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Hi everyone. This is Carmen and Christina and this is
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Estodia's Unknown, a podcast where we talk about Latin American history.
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Sometimes it's horrible and deals with heavy topics like racism, corruption,
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and genocide. But more than that, it's also about resistance,
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power and community. And today there's a lot of corruption. Yeah.
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I love it, do we No, No, but we love
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to talk about it. Yeah. We love to inform everyone
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about it. Really. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah,
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I'm talking about Coca Cola and Mexico specifically Chiapas. Yeah.
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And if our OG listeners or anyone who's just goes
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to the beginning of our episodes, for anyone who's listening
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to every single episode, yes, well, notice that we have
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one of our very first episodes is about Coca Cola,
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focusing mostly on their disruption of labor movements and alleged
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ties to para militaries and murders in Colombia. Yeah, but
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other supposed to yeah, other countries in Central America. Yes,
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And I think in that episode we briefly mentioned that
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we were going to talk about Mexico and Coca Cola
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specifically in a separate episode, And here we are two
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years later. Yes, Coca Cola and Mexico. So if you
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searched Coca Cola and Mexico, there's no doubt that you're
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going to be flooded with content about how much Mexicans
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love Coca cola. There's no denying that a conspiracy. They
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forced it on us. It's actually not a conspiracy. It's true. No,
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it's true. Yeah, no, no, no. You know when you
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go to Mexico and you're sitting for dinner, Yeah, Laca
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and literally they'll go no, no, no, not la Coca Lacokota.
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You're right, yeah, yeah, and you'll walk to the corner store, yeah,
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to go get it, to go, get Lakokota, and you
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can return the old bottle, yeah, and then get it
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for cheaper. Yeah. So yeah. Also you're gonna find so
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you're gonna find like content about how much Mexicans love
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Coca cola, but also like the rocketing, skyrocketing rates of
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diabetes in the country. There's also going to be talked
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about blaming Coca cola for diabetes, the coca cola addiction,
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sugar addictions. You'll probably also come across this alarming and
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statistic that in Chiapas Mexicans drink an average of two
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point five liters of Coca cola a day. Oh my god. Yeah.
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But of course behind all of this, it's not like, oh,
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they just love it. It's deeper. It's always deeper. Yeah.
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And at the root of it all, what do you
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think we're going to find Carmen capitalism? It was capitalism
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all all along, capitalism and neo colonialism. Yes, yeah, and
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of course that's what's going on here. So if you
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maybe people didn't know, I don't know, but we sent
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the folks. Was a Mexican president, right, yeah. I think
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it was two thousand to two thousand and six. So
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in the recent years though, like twenty sixteen, he made
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waves on social media because he was known to like
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clap back at Trump for ship, like Trump would say
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something about the wall and maybe sent the Fox would
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come out and say something else and people were like
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hell yeah, retweeting and shit. But it's like not people there, no, No,
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he's not liked as he should not be, or as
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he should be he should not be like whatever. We
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shouldn't like any politicians. Okay, people were out here celebrating
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what's her name? Okasio, Oh I thought you were gonna say,
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Jimmie Corner. Oh sorry, get into the no. But like
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anytime there's like a win for the Latino community in
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like government, I'm like, okay, AOC AOC which not the
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worst of all of them, but like, i mean, look
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at that that politician in LA that was saying things
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about black people, right, like the politicians s yeah, oh
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sorry it was more than one. Yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah,
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don't celebrate any of them. So yeah, he was saying
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things like that, like no, we're not building your fucking wall,
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and he was like it was he was getting like
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social media fame, cloud cloud, thank you, that's the word.
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But maybe people don't know. He was a president of
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FEMSA before becoming president, and FEMSA owns ok So, the
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biggest chain of convenience stores in Mexico, also apparently coming
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to the US at some point. No way, Yes, they're
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opening some oak So somewhere so they own also. But
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also FEMSA is Coca Cola in Mexico. It's Coca Cola.
