'Coke Lords' Wield Power in Mexico
CocaCola, Pepsi are Used to Mete out Justice, Political Favors

By Julie Watson
Chronicle Foreign Seruice

San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico

In the United States, the longrunning battle for market share between
Pepsi and Coke is so numbingly familiar to consumers that it has faded to
the background of consciousness.

But in Mexico's turbulent southern state of Chiapas, where ancient Mayan
traditions mingle with modernday society, the U.S. soft drink giants have
expanded their influence beyond mere thirst quenching into the realms of
spirituality and politics.

Coke and Pepsi have become an integral part of sacred rituals. Some
traditional healers believe the carbonation helps them belch out evil
spirits. And cola distributors are a privileged class in the desperately
poor Mayan villages.

"Coke and Pepsi have coutributed to the creation of a small group of
powerful people in the indigenous villages," said Marcelino Gomez Nunez, a
Tzotzil Indian and state legislator from the opposition Democratic
Revolutionary Party (PRD).

"They are our indigenous brothers who were lured by the money and now rule
over the people."

More than 400 Maya Indian leaders decided recently to dilute that power by
declaring that they have had enough of America's favorite soft drinks. At a
meeting of a council that represents 180 mountain villages, the leaders
pledged to boycott Coke and Pepsi.

They stated their cause in the name of good health and cultural
preservation. But their attack is also aimed at the power base of a
peculiarly Chiapan institutionthe cola lord.

Soft drink concesmons have long been a tool for the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its local chieftains to wield power over
indigenous people at th~ village level.

In a decadesold practice, nonIndian PR leaders have offered land, trucks
and soft drink concessions to Indian leaders in ex change for quietly
blocking agrarian reform petitions and labor complaints againxt landowners.
By the late 1960s, many of those same Indian leaders occupied top posts in
local governnent and the local PRI.

"The majority are the money lenders of the community," said Walter Morris,
an American anthropologist who has lived in Chiapas for over two decades.

Morris says the cola habit was grafted onto a traditional Mayan custom of
bringing a modest gift when talking to an official or discussing a business
deal.

"Whenever someone asks for a loan, they bring a soft drink. That's how it
all got started," he said.

"Concession owners also have a network of communication. Their trucks go to
all the hamlets. This has given them massive political control."

In Tenejapa, Coca Cola concession owner and PRI Mayor Sebastian Santiz Luna
makes no bones about how Coke made his life sweeter.

Once a destitute Tzeltal Indian youth with barely enough food to eat, he is
today a powerful figure in the community striding through town sporting
two gold front teeth, aviator glasses and a cellular phone on his hip.

Nicknamed "El Rey" (the king), Santiz is flanked by his "advisers," two
robust Indian men wearing cowboy hats, traditional black wool ponchos and
flaming red andyellow kneelength trousers. Santiz won his mayoral post by
defeating his main rival in business and politics, Sebastian Lopez, known
as "E1 Pepsi."

Coke sales shot up during Santiz's successful run for office. "People
bought tons of Coke," he ~ recalled. "Why? Because they su~ I port me."

Residents say Santiz and Lopez have ruled Tenejapa through what they call
"cola justice."

As punishment for many lowlevel crimes, the guilty party must buy the
victim a case of Coke or Pepsi, depending on which administration is in
power.

Although this puts money in the distributors' pockets, they defend the
practice as effective in defusing tensions.

But cola also has more blunt uses. During Lopez's reign, political
opponents were often jailed and then forced to buy cases of Pepsi for the
town.

Lopez says his critics "are envious that I can earn a living. They say we
distributors are powerful, but we are not. If anything, I have helped the
community by donating drinks for festivals so everyone can enjoy a Pepsi."

The Pepsi and Coca Cola companics in Mexico declined to comment on the
political dimension of their products.

Anthropologist and Mayan expert Jan Rus said: "Basically all they're doing
is selling flavored water. I don't think they are aware of the role their
product plays at that level.... It's really awkward."

The cola boycott is a part of the continuing fight for rights and cultural
survival by the indigenous people who were awakened by the Zapatista
rebellion in Chiapas that began on New Year's Day 1994.

Most of the communities participating in the boycott support the
Zapatistas, whose peace talks with the government have floundered amid
disagreement over how to implement an indigenousights accord.

For now, the protesters are refusing to buy the colas. But in the future
they may block delivery rucks from entering the villages.

Indian leaders urge communiies to drink fruit juices and other ocally made
refreshmentsan ppropriate suggestion since the indigenous population is
extremely poor and suffers a high rate of malnutrition.

But change may not come easy. !dexicans are the second biggest onsumers of
soft drinks in the world, behind Americans.

Coca Cola and Pepsi refused to release information on annual iales in
Chiapas. But distributors say they sell more than 14,000 bottles a week
just in the Tenejapa region, where the largest town has less than 3,000
residents.

In the 1970s, encouraged by religious leaders, many Mayan peasants swapped
the local cane liquor called posh for soft drinks in an attempt to reduce
alcoholism.

Today, Pepsi and Coke are part of Mayan and Christian ceremonies. In San
Juan Chamula, scores ' of devout Mayan women wrapped in traditional bright
blue shawls trickle into the small Catholic ~hurch daily to light a candle
and ~ffer a cola to their patron saint.

Down the road in Tenejapa, a huge Pepsi truck rumbled down a partially
paved road connecting the isolated mountain hamlet to the rest of the
state. As it stopped in town, men in floppy straw hats and black handwoven
woolen ponchos gathered to watch teenage boys unload the crates.

An elderly, barefoot Tzeltal woman filled a handknitted net bag with two
dozen bottles, slung the bag's strap across her forehead to balance her
load on her back and shuffled down a dirt path.

It is tradition for a young boy to ask for a girl's hand in marriage by
first offering her parents a case of Pepsi or Coke.

"Prohibiting it will never work," said Antonio Intzin Ramirez, the city
treasurer of Tenejapa and one of the Coke distributor's righthand men.

"How can they? It's a part of our custom."