Daily consumption of bottled soda in Chiapas is around 800 milliliters, which keeps the state under scrutiny from health authorities and experts.
Gerardo González Figueroa, a researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (Ecosur), asserts that even with campaigns to raise awareness among indigenous people about the need to stop consuming cola, consumption continues unabated. “Soda consumption is growing every day. It hasn’t been stopped despite the campaigns. Soda sales are indiscriminate,” the researcher states.
Chiapas has no limits on its consumption of sugary drinks, which has led to malnutrition and widespread health problems, primarily among children.
The proposed law submitted by the federal government regarding the Special Tax on Production and Services (IEPS), which would increase the tax by more than three pesos per liter, could cause a decrease in sugary drink consumption in indigenous communities, but only for a few days, as it would then return to normal.
“The problem is that consumption is going to increase. We haven’t created a soda-drinking nation, but where we have no limits is in Chiapas,” the researcher asserts.
“We’ve gone from undernutrition to malnutrition. There are children who are obese at eight or ten years old and can develop diabetes, hypertension… serious health problems,” he warns.
At the end of the 1970s, the communities of the Chiapas Highlands incorporated cola into their daily lives.
At that time, one of the chiefs of Tenejapa, a Tzeltal man who lived in the El Cerrillo neighborhood of San Cristóbal de las Casas, began bringing the first crates of soda to the communities of that municipality, recalls researcher González Figueroa. The indigenous people immediately adopted the sugary drink.
More than half a century after the arrival of sugary drinks in the indigenous communities of Chiapas, the results are problems of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and other diseases.
“It has been a catastrophic cost. All these diseases we call emerging have increased: diabetes, hypertension, and others, associated with dietary issues,” he says.
Originally, Mexicans used to accompany their meals with coffee or atole, but little by little they replaced them with sugary drinks. “In San Cristóbal, it was Nectarín (a regional soft drink that no longer exists), and cola soft drinks became part of the culture,” the researcher explains.
The companies’ strategy was to sell the product at a lower price than it costs in the cities, and this allowed families to buy industrial quantities of soda, as if they were going to sell it. “In reality, it’s because consumption is alarming,” he says.
Although the billboards encouraging Indigenous people to consume sugary drinks in their native languages are gone, having been dismantled before the pandemic, consumption of the beverage “is high,” with an Indigenous person consuming up to 300 liters of cola or other sugary drinks per year, the researcher reveals.
In stores, the prices for sodas are as follows: three-liter bottles for 50 pesos; 1.35-liter bottles for 28 pesos; and 473-milliliter energy drinks for 20 pesos. An advertisement advertises a 15-peso discount on the purchase of three, two, or 2.5-liter cola bottles if you collect “three silver bottle caps.”
Outside a business run by two young Tzotzil men, two women sit on the sidewalk. “We don’t drink cola anymore, but in our community it’s consumed a lot,” one of them says in Tzotzil.
Source: informador
