Coca-Colas Dark Secrets in Latin America...

Coca-Cola needs no introduction, the soft drink giant that has dominated the industry for decades with their world-famous soda and numerous other products, subsidiaries, and distribution partnerships. From Sprite to Powerade to Dasani, the corporation has spread their influence far and wide in the world of bottled drinks.

But underneath the upbeat Santa Claus and polar bear commercials for the beloved fizzy pop lie allegations of a darker side of the company that the majority of Coke consumers are unaware of, a history of accusations of abuse and exploitation in the name of profits, especially in Latin America.

Today we’re going to break down all of these shocking findings from the last few decades, covering everything from claims of hazardous child labor to accusations of union-busting paramilitary death squads, all the way to the alleged destruction of the ecosystem and health of an entire Mexican city.

Coke’s Alleged Mercenaries

The history of the United States is no stranger to smashing worker’s unions. All the way back in 1921, coal workers in the state of West Virginia who attempted to unionize were fired from their jobs and subsequently evicted from their homes, with some high-ranking members even being murdered. The situation between the strikers and the government escalated, eventually resulting in a five-day battle between the miner’s union and the United States Army during which more than a million rounds were fired and over a hundred people were killed.

But while such blatant acts of anti-union violence are far removed from the American public in the modern era, the same sadly can’t be said for many nations around the world, where anti-union violence is still common. What’s shocking is that in many instances, it is American corporations that are at the center of the allegations. This, of course, includes Coca-Cola, who in recent decades has been the subject of numerous lawsuits and claims accusing the company of using violence to suppress workers’ rights in Latin America.

Most of these anti-union accusations come from Colombia, a nation with a long history of battling for their union rights. For many years, Colombian trade unions were among the strongest and most developed in all of Latin America, but that all came to a sudden end in the 1990s and early 2000s with the rise of powerful and violent right-wing paramilitary groups. These mercenary squads were highly opposed to any sort of union, which they viewed as a radical Marxist invention, and had no qualms about using murder and torture to scare unions into breaking up. Colombia soon became one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a trade unionist, with the country alone accounting for nearly two-thirds of all union-related assassinations in the world.

Coca-Cola bottling plants were among the most affected institutions in the wake of this mercenary violence, and, according to many of the victims, that may not be a mere coincidence.

In 2001, Coca-Cola was sued in a US federal court in Miami by the Colombian food industry trade union Sinaltrainal. The lawsuit alleged that Coca-Cola was not only turning a blind eye to the acts of the various paramilitary groups, but actively recruiting them. Specifically, Coca-Cola management in Colombia was accused of hiring the militant group United Self-Defenders of Colombia to kidnap, torture, and murder union leaders working for the bottling company Panamco.

This lawsuit sparked widespread protest and even boycotting of Coke’s products in several countries as the news spread, with some slogans such as “Stop Killer Coke” still actively spread online to this day.

Among the evidence and testimonies presented in this lawsuit, a few pieces were especially eye-catching. For instance, in 1996, union leader Luis Adolfo Cardona was using a forklift at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in the city of Carepa when he heard several gunshots and saw a group of gunmen flee on motorcycles. The target of their bullets had been another union leader named Gil, who was killed on the scene. Just hours later, Cardona himself was kidnapped by the same gang, and after being tortured, was told that he had to leave the area and break up the union or he would face the same fate as his former co-worker.

A couple days later, the attackers returned, torching the union office and announcing to all employees that if they didn’t officially remove their names from the union list, they would all be killed on the spot. In a move that was viewed by many as highly suspicious, the plant manager had already prepared everyone’s union resignation forms, which they all signed at gunpoint, slashing their monthly wages from nearly $400 down to about $130.

Another notable incident took place in 1996, when several unionized employees were thrown in prison on terrorism charges after a regional chief of security for Coca-Cola accused them of planting a bomb in their factory, though they were eventually released by a Colombian court due to a total lack of evidence. According to an investigation from a New York City delegation:

“These union activists were detained for over six months until the charges were dismissed as without merit by the prosecution. The workers and their families were never compensated for damages suffered, and some report suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder incurred from their experience in prison. Coca-Cola has failed to condemn these workers’ imprisonment on the false charges brought against them by their own subsidiary Panamco.”

