued that it did not invest because it had to comply with the economic sanctions that the United States placed on the Islamic Republic.

COCA-COLA EXPLOITS CHILD LABOR

Human Rights Watch documented the employment of children up to nine hours daily on sugarcane plantations in El Salvador for the Coca-Cola Company when its Code of Conduct stipulates that, “No child labor, as defined by local laws, will be used.”  For this work, the children used machetes and other knives.  Almost all of the children interviewed by Human Rights Watch for its 139 page report, Turning a Blind Eye: Hazardous Child Labor in El Salvador´s Sugarcane Plantation, said that they had suffered cuts on their hands or legs from cutting cane.  As much as a third of the workers of the plantation in El Salvador are less than 18 years old, many of whom began to work in the fields when they were between 8 and 13 years old.  The International Labor Organization estimates that at least 5,000 and up to 30,000 minors work in the Salvadoran sugar plantations.  El Salvador establishes a minimum age of 18 years old for employment in dangerous jobs and 14 years old for other forms of labor.  Frequently, there is no medical attention available on the plantation, and the children have to pay the costs of medical treatment.

COCA-COLA DOES NOT SUPPORT EDUCATION

In Chiapas, Coca-Cola announced that it is donating a rural indigenous school.  Millions of dollars in profit and more than 100 years of existence, so why is the company suddenly interested in aiding the education of indigenous boys and girls, the population that has most consumed it for decades?  Because of the possibility of water privatization.

The children who work on sugarcane plantations in El Salvador and who go to Coca-Cola plants generally miss various weeks or months of school.  In a rural community in the northern part of the country it was calculated that 20% of the children in the school did not attend during the sugar season.  Other children stopped going to school altogether.

Coca-Cola spends more on advertising than in aiding education.  From 1995, Coca-Cola had an annual budget of $500 million in advertising for Mexico, which is equivalent to the annual income of 685,000 poor people, who earn two dollars daily.

COCA-COLA HARMS YOUR HEALTH

Some of the ingredients in Coca-Cola can be injurious to your health, such as phosphoric acid, which is a corrosive used in industrial situations as an additive and the effect of the acid is used to clean motors or loosen oxidized screws.  In the body, it causes demineralization, which means that it does not permit adequate calcium absorption by the body, debilitating bones and thereby increasing the possibility of fractures.  Moreover, the combination of this acid with refined sugar and fructose hinders iron absorption, which can cause anemia and make it easier to catch infections, principally in children, the elderly and pregnant women.

The cola soft drinks contain a “potentially addictive” substance, caffeine, which is a stimulant to the nervous system when it is consumed in moderate quantities (20 mg.), more if it is consumed cold, which produces pleasant sensations, but if it is ingested in elevated quantities (400 to 600 mg.) it can provoke insomnia, tachycardia, headaches and even anxiety attacks.  One can of Coca-Cola contains approximately 50 milligrams of caffeine.  This substance is principally dangerous for children.

Coca-Cola also contains carbon gas that, according to AMEDEC, is an ingredient that provokes “psychological addiction.”  In reality, drinking Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola is drinking carbon dioxide.  Coca-Cola owes its characteristic color to an additive called e-150, which has been associated with a deficiency in vitamin B6, which is important for the metabolization of proteins and the health of the blood.  Its deficiency can cause anemia, depression, and confusion amongst other symptoms, as well as causing hyperactivity and low levels of glucose in the blood.

When Coca-Cola utilizes high fructose syrup from transgenic corn from the United States to sweeten the beverage, it places the health of its consumers at risk, because the effects of genetically modified foods on human health have not yet been adequately studied.  On the other hand, the sugars that the drink contains gradually dissolve enamel, which weakens the teeth and produces cavities.  And not only that, the sugars that are not used by the body transform into fat, making a possible consequence becoming overweight and even problems with obesity.  Historically, diabetes has been associated with adult patients, but lately there has been a rise in cases of this illness in overweight children and teenagers.  Currently, there are 22 million children under five years old who are already overweight.  Diabetes is an illness that principally affects the eyes, kidneys, feet and heart.  One can of Coca-Cola contains approximately 10 teaspoons of sugar, and according to a study published in The Lancet, the probability of a child becoming obese increasing 1.6% with each additional can consumed per day of a beverage sweetened with sugar.

