by Mark Thomas
Wandering here it occurs to me that the Pope has about as much control here as he has over the Presbyterians and the sense of individual ownership here is quite moving. The models of the saints are gaudy and slightly disturbing - as they should be in a Catholic church - but the figure of Jesus is jaw-dropping. In a glass cabinet near the altar the prone figure of Christ is being borne down from the cross by his followers. But Our Lord is not wearing the traditional loincloth. Our Lord is wearing a spangled powder blue glitter flower frock that comes up to just under his nipples, making Jesus look like a Thai transsexual fainting at a wedding.
And no matter how much I want to respect the Tzotzil families here, I find it hard to feel comfortable amidst high camp, low poverty and liberal tourists trying to sneak a peak at a chicken having its neck wrung.
Searching for a line of enquiry that involved a little less poultry and voyeurism we follow the curves and crumpled hillroads back to San Cristóbal. From the tourist centre of the postcard homes and tiled roofs, we step from the raised pavements away from the bars and hotels, past the markets and the stalls of Zapatista dolls, out on to dust tracks that all seem to have a single Toyota pick-up truck lunging from side to side as it trundles in a cloud of dirt; and then on to narrow lanes lined with ditches and weeds, where bulrushes sprout by wasteland ponds and plastic bottles collect around them at the edge of the mud. Out in the sun we wander to the shanty towns through the packed soil corridors and alleyways of wooden boards, with lone standpipes and packs of barking dogs, past the open family huts and homes, on to a long car-less street where children play chase in its empty lanes, twisting and turning from each other’s flailing arms, while their parents sit by stalls watching and waiting for customers. And above, looking down on us from the distance are the newly built mountainside hovels, a hill of blossoming shacks and sheds on stilts. These are the newcomers fresh from the frontline of penury sprawling across to spread to the upper reaches, searching for a foothold to cling to, searching for a moment’s respite.
Under this gaze we arrive on the outskirts of San Cristóbal at the Mayan Medicine Museum. The compound houses not only a museum but is also home to the Organizacion de Médicos Indigenas del Estado del Chiapas (the Organisation of Indigenous Doctors in the State of Chiapas). Where, amongst other things, they organise Mayan midwives for the communities in these hills. The front steps of the museum are under the cool shade of a porch which proves a tempting place for folk to squat and chat. This is where I meet Miguel, a member of staff who works on the committee for the indigenous doctors as well as in the museum as a youth worker. He is going to talk me through the significance of the Coke in the Tzotzil church.
‘You can see Coca-Cola being used in the rituals and ceremonies of traditional doctors as it happens in San Juan in Chamula. But these happen everywhere, in communities, in small chapels, here in this museum…’ In the religious healing ceremonies each component represent an element: the candles represents fire, pine needles the earth, prayers represent air and Coca-Cola symbolises water. ‘In this case the ritual process - the drink has another element, the gas,’ he says, explaining that burping throws out the ‘bad energy, negative energy’.
‘Some people say it is throwing out bad spirits?’
‘It’s all the bad energy, the ghosts, the nightmares, everything bad in that spiritual part.’
Considering parts of these ceremonies go back hundreds of years, it begs the question how did Coke muscle in on an ancient ritual?
‘Before the famous soda was introduced there was atole which is made of corn. You have to leave it to ferment for eight days. After that you grind it and you make sour atole.’
This was the original burp juice. However, people began to realise you could get the same effect with Coca-Cola or Pepsi, and you didn’t have to ferment corn for eight days. According to Miguel, ‘Step by step Coca-Cola has started to be involved in religion and the indigenous communities and it started at the beginning with very cheap prices [for a bottle of Coke].’
This is a practice that carries on today: the price of a Coke in an indigenous community is half the price it would be in San Cristóbal, because in this poor community they can only buy what they can afford. Miguel looks up at the shantytown on the side of the mountain. ‘Even in the small shops on the tops of the hill - they transport it up by donkeys.’
Some of the men sitting on the porch have listened to us talking and take this opportunity to pipe up, ‘You can have a healing ceremony conducted for you here.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes, if you want,’ says Miguel.
‘A healing ceremony,’ repeats one of the men.
‘I’m sure it is very good but there is nothing physically wrong with me.’
‘That is what you think but this heals your spirit.’
‘Do you think my spirit needs healing?’
There is silence. Then the man nods. ‘Yes - you will see how much better you feel after it.’
‘OK, then, I would like to do this…’ I clap my hands together and smile awkwardly while mentally rationalising, ‘It’s all OK. It would be rude not to. I should respect this culture and after all what is the worst that can happen?’
I turn expectantly to Miguel, who says, ‘First you will need to buy some big bunches of basil and an egg.’
Fifteen minutes later a shaman is instructing me how to order the rows of lit candles on the floor while he places the egg and a cup of water next to them. Our spiritual guide for this particular healing journey is a stocky small man with a paunch and cropped hair, dressed in a blue denim shirt. Although I didn’t have a fixed image of a shaman in my mind, I somehow did not expect him to look like a night watchman at a Parcelforce depot.
