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Nobody in the world drinks more Coca-Cola and other fizzy drinks than the residents of Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost and poorest state.
In the state’s mountain town of San Cristóbal de las Casas – population 186,000 - locals drink just over two litres of soft drink a day, or around 800 litres a year. That’s more than five times higher than the national average of 150 litres per person per year.
Consequently, Mexico is facing an obesity epidemic and in Chiapas, health officials have declared a diabetes emergency.
Pedro Jiminez lives in San Cristóbal with his mother Maria Ton and brother Roberto.
Pedro plays at a funeral of a person who died from COVID-19. They also had diabetes.
Pedro has been battling diabetes for almost thirteen years.
His entire family have also been diagnosed with the deadly disease.
As a musician, Pedro is often called to play at the funerals of residents who have died too young.
“Sometimes the sadness enters seeing how someone has died. We are all going through this process of dying but the level that diabetics go through, it crosses your mind,” he says.
“I better look after myself.”
Roberto is seriously unwell and doesn’t have the ability to do everyday actions.
“My head has no strength. I almost can’t open my eyes,” Roberto says.
Pedro's brother, Roberto, could be having a diabetic emergency.
His symptoms: tiredness, sweating and confusion are all signs he could be having a diabetic emergency and Roberto’s doctor says too many people in this community are facing the same reality.
In Chiapas, which has a population of 5.6 million people, 3,000 people die each year from diabetes-related illness, making it the second leading cause of death after heart disease.
Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes. Though is it unknown as to whether excess sugar is the main cause, a person is more likely to be diagnosed if they are overweight. Obesity levels in this Mexican state are high, and are linked to the consumption of high-calorie sugary drinks.
The main reason for this is the country’s love affair with the bubbly beverage and some have taken this obsession to the extreme.
'Liquid gold'
An hour away from San Cristóbal lies the Indigenous town of San Andrés Larráinzar
,where Coca-Cola is considered liquid gold.
It’s used by local shamans like Maria Lopez as part of their religious ceremonies.
Maria Lopez is a shaman in the small town of San Andrés Larráinzar.
As Maria aims to cure a diabetic, she prays over bottles of co*ke as incense and smoke from hundreds of candles fill the air.
Situated right next to her shrine is Maria’s own co*ke fridge. She sells around fifty crates a month.
Her perspective on the origins of diabetes differs to the scientific and medical reasoning due to her religious beliefs.
“This drink has healing properties,” she says.
“Diabetes is caused by anger and problems in the family. When we scold each other, when we yell at each other, it turns into diabetes.
“I’m 51 and have never been sick. I have drunk and eaten plenty of soda, liquor, beer and chicken.”
A religious ceremony involving bottles of Coca-Cola.
According to a 2019 study by the Chiapas and Southern Border Multidisciplinary Research Center (Cimsur), each resident of the southern state drank more than 800 litres of co*ke in a year.
This equates to more than 3,000 250ml cups a year.
Why such a large consumption?
With a growing population, safe drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce in a town where some neighbourhoods have running water just a few times a week.
So, many residents drink co*ke produced by a local bottling plant. The beverage can be easier to find than bottled water and is almost as cheap.
The plant is owned by Femsa, a food and beverage conglomerate that owns the rights to bottle and sell Coca-Cola throughout much of Latin America.
The owners are allowed to extract more than 1.3 million litres of water a day as part of a concession with the federal government that dates back decades.
Doctor Marcos Arana is campaigning against the power and influence of Coca-Cola.
“Coca-Cola has developed a strategy precisely so that it’s available everywhere,” he says.
“They convince consumers to sell soft drinks on a small scale and obviously that generates many captive customers.
“According to [Femsa] statistics, they say they have 400 employees
,which obviously doesn’t compensate for the ecological, environmental, social and health impacts.
“They got the concession a long time ago, the situation has changed. The city has grown a lot and there is a greater demand for water now.”
Coca-Cola has developed a strategy precisely so that it’s available everywhere.
Dr Marcos Arana
Coca-Cola says it’s committed to a responsible marketing policy which complies with the laws and regulations in Mexico, pointing to Mexico’s Water Commission which found the concession did not put the populations water supply at risk.
It says it understands water is a vital shared resource and has been investing in conservation projects for over a decade.
The company gets its water from deep underground wells, but the drinking water people rely on comes from overground springs.
Scarce drinking water
Fermin Reygadas is campaigning to improve the town’s water supply, testing the quality of the town’s river water and springs for levels of E-coli bacteria.
“All of these houses do not have sewage and so they are basically dumping their sewage into the river because they don’t have the infrastructure to collect the sewage,” he says.
“The city really needs to tap into the water that is underneath. Having a plant that has pristine water and you have hundreds of thousands of people in the dry season that have to deal with a small amount of water,” he says.
“I think that inequality shouldn’t exist.”
This sample shows E-coli is present in the town's drinking water supply.
Mr Reygadas says the presence of bacteria means the children grow up malnourished and because they are drinking a lot of Coca-Cola, their bodies don’t assimilate the sugar.
In 2021, an estimated 14 million adults in Mexico were living with diabetes with a rise of 10 per cent in the last two years. Almost half of those living with the disease were undiagnosed.
To combat the health emergency, Mexico introduced a sugar tax in 2014 of around a 10 per cent increase in price on any non-alcoholic drink containing added sugar After the first two years of the tax, Mexico saw an estimated 7.6 per cent reduction in household purchases of taxed beverages.
They’ve been drinking it for so long. It’s become a custom.
Maria Ton
Since its introduction, a global momentum for this form of fiscal policy has been building, especially in Australia.
In three years, it’s projected a third of Australian adults will be clinically obese
,with diabetes being the fastest growing chronic disease.
Earlier this year, the Australia Medical Association (AMA) launched the #SicklySweet campaign
,which suggested a tax of 40 cents per 100 grams of sugar, reducing sugar consumption of sweet drinks by 12 to 18 per cent.
The AMA says Australians drink more than 2.4 billion litres of sugary drinks each year.
Maria Ton runs a shop that sells Coca-Cola.
But critics say there is not enough evidence it would reduce obesity.
In Mexico, Coca-Cola had been around for decades before it started booming in popularity. This shift happened in the late 1960s when one of its delivery workers, Vincente Fox, rose through the ranks to become president of the company in 1975 and eventually president of Mexico in 2000.
During Fox’s presidency, Mexico joined the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, allowing co*ke to become cheaper to buy and more accessible.
Since its spike in popularity, Coca-Cola has become ingrained in culture.
Pedro and Roberto’s mother Maria runs a small shop in San Cristóbal and makes little profit from the sale of co*ke, but her livelihood depends on it. If she doesn’t stock the drink, her customers would go elsewhere.
Maria buys two crates of Coca-Cola a week.
As Maria sits in despair thinking about her ill son, she says Coca-Cola has become deeply embedded in the Mexican way of life.
“They’ve been drinking it for so long,” she says.
“It’s become a custom.”