The “Coke Light” that uses substitutes for sugar, or synthetic sugars in large quantities, can cause cerebral damage, memory loss and mental confusion (according to AMEDEC).  The substance that provokes these effects is called aspartame and sustained, it could contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.  Moreover, AMEDEC pointed out that some of the chemical components of aspartame have other grave consequences with excessive consumption, such as damage to the retina and nervous system.  Coca-Cola was named one of the “10 worst companies” of 1998 by Multinational Monitor for “filling American children with sugar and soda water.”

LA COCA-COLA PRESSURES THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

            In 2003 the World Health Organization (WHO) tried to produce a report advising of the dangers of excessive sugar consumption and recommending that this not comprise more than 10% of the diet.  The big transnationals tied with sugar tried to impede publication of the document, and as such the WHO denounced them.  It reported that the sugar association that includes such giants as Coca-Cola and Pepsi threatened that it would pressure the U.S. Congress to take away the subsidies that it gives to the WHO if it did not withdraw the document.

            In a recent report, the WHO advises restricting the sale and advertising of soft drinks because of the relationship between the rise of illnesses such as obesity and diabetes and the aggressive soft drink marketing.  Obesity is one of the diseases that is increasingly affecting industrialized nations, and the rate of obese children is rising rapidly.  In England and Scotland, for example, the rate of obese children between four and eleven years has risen over the past ten years by 2% and 2.8% respectively.

            Obesity in children and adolescents affects the entire body and can cause, in addition to grave physical problems, psychological problems such as depression, eating disorders and low self-esteem.

Sources and for more information: Colectivo “No a la Guerra”, Boicot a Transnacionales Estadounidenses noalaguerra@tutopia.com; ¡Otro Mundo es Posible!, Boletín No.3 octubre 2003, CRIPDES, El Salvador; The Japan Times, March 27th, 2003, p.13; www.consumers-against-war.de; Milenio Diario, December 8th, 2000; (Cuarto Poder, December 9th, 2003); www.mtcp.co.uk/Coca-Cola; El Mundo, España, October 4th, 2003 and March 2nd, 2004; www.indiaresource.org/campaigns/coke; www.club.telepolis.com/leyendas urbanas/creencias/cocacola.htm; Coca-Cola: The Dark History of the Black Cola, Part One, Boletín Chiapas al Día No. 382, CIEPAC, www.ciepac.org; Refrescos de Cola, ¡aguas!, Raúl Serrano. Salud Y Medicina http://www.saludymedicinas.com.mx/; México campeón. En el consumo de refrescos del Cola, AMEDEC, compiled by Dr. Luis Santos López Jefe del Departamento de Servicios Médicos de la Universidad Tecnológica del Valle del Mezquital; Afirman que Aspartame produce daños cerebrales, Salud Colombia, www.saludcolombia.com/actual/salud39/noveda39.htm; La diabetes es la peor epidemia en Estados Unidos. CNN en español / Salud, www.cnnenespanol.com/2003/salud/10/07/diabetes.epidemia.reut/; Coca-Cola admite que sus refrescos en Bélgica estaban contaminados, El Mundo, www.el-mundo.es/noticias/99/junio/15/sociedad/belgica.html; La India confirma la venta de refrescos con pesticidas, María Sainz, www.elmundosalud.com; Solidaridad.net www.solidaridad.net; La obesidad aumenta el riesgo de diabetes en niños, www.pediatraldia.cl/obesid_diabetes.htm; Investigadores encuentran relación entre obesidad y diabetes en los niños y adolescentes, Dra. Wanda Figueroa Cruz, Salud y nutrición, www.saludnutricion.com/scripts/salud.dll/Obesidad_y_diabetes_en_los_ni%C3%B1os.htm; Mother Jones Magazine, January 21st, 1999, www.geocities.org; GMT, April 22, 2003; www.ideas.coop; Hermann Bellinghausen, Agresiva campaña de Coca-Cola de Chenalhó a Acteal, La Jornada, Sábado, 3 noviembre, 2001; www.cimacnoticias.com/noticias/02sep/02091101.html; OneWorld.net, Oct 17, 2002; www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/0/c9d4170921a4d7cc802567c40035d979?OpenDocument; ¿Quién manda en México, Fox o la Coca-Cola? Línea Directa; AF, La Jornada, March 3rd, 2004; March 19th, 2004 Reuters, www.cnnenespanol.com; www.elmundo.es/nuevaeconomia/2004/213/1079360229.html; www.cedarena.org Foro Social del agua Zona Sur; www.consumidoresint.cl Consumers International.

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