And finally, there is the account of 15-year-old David Jose, who was kidnapped, tortured, and interrogated concerning his father’s whereabouts as he was a known union leader for Coke workers in the city of Barranquilla.

Throughout all these years and numerous events, there have been dozens of witnesses who claim to have seen exchanges and handling of money between official Coca-Cola personnel and various paramilitary agents, driving the suspicion that the corporation is more involved than meets the eye.

Another lawsuit was filed in 2006 by the International Labor Rights Fund, or ILRF, accusing Coca-Cola of several human rights violations, for instance that:

“…despite a number of warnings to Coca-Cola management in Atlanta that management in Barranquilla continued to meet with and provide plant access to paramilitaries, the paramilitary infiltration of this bottling plant continued unabated through 2006.”

Along with another complaint outlining how one employee, Adolfo de Jesus Munera Lopez, was terminated on the grounds that he was a fugitive guerilla fighter wanted by the Colombian government, when in reality he had no ties to such activities, and it was discovered that he may have actually been fired for his pro-union attitudes. The Constitutional Court of Colombia even found that the Coke bottling plant was guilty in this case, and ordered his family to be paid damages. Notice how we specified that his family was paid damages and not him, and that’s because Mr. Lopez was sadly murdered long before the case was settled.

Despite the publicity and shocking contents, both cases were eventually dismissed, and Coca-Cola denies to this day that their regional office had any involvement in the violence.

One of the main ways Coca-Cola continues to maintain innocence in these cases is by displaying the results of several independent investigations that cleared the company name, but these have come under scrutiny in recent years. For instance, their official statement on the matter refers to a third-party investigation finding no instance of anti-union action by Coca-Cola in six separate bottling plants in Colombia, but this is referring to a report published in 2005 by a private firm called the Cal Safety Compliance Corporation. Well, it turns out, this firm was commissioned and paid for by none other than Coca-Cola themselves, creating a potential conflict of interest that is hard to ignore. This connection was pointed out by the likes of the Los Angeles Times and even PBS, who created their own entire investigative documentary on the subject.

Another point of controversy lies with the judges involved in the cases themselves. For instance, Judge Jose E. Martinez was the one who dismissed the case in 2001, but it has since been alleged by several victims that he had a potential conflict of interest in the case, as he had several ties to prominent law firms and former partners that had represented or worked closely with Coca-Cola in the past.

Now, as for a truly independent investigation, one of the most well-known comes from former New York City police officer Hiram Monserrate, who assembled a team and traveled to Colombia to interview witnesses first-hand. The team reported that the sheer volume of testimonies was far greater than they’d expected, and they ended up compiling a list of 179 reported instances of human rights violations that allegedly took place in Coca-Cola bottling plants, 9 of which were murders. There have been several other investigations over the years, from journalists to specially formed investigative teams, nearly all of which have indicated that Coca-Cola’s regional management in Colombia is allegedly turning a blind eye or directly ordering many of these events.

If you’re wondering why a company this large would hypothetically go to such extreme lengths to keep unions down, the answer is, of course, money. In 1990, it was estimated that the various Coca-Cola distributors and bottling plants across Colombia had 12,000 employees, 9,000 of which had secured their employment through permanent contracts. However, through the decade of paramilitarism and anti-union action, by 2005 there were less than 1,000 workers with stable contracts, and now, the vast majority of Coke employees are contractors on what are called “flexible” schedules. In theory, these types of flexible hiring practices make it easier to minimize benefits and paid time off, and makes off-boarding unruly employees much easier.

To this day, the violence continues, with union workers regularly reporting that they receive death threats, and with plant managers not hesitating to authorize the police to violently quell factory protests. And, sadly, while Colombia is certainly the epicenter of the accusations, it is not the only Latin American nation with a deadly history surrounding Coca-Cola unions, with Guatemala going through similar issues in the 1970s and 80s.

