The Colombian soda war

Colombia’s president Alvaro Uribe has been dancing to America’s tune thanks to an annual injection of $600m in US aid, he has beefed up Colombia’s anti-narcotics police, seized record tons of cocaine and extradited 520 drug traffickers to US jails

Hey, this is all good news right? Erm, well he’s gone and overdone it a bit.

He’s has now decided to focus on coca products made by the country’s indigenous Indians, the sale of which, outside Indian reservations, will now be banned. The main item affected is , a coca-based energy drink that looks like cider and tastes like ginger ale, which has become an alternative to the real thing, aka Coca-Cola among Colombia’s kids.

It’s obvious what prompted this new measure: pressure from Coca-Cola. No matter that the US giant itself uses coca in the flavouring for its own fizzy drink (allegedly): the Nasa Indian tribe, who make Coca Sek, are still being told that their brew infringes the 1961 treaty banning the distribution of products with the slightest trace of coca. So it is that America’s war on drugs is now played out in the supermarket aisles of Colombia.

What you can do

Support the COLOMBIA SUPPORT NETWORK: a grassroots organization created to give solidarity to the Colombian people through sister city projects, delegations and petitions to educate members of the U.S. government.

CSN works for a negotiated solution to the Colombian conflict and peace with justice in Colombia, through strengthening civilian society. By civilian society CSN means giving support to the myriad of budding groups that come from the grassroots in Colombia, such as women’s groups, teachers, cooperatives, unions, environmental groups, indigenous movements and different associations that make a society a vibrant group of human beings. CSN believes that the armed struggle has destroyed so many lives for such a long time, that it is time to experiment with peaceful means.

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[Capitalism] is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous–and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.

John Maynard Keynes

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