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FEMSA the largest beverage bottler and marketer of Coca Cola,
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a multi national beverage company headquartered in Mexico City. He
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was the president of that company before being the president
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of Mexico. I don't know if you're going to mention
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it later, and I don't fully remember, but when I
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did the Coca Cola episode of The Labor Unions, I
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briefly mentioned this, and then he had a nickname at
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this corporation. I see, man, I wish I remembered. I
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don't remember, but he had a nickname because of his
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like just how much work he did and whatever else,
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like how much he helped the company and all that.
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But I do remember it. I didn't write I that
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didn't come across any I think I was reading. Wow,
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I don't know about this nickname. I didn't write it.
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I didn't see it when I was reading about it.
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I try to remember to listen to it so I
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could send it to you. Yeah, and I'll edit it
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in if you do that. This is editing Christina, and
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in a shock internaive events, Carmen did not remember the
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name like she says she would, and even in the
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original episode she said he had a nickname, but I
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don't remember it. So we still don't know what this
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nickname was. All right, back to the episode, but before
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we get into all that, let's go to the beginning.
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So Coca Cola first entered Mexico in nineteen twenty six.
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By the late nineteen thirties, it was already pretty popular,
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but they wouldn't reach their current level of fame until
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the nineteen sixties slash seventies. So in nineteen seventy one,
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Coca Cola ran this very very famous ad that you've
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probably come across. It's called the Hilltop Ad. But in
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this ad, there's people from all over the world standing
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on a hilltop in Italy. They all have a coke
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bottle in hand and they're singing like I like to
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buy the world of coke, and this air everywhere and
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it was just like very very effective. And if there's
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one thing they're good at, it's marketing, Like, oh yeah,
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that's like the number one thing they were known for
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for the longest time. Yeah, there's a reason that people
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think about Christmas and Coca Cola like Coca Cola. Yeah,
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and the Polar Bear. And you know what, we talked
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about this in the Coca Cola episode, literally their second episode,
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I think, no, it's like third one. I think third one.
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Think the first one was the Coffee and san and
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then the Travis Ravine, Oh, you're right, and then the
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Coca Cola. Yeah, so that add their numbers everywhere including Mexico.
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But then also when Mexico held the Olympics, Coca Cola
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was a huge sponsor, so they were everywhere during that
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time period too, So the product soared in sales after this.
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And again it had already been like a staple in
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most places, but this, like it was huge the Olympics. Uh,
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and Coca Cola sponsoring it because you know when it
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sponsors some Once there's a sponsor for the Olympics, you
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literally see that everywhere. Yeah, plus like worldwide attention mm hmm.
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And so former President Fox, we sent the folks. He
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was a salesperson. First he I think he started as
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a delivery driver for Coca Cola, then a salesperson. Part
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of this was to give incentives to local businesses to
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become exclusive to Coca Cola instead of pepsi. Literally the
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reason you don't even see pepsi in Mexico, like nobody
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drinks it. If you go and like ask for a pepsi,
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like who are you? Yeah, that doesn't exist. I don't
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like pepsi and that's probably because of all the marketing.
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So yeah, all of this combined with the successful marketing
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campaigns helped the tone. But also our little buddy NAFTA helped.
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That should have been on our bingo card NAFTA. Damn,
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you're right, because there's also I have yet to post
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the bingo card. Oh gosh, and all of our posts
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and everything. Yeah. Uh, I feel like I was going somewhere.
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Oh yeah, I feel like we mentioned it often. We do,
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usually in an episode that has to do with Mexico
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and NAFTA's gonna come up. NAFTA was a great thing
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for Femsa Coca Cola, so they received hundreds of millions
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of dollars in investments because of NAFTA. And for those
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that might be unfamiliar, NAFTA is the North American Free
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Trade Agreement which established a free trade zone in North America.
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It was signed in nineteen ninety two by Canada, Mexico,
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and the US and it took effect on January first,
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nineteen ninety four. What NAFTA did was immediately live tariffs
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on the majority of goods produced by Canada and Mexico
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in the US for those three countries, so like it
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was supposed to be cheaper. You know, it sounds like
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a good thing, but it was largely terrible to the economy. Yeah,
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a lot of US jobs went to Mexico, like the
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famous Machi la Las, which so many terrible things they're
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including the femicides in wads are Ti to the makilaal
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ras so the factories and in Huadis in places like that.