Child Labor Accusations

On their official website, Coca-Cola has a “Modern Slavery Statement”, throughout which they outline the steps they take to avoid profiting from or supporting various forms of slavery, hard labor, and child labor around the world. The statement is full of interesting graphics, charts, and confident statements by the company showcasing their dedicated position against any form of it.

However, some scathing reports over the years have come in accusing Coca-Cola of just the opposite, specifically in the ways that they acquire their sugar.

A report from Human Rights Watch found that in El Salvador, the sugar cane industry is filled with child labor throughout nearly all parts of the supply chain. For instance, El Salvador’s largest sugar mill, called Central Izalco, provides Coca-Cola with the sugar for its bottled drinks across most of Central America. Throughout an investigation into the matter, Human Rights Watch interviewed nine children between the ages of 12 and 16 that worked in sugar production at this plant, accounts corroborated by adult workers in the same factory.

Now it is true that Coca-Cola isn’t the only transnational company known to use these sugar mills as suppliers, however, they are especially noted as being aware of the factory conditions within, as a representative of the mill told investigators that they had to undergo extensive remodeling in order to become an authorized supplier of Coke.

And taking a brief glance outside Latin America, this is an issue in other places in the world as well.

A 2024 investigation by the New York Times interviewed workers on sugar plantations in India that Coca-Cola uses as suppliers, and uncovered horrifying conditions. After interviewing dozens of people all throughout the supply chain, they found that, for starters, the average work day on these plantations is between 12 and 15 hours long, after which workers sleep on hard mats on the ground.

They also found several instances of young women being forced into child marriages so that they could work with their husband gathering the sugar cane. To make matters even worse, many of these young girls don’t even receive wages, instead, they are continually working to pay off cash advances given to them by their employer for medical procedures.

One of the most popular medical procedures was a full hysterectomy, apparently pressured onto these young girls to solve problems that could easily be resolved in much less invasive ways, but the clinics know that they can get good money for the surgery, and the sugar mills know that if they pay for it, they can keep the young women trapped in employment debt.

When news of this reached Coca-Cola, they responded by saying that they:

“…condemn abuse in any form within our supply chain and take these reports very seriously.”

However, the frustration of human rights activists is that Coca-Cola has allegedly known about these conditions for years, due to a report back in 2019 having already claimed that children were being employed in India to cut sugar cane, even interviewing a 10-year-old girl who performed such work. Coca-Cola has since said that they are funding a program to “gradually reduce child labor” but the criticism of this response is that it’s rather vague.

Likewise, heading over to Africa, Swaziland is a major producer of sugar, and the manufacturing group Coca-Cola Swaziland is the sugar source for the popular drink’s production in around 20 African nations. This fact has recently come under scrutiny due to Swaziland being a nation with insanely high rates of child labor, with a 2010 survey finding that 11% of children between the ages of 5 and 15 being employed, and only 13% of these working children were able to simultaneously attend school. A study launched by Coca-Cola investigated the sugar industry in Swaziland and found no evidence of child labor, but many activists assert that the investigations need to be performed by a third party.

A City Addicted

There are only two nations on earth that don’t sell Coca-Cola, North Korea and Cuba, but while the drink is found essentially everywhere else, no one on the planet drinks quite as much as the citizens of San Cristobal de las Casas, a city in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico. Residents here down an average of more than 2 liters of the sugary stuff, per person, per day, amounting to a yearly per capita consumption of more than 800 liters.

The cause of this excessive consumption is often blamed on the fact that there is little to no clean drinking water available, which is sadly true, but this shouldn’t be the case, as Chiapas is a tropical region with plentiful rainfall and numerous rivers. Unfortunately, while the amount of water looks sufficient on paper, not much is left for the 250,000 residents of San Cristobal, due partly to a lack of critical infrastructure, but also, reportedly, due to Coca-Cola.

