The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [79]
Along with the proliferation of advertising, Coke 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, Coke distributors told a forty-something shopkeeper named Raquel Chávez they’d stop delivering Coke to her store unless she got rid of a Peruvian import called Big Cola. Chávez reported them to the Federal Competition Commission, which fined the Coca-Cola Export Corporation $68 million for unfair competition. (“You may call the shots everywhere else, but I’m the boss in my store,” she told the BBC.)
Coke’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 Coke 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 Coke 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—the homemade sugarcane rum seen in the Chamula church. In part, the drinking was pushed by the village elders, called caciques—local political bosses who tightly controlled pox production and profited from its sale.
When Nash lived in the nearby village of Amatenango in the 1960s, boys and men drank pox daily in both religious and civil ceremonies, holding competitions 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 turned to a new drink that was just then beginning to penetrate the market: Coca-Cola.
In many communities, the same caciques who monopolized production of pox retained the concessions to Coke and later Pepsi. In some, such as Amatenango, concessions were granted politically, with officials of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) controlling Coke and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) controlling Pepsi. It was easy enough to substitute the new drinks for many of the same rituals that previously used pox (though in some cases, such as the church in Chamula, pox is still maintained in limited quantities). Those owning the concessions of the soft drinks became rich, reaping huge profits in villages with little other commerce or industry, and passing 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