This ceremony does not involve Coca-Cola and burping, so my bad spirits are staying put, but a couple of local folk are having the same healing ritual and tell me as we line up in the small chapel that this is a protective healing ceremony. Figures of the saints inhabit the alcoves, including the Virgin of Guadeloupe in crown and gown, Saint Anthony looking lost in the corner and John the Baptist with his head still on his shoulders. There is one figure that stands out from the rest, a cross, chubby man holding a stick in the air wearing a frock - though it could be a toga - and I wonder if John Belushi has been canonised.
The stocky shaman sits upright on a small stool, rocking back and forth with his hands on his knees, intoning place names and saints in a sing-song monotone. Rising with a laboured breath he motions for me to come forward and he starts walking the length of the chapel chanting in Tzotzil, brushing the basil against the saints, evoking their names each in turn, before arriving at the corner where I wait by my egg and candles. The stocky shaman stands before me, coming up to my nose in height and as he intones his prayers he brushes the swatch of basil over my face, first once, then again. Then he taps my shoulders with basil, first one side then the other - all the while continuing his chant. Next my stomach and sides are hit, each time harder than the first. Bending down he starts working on my calves whacking them with such force that he is beginning to pant with the effort of the blows and the chanting. The air is now thick with a peppery smell and as he returns upright he starts all over again, with even greater energy - smacking my shoulders with such vigour that leaves begin to fly off the branches. As he hits my stomach the air becomes a blizzard of basil and I want to shout, ‘This isn’t healing, this is seasoning!’ but I am speechless in the face of the serious conviction held by everyone in the room. Suddenly he stops and stares as leaves flutters to the ground. Stooping he picks up the egg waves it over my body, breaks it into the cup of water which he holds to the light to examine the floating yolk. Then he says: ‘All the jealousy people have towards you is gone - you will return to San Cristóbal one day.’ And with that he motions it is over and I to return to my seat.
Outside one of the local folks walks with me back to the city centre.
‘Well?’ he asks expectantly, breathing in de
eply to show his own contentedness ‘Did you see the way the plant turned black?’
‘The basil?’
‘Si, it turned black. It is the plant taking your bad energy. Some things science cannot explain.’ He nods wisely, breathes another deep sigh of contentment and says, ‘So, how do you feel?’
‘I feel like I have been beaten up by pesto.’
As an atheist son of a family of preachers I have a bastardised version of the supposed Christian credo, ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’, namely ‘Love the religious, hate the religion’. It is impossible for me to fault anyone for wanting to buy a bottle of Coke over brewing maize for eight days, and believing basil takes away bad energy is no more bizarre than thinking a wafer turns into Jesus’ body when it hits your tongue. But Coke and Pepsi have managed to inveigle their way into a ceremony that is an intrinsic part of these people’s identity. They have once again become woven into the fabric of ordinary lives and special memories and I wonder if the children in the church will remember drinking Coke with their grandparents on the pine-needle floor. In these circumstances it is entirely possible to ‘Like the drink, loathe the company’.
14
WE’RE ON A ROAD TO DELAWARE
Wilmington, USA
‘If the communities we serve are in and of themselves not sustainable, then we do not have a sustainable business.’
Neville Isdell, The Coca-Cola Company, 20081
The city of Wilmington in the state of Delaware is about ninety minutes and three decades south of Brooklyn. The best thing about the place is that it is effortlessly forgettable. This is not where I envisaged ending my journey. Having stood on the banks of an oasis in the desert of Rajasthan, watched cane fields of fire turn the sky orange in El Salvador and marvelled at the mountain mist tumbling down the steep hillsides of Bucarmanga and into bustling streets of the city itself; Delaware is not the geographical dénouement I was hoping for. I have travelled thousands of miles, through squalor and splendour, meeting people with courage and tenacity searching for the political equivalent of what Spalding Gray would have called a ‘perfect moment’. If I was on daytime TV I would call it ‘closure’, if I was a lawyer - a ‘resolution’, I suppose I want to know what the fuck this has all been about and I have a niggling feeling that Wilmington is a resolutely ‘epiphany-free zone.’ I am not doing down Wilmington, I just didn’t know that IKEA did a flat-pack town. And as soon as someone finds that Allen key this place will tighten up just nicely.
The Coca-Cola Company has its annual meeting of stock holders in Wilmington because the company is registered not in its southern home of Atlanta but up here in the north in Delaware, along with half the Stock Exchange who take advantage of this on-shore tax haven. The meeting is to take place in the Hotel du Pont ‘the best hotel in town’ a policeman tells me, which may be the case but a hotel owned by DuPont - the second-largest chemical company in the world - just doesn’t conjure an image of pampered luxury. To be fair it does look like the kind of place that hosts a lot of corporate events, a place where managing directors pick up industry awards and trophy wives.
Back in London I had taken Coca-Cola’s PR people up on their offer to try and arrange an interview with Ed Potter, the company’s Global Workplace Rights Director, who I had seen at the House of Commons. The likelihood of the company sanctioning such a meeting was never high, still I went through the process with the same grim lack of expectation with which my mum buys her lottery tickets every week - knowing it is not going to happen but still being slightly disappointed when that turns out to be the case. ‘It’s a No right now’ said the mail from the company, as if this were only a temporary state of affairs.