Since the 1990s, the Coca-Cola plant in San Cristobal has pulled out an average of one million liters of fresh ground water every single day. This would be enough to give every resident of the city four liters daily, plenty for drinking, cooking, and washing. But instead, this water is used to create various Coke products, such as Coca-Cola, Fanta, and even Ciel, their very own bottled water, which they sell back to the residents.

However, peering into local markets and shops, you won’t even find much of this bottled water, instead, sugary drinks populate nearly every beverage choice on the shelves, with water being so expensive in comparison that it’s rarely even considered by the relatively impoverished citizens.

And if you don’t drink your water from plastic bottles, your only other real option is to drink from the tap, which, if you’re receiving untreated water is an incredibly dangerous endeavor, as a lack of water treatment infrastructure leaves raw sewage contaminating local source. This means that all sorts of bacteria can run rampant in the tap water, and indeed, E. Coli has been found in many samples.

But even if you are lucky enough to have treated tap water, it’s still not a great option for consumption, as this means it is heavily chlorinated. Sure, this means it is free from bacteria, but it is now harmful to your internal organs in many other ways, and should really only be used for bathing.

So, the situation overall is that most people in San Cristobal can’t drink water from the pipes at home, and soda is much cheaper than bottled water at the store, which is why it’s totally understandable that residents gravitate to ice-cold Coca-Cola to quench their thirst.

A security guard interviewed by the New York Times, Ms. Abadia, said:

“Soft drinks have always been more available than water.”

With another resident noting that the town used to be:

“isolated and didn’t have access to processed food. Now, you see the kids drinking Coke and not water. Right now, diabetes is hitting the adults, but it’s going to be the kids next. It’s going to overwhelm us.”

And this observation was spot on. Diabetes rates have soared in the region in recent years, and in San Cristobal it is now the second-leading cause of death behind heart disease. And this doesn’t come as much of a surprise, after all, just one liter of Mexican Coca-Cola has 110 grams of sugar, much more than the daily recommended amount for adults in the United States, and that’s just in a single liter, with, as we pointed out, most residents drinking much more on a daily basis. Piling this sugar day after day for years on end has catastrophic effects on the body, the results of which are now coming to light in this Mexican city.

Another point of contention is the price that Coke pays for said water. Investigations have not only shown that the company pays a disproportionately small amount for what they receive, but the payments also go to the federal government, not to the local government. In this way, the water is not only siphoned away from the city, but San Cristobal doesn’t even get a cut of the profits from it, further hampering their capabilities to build up proper infrastructure.

Throughout the years, there have been several protests by the people of San Cristobal demanding that the legal rights to this water return to the city to allow it to improve its health. There was a 2017 march on Coke’s factory, a large 2020 protest, and more, but the cries for help have all fallen on deaf ears.

The frustration was best summed up by one interviewee who agonized that their city government was defending the rights of a mega corporation’s water, while failing to provide their own citizens with even the most basic of resources.

One activist was quoted as saying:

“They take our pure water; they dye it and they trick you on TV saying that it’s the spark of life. Then they take the money and go.”

As for how Coca-Cola has been able to maintain their presence in the city for so long despite the local protests, investigations have uncovered alleged connections between the corporation and local and federal politicians. After all, the bottling plant responsible for the water usage is owned by FESMA, one of the most powerful companies in all of Mexico, and their former CEO, Vicente Fox, was also Mexico’s president for six years.

Adding to the issue is the fact that San Cristobal is a city with a high percentage of indigenous people, many of whom are taught by their spiritual leaders that Coca-Cola has supernatural powers. The fizzy drink has long made its way into their rituals, and is believed by many traditional healers to have the power to cure various ailments. This makes health advocacy programs all the more difficult in the area, but it makes marketing the product much easier.

For years now, Coca-Cola has run advertisements in the local indigenous languages and has put up billboards showing models drinking their product while wearing traditional indigenous attire. Critics have labeled this marketing strategy manipulative, but there’s nothing inherently illegal about it, so the ads stay up.

