Since they were children, they consumed sugar in large quantities dissolved in that dark drink; This drink was served at children’s parties; bottles of several liters accompanied family meals; Christmas was enjoyed with caravans that circulated through the main streets, sponsored by the dark drink company; Santa Claus drank it in front of the children who admired this character who would magically bring them a gift in a few days. Christmas and its joy, the celebration, the family reunion, could not be separated from the brand, the logo, the bottle of the dark drink. The grandmother, the uncle and the cousin already had diabetes, but they did not relate it to the dark drink that everyone consumed; This was part of the happiness, of the celebrations.
In that country, every year, more than 230 thousand people became ill with diabetes and also cardiovascular diseases due to the consumption of the dark drink and by others who emulated it, but mainly from the dark drink. And more than 40 thousand died from this cause every year.
The red-painted trailers transported the drink along the roads of that country; They were the most seen vehicles circulating through them; It was already the country of red trucks that carried the dark drink to every corner. Even in many communities there was no water, but there was the dark drink that was advertised on the awnings of the little stores, in the refrigerators with the logo eternally on with the subsidized electricity in the poorest towns. It was sold like a drug, like the spark of life.
Millions of people were already addicted to the dark drink; diabetes had become normalized like the consumption of the dark drink; one in six adults suffered from diabetes, a pandemic. In the past, a President of that country had been a director of the dark drink company; another former president had joined its advisory board, as well as several health secretaries collaborated with the company. The dark drink, the main cause of diabetes, invaded the most practiced and followed sport in that country with advertising with its logo. The company invested a large part of its profits in advertising campaigns to associate its consumption with love, with the empowerment of women, with family, with environmental care, with youth, with beauty. The United Nations rapporteur for the right to food visited the country and in his report mentioned that the country was colonized by the dark drink.
The speaker had traveled the world verifying food environments and had never seen the penetration of that company anywhere else in the world: the product in every corner of that country’s territory, advertisements in indigenous languages, huge warehouses with stacked boxes of the drink, its logo, its advertising in large advertisements, on walls, in almost all businesses, small stores, on awnings, tables, chairs; multi-million dollar advertising. And the corporation reduced the enormous investments in advertising from its tax payments; Even the pittance he paid for the water he hoarded in many regions also deducted it from his tax payments.
This corporation had a big sister, another corporation, which was the main bottler of its drinks in the country and in the world. That corporation, a bottler of the dark drink, which had many other businesses, had directed the main business associations in the country, achieving their alliance to avoid any policy that could affect their profits. Together, the dark drink corporation and the bottling company had managed to co-opt legislators, political parties, officials, academic institutions, “opinionists,” the media; money could do everything.
In that country, the dark drink corporation infiltrated like humidity; made agreements with municipalities, states, secretariats, academic institutions and their foundations. It sponsored associations that appeared to be independent to infiltrate all organizations, to make statements defending their interests, saying that the dark drink company was not responsible for the damage to health, that obesity, diabetes, were the responsibility of people, that they did not do physical activity, that their dark drink was part of a healthy life. Their interests were well defended in anonymous campaigns on social networks, campaigns with armies of bots and trolls to attack those who proposed and demanded that policies be applied to reduce their consumption.
There was no longer an international organization to defend them, the United Nations organizations recommended that the country of the dark drink impose high taxes on it, prohibit its advertising to minors, remove it from schools, and put warning labels on it about its harm. The international financial organizations also recommended the same, they told the government of the country of the dark drink that it would never have the money to maintain its health system to face the damage that the consumption of the dark drink was causing.
Despite everything, the dark drink company continued making agreements with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so that the dark drink brand could enter schools abroad that bore the country’s name. They also made agreements with the Ministry of Tourism and they tried to do the same with Education and Health. A director of the dark drink company signed the agreements with public officials; he had previously worked in the government, precisely in the health sector, and from there he provided his services to that company. Their services were key to labeling dark drinks that said their sugar content was part of a daily nutritional requirement. A labeling that deceived the population of the country of the dark drink for six years. They had achieved that this labeling, designed by the industry, was installed in that country, the only country in the world where that happened. His services in the government were well remunerated, later, with a good position in the dark drink company.
How much we would like this story to be like this, told as something that happened in the past, what good it would do for the country, to stop being the country of dark drinks, what good it would do for the health of the population, what good it would do not only for health, but for the environment with much less plastic garbage throughout its territory and, of course, less hoarded water.
However, this story is from the present, each event has occurred, this is our CocaColonized Mexico, the country of the dark drink.