Nonetheless this is the only chance I will have had of seeing the corporate titans of the world’s most famous brand and I’m curious how they will handle the criticism levelled at them. But more than this I wanted to see if the company was changing, if all these campaigns and lawsuits struggles and fights were having an effect. In the House of Commons debates one of the PR people had said, ‘You’re looking at a company that wants to change.’ And if that is the case here’s the place to see.
Ray Rogers has been described as a ‘legendary union activist’ and has been campaigning against Coca-Cola since 2003. He founded and runs the Corporate Campaign Inc who coordinate Stop Killer Coke.2 Ray is making the now-annual pilgrimage to Delaware to challenge the company at the annual meeting. With him is Lew Freidman, a retired teacher who coordinates the websites, and the pair of them gave me lift from Brooklyn. Arriving at Wilmington, Ray runs off ahead of us while Lew and I chat as we amble over to the protest line opposite the hotel. This comprises primarily of clean, well-groomed, polite people in their early twenties who look a bit like market researchers for a Bible college as they smile and hand out seditious balloons with anti-corporate slogans on their innocent oval shapes.
‘Mark!’ shouts Ray as he runs across the road, momentarily disappearing behind a large truck. ‘Mark!’ he shouts again. Passing, the truck reveals Ray running toward a smartly dressed man who stands on the wrong side of the hotel’s covered colonnade, adrift from the mass of shareholders milling towards the meeting. And I suddenly realise that Ed Potter has been caught in open ground.
When properly motivated I can multitask like a motherfucker. By which I mean I can cross a road, extract a digital recorder, turn it on, check the sound levels right, pop a pre-interview breath mint, grab a blast of Ventolin and reach Ed Potter before he can get to cover. Behind Coke’s Global Workplace Rights Director a group of scaffolders work overhead, with mandatory hard hats and obligatory work belts, a few wear high-visibility orange vest and the place is covered in safety signs and warnings. It is under the appropriate sound of their hammering and sawing that I manage to interview Ed Potter. He smiles wanly as I wave the digital recorder at him and dive straight away into the case of the Indian workers in Kaladera being forced to work in dangerous conditions without the proper safety equipment.
‘How are you going to sort it out?’ I enquire.
‘I don’t know the circumstances of India so I can’t really comment directly on that but just like other issues that are, what I’ll call systemic issues, we’re working to resolve those,’ he says.
Ed Potter’s voice is slightly thin, pitched at the tone of a man trying to clear his throat, so every now and again he has to go up a decibel to be heard above the building noise.
‘How would you deal with it?’ I press.
‘If you email it to me we will definitely look into it.’
‘Is there a procedure that you have for looking at this?’
‘Do we have a written down procedure?’ He repeats, eyebrows raised with his voice, ‘No…if you bring me a situation and location x, depending on what it is, we would put in an audit team…’
‘…But they say the only time we get given gas masks and gloves to work in the water treatment plant is when the auditors come round.’
‘You know,’ he says shaking his head ruefully, ‘we have the same challenges as any national government will have with respect to people who may want to manipulate the outcome.’
But the real issue is not just tracking down these abuses but how the company acts to solve them, so I ask what the sanctions are for bottlers who commit this kind of labour rights’ abuse.
‘Well, in the case of the supplier, a supplier who fails to take corrective action is subject to not being a supplier any more, that’s the sanction.’
Assuming that this is the case, that bottlers have their franchise removed, how will it work in this instance? Coca-Cola is the bottler. Or at least it is a direct subsidiary - the Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverage Pvt Ltd is owned by The Coca-Cola Company.3
From under the hotel covered entrance a Coca-Cola man has spotted Ed Potter talking alone and unguarded and has come over to keep an eye on things. The man introduces himself as ‘Tom, Head of Public Affairs’. To be fair to Ed Potter he stays and answers the questions, his thin
hair blowing slightly. I am keen to get some action taken on the situation in India and press Ed Potter once more on the course the company will take.
‘These guys are going in, and not working with the proper safety equipment, is this serious enough to investigate?’ I ask.
‘Well, of course! Health and safety is one of our…things.’
‘So if I come to you and say this is happening here…’
The Public Affairs man nods firmly, ‘We’ll go and look.’
‘You’ll go and look.’
‘Yeah, of course,’ says Ed Potter.
Days later I emailed Ed Potter asking how we might proceed on this issue. The reply I got reads: Ed Potter has referred your email to me. You can find information about our workplace practices on both cokefacts.com and on www.GetTheRealFacts.co.uk.
Sincerely,
Kari Bjorhus
Which seems a long way away from the response of ‘we’ll go and look’.
Overhead the casual yells and hollers of building work continue as metres away the shareholders start to gather around the hotel entrance while police officers with Secret Service earpieces watch over them. So before time wears our encounter to a close and we too must herd inside I say, ‘Colombia. Isidro Gil. I spoke to people who saw him killed - someone was shot and killed on Coca-Cola’s property.’ Tom from Public Affairs says ‘We understand that.’