Coca-Cola has acknowledged the issues at hand in San Cristobal, and has promised to assist in building proper water treatment facilities, but this has only led to further problems. For example, in 2017, Coca-Cola and FESMA announced their intention to build a small water treatment plant in the city, with the capacity to provide water for around 500 families, but this did nothing but spark protest. After all, in a city of 250,000, 500 families are really just a drop in the bucket, and the notion felt more insulting than helpful.

These issues don’t appear to be reaching a resolution any time soon, and until they can gain access to clean drinking water, for many residents of San Cristobal, Coca-Cola will remain the only affordable drink.

Key Takeaways

• Coca-Cola has faced allegations of union-busting in Colombia, including hiring paramilitary groups to suppress workers’ rights.
• The company has been accused of using child labor in its sugar supply chain in El Salvador and India.
• In San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, Coca-Cola’s water usage has led to health issues due to lack of clean drinking water.
• Coca-Cola’s marketing in San Cristobal exploits indigenous beliefs, portraying the drink as having supernatural powers.
• Despite protests and lawsuits, Coca-Cola maintains its operations in regions with alleged human rights abuses.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main allegations against Coca-Cola in Latin America?

The main allegations against Coca-Cola in Latin America include hazardous child labor, union-busting paramilitary death squads, and the destruction of the ecosystem and health of an entire Mexican city.

What is the history of anti-union violence in Colombia involving Coca-Cola?

In the 1990s and early 2000s, powerful right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia targeted trade unions, leading to numerous assassinations. Coca-Cola bottling plants were among the most affected, with allegations that the company hired paramilitary groups to kidnap, torture, and murder union leaders.

What evidence supports the allegations against Coca-Cola in Colombia?

Evidence includes testimonies from union leaders like Luis Adolfo Cardona, who was kidnapped and tortured, and accounts of paramilitary groups torching union offices and forcing employees to sign resignation forms at gunpoint. Additionally, there are reports of exchanges of money between Coca-Cola personnel and paramilitary agents.

What was the outcome of the lawsuits against Coca-Cola in Colombia?

Both lawsuits filed in 2001 and 2006 were eventually dismissed. Coca-Cola denies any involvement in the violence and points to independent investigations that cleared the company, although these investigations have been criticized for potential conflicts of interest.

How has Coca-Cola been accused of using child labor?

Coca-Cola has been accused of using child labor in the sugar cane industry, particularly in El Salvador and India. Reports indicate that children as young as 12 work in sugar production, and there are allegations of forced child marriages and invasive medical procedures to keep young workers in debt.

What is the situation with water usage in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico?

The Coca-Cola plant in San Cristobal extracts one million liters of fresh groundwater daily, which is used to produce various beverages. This has led to a shortage of clean drinking water for residents, who often rely on sugary drinks instead. The city has high rates of diabetes and other health issues due to excessive soda consumption.

How has Coca-Cola responded to the water crisis in San Cristobal?

Coca-Cola has acknowledged the issues and promised to assist in building water treatment facilities. However, their efforts, such as building a small plant for 500 families, have been criticized as insufficient and insulting given the city’s population of 250,000.

What role do local and federal politicians play in Coca-Cola’s operations in San Cristobal?

Investigations have uncovered alleged connections between Coca-Cola and local and federal politicians, which have helped the corporation maintain its presence despite local protests. The bottling plant is owned by FESMA, a powerful company whose former CEO was the president of Mexico.

How does Coca-Cola market its products in San Cristobal?

Coca-Cola runs advertisements in local indigenous languages and uses models wearing traditional indigenous attire in their marketing. This strategy has been criticized as manipulative, but it has been effective in integrating the product into local rituals and beliefs.

What are the health impacts of excessive soda consumption in San Cristobal?

Excessive soda consumption in San Cristobal has led to a surge in diabetes rates, making it the second-leading cause of death behind heart disease. The high sugar content in Coca-Cola products contributes to these health issues, which are exacerbated by the lack of clean drinking water.

Sources

• Original Into the Shadows video: Coca-Colas Dark Secrets in Latin America…
• Hero image source by openverse, cc0.

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