Coca-Cola Healing Rituals

Coca-Cola Healing Rituals as a Product of Globalization in Highland Mexico

Transnational corporations are one of the principal agents of globalization in the modern world. They contribute to the global homogenization of culture by organizing worldwide distribution of the western commodities and the life styles that come with them (Barker 161). One of the most well-known examples of transnational corporations is the Coca-Cola Company, which beverages are sold in almost every country in the world. High global consumption of the Coca-Cola Company’s soft drinks can be explained by its social prestige and availability. For example, in Mexico, the biggest per capita consumer of soft drinks, Coca-Cola is more popular than bottled water for the price

It is obvious that the tradition of using Coca-Cola in the healing rituals is not a fixed, static practice that was passed through generations, but rather a cultural construction that adjust to the dynamism of the constantly changing reality, and the healing practitioners adopted the use of Coke under certain circumstances created in the process of globalization (Chiappari 234). It is also logical to assume that when Coca-Cola has not been invented yet there was some other beverage that took its place during the healing rituals. Tracing the history of the healing rituals to the pre-Colombian times reveals that homemade alcohol distilled from sugar cane played an essential role, in religious ceremonies performed by indigenous people living in the Mexican highlands next to the border with

In other words, glocalization implies that the marketing strategies of the Coca-Cola Company are tailored specifically to the