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So people working at the Maquila loras there, they were
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severely exploited and in fact, their pay went down after NAFTA.
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Latino workers in the US suffered the most job losses
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after NAFTA, and the decade after NAFTA came, you know
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into play, Mexican minimum wage is down fourteen percent than
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before NAFTA. Yeah, fourteen percent. That's a lot. Like as
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time goes on, you're supposed to be making more money,
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not right, These things are supposed to go up, not down.
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And then outside of minimum wage, just the national average
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for everyone that went down two percent after NAFTA. Twenty
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eight thousand small Mexican businesses were lost after four years
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after NAFTA, and this is directly because of NAFTA. That
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is a lot, right, Mexican farmers being affected the most,
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like small time businesses, fault small farms. Also, you you
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talked about Commandante Ramona, right, yeah, you might have mentioned,
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I'm pretty sure in that episode. But the day NAFTA
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went in to effect January first, nineteen ninety four, the
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Zapatisas declared war on the Mexican steam and I when
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I don't know why was that day chosen? Do you
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remember or no? I think it was chosen because it
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was when NAFTA. I'm okay, like deliberately on that day. Yeah,
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that's because NAFTA is not a good thing. No, it's terrible,
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but for different reasons. Because if you also paid attention
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to current news, like NAFTA is a talking point for Trump,
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I'm the right queen right now, and it's none of
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what they say is not true, like, but there are
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bad things about NAFTA because they're saying like, oh, they're
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stealing American jobs. Like currently there's a video going aroun
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on TikTok that's gone viral of some white guy talking
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about how like this is a and it's like some
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I don't know, meat or something meat from so and so,
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and it costs way more because of NAFTA because this
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is all going Oh, a Brazilian meat company supposedly is
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underpaining something something something, But really this Brazilian company is
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headed by the US. Oh okay, but they're trying to
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somehow blame like Brazil and America and NAFTA and this
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has nothing to do with that, but they're they're doing
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this and it's like at the head of it, it's
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still the US, right. And it's the same thing with NAFTA,
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where like it benefited the richest and the preparations and
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not the people. So NAFTA was actually renegotiated in twenty
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seventeen and then in twenty twenty it became the United
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States Mexico Canada Agreement. But I don't know the details
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of that. I didn't look at that and what changes
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were made or anything like that. And again this is
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a talking point of the press. Didn't elect and he
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like all the terroriffts and blah blah blah blah whatever.
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Fuck him. So yeah, back to uh, Coca cola. Enough
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about enough to That's all I wrote. So that was
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a very very brief like history on Coca Cola why
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they're so powerful in Mexico, which is very brief and like,
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now I wanna why is this terrible? Like why does
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any of this matter? Well, well, because behind FEMSA Coca Cola,
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you know, there's so much money, political power and who
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suffers the people? Right, Like, there's a reason that the
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once president of FEMSA was also the president of the country,
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right And again it wasn't. He wasn't. He was not
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a popular president for a reason. So that's the reason
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that Coca Cola is able to do whatever they want
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in Mexico. When we sent the folks was president, he
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signed water rights over to the bottling companies, mainly THEEMSA
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Co Cocola, And this was under the guise of creating
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more jobs. But really what this did was give Theemsacocacola
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the ability to privatize a public resource, deplete that public resource,
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profit off that public resource, and now that resource is
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running out. Like yeah, And one of the worst worst
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examples of why this is also bad is the city
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of San Cristoval de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. So
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this all started in the nineteen sixties. For San Cristo,
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Coca Cola started running very predatory ads aimed at indigenous
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communities of this area in a time when like and
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still these communities are largely ignored neglected by the Mexican government.
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I mean that's why they had to declare war on
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Oh yeah, like we talked about episode. There's a reason
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it happened. I shouldn't listen to that. It's been a while. Yeah,
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Coca Cola was running like printing these as these billboards
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in like their languages, which was something that was unheard
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of at the time. Damn, that's fucked up. Yes, they
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also like forced the soda into religious ceremonies. Basically they
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would drive there. I remember reading about that in the book,
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and yes, they would be like, well, I mean, I'm
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sure you're going to get into it. Oh I was
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gonna say, you can say no. I mean that's kind