I would not go to Mexico if ya paid me and I used to love that place. Best beaches ever… sad
MEXICO CITY – Mexicans are among the biggest soda drinkers in the world, so residents of the southern city of Ciudad Altamirano were hit hard when first Coca-Cola then Pepsi closed their distribution centres amid drug gang extortion demands.
To paraphrase an old Saturday Night Live routine, it’s “No Coke, no Pepsi” for the city in the steamy southern state of Guerrero.
“Soft drinks form a part of our diet, people drink them in their homes, so imagine when the two main distributors in the whole region practically leave,” Guerrero state security spokesman Roberto Alvarez said Wednesday. “It’s huge.”
PepsiCo Mexico said in a statement: “Our bottler Grupo Gepp made the difficult decision to suspend their operations in Ciudad Altamirano because the necessary conditions to distribute its products did not exist. PepsiCo respects the decision.”
Alvarez said the government was still investigating exactly why the plant closed, but added: “We not ruling out that criminal groups have been pressuring (the company) to extort money from them.”
That was apparently the reason why the Coca-Cola plant there closed in March. Coca-Cola FEMSA said that in January employees in Ciudad Altamirano “began receiving constant threats and attacks by organized crime,” a phrase that usually refers to drug cartels. It also cited a “recent unjustified attack” on one of its employees, but did not specify what happened.
h/t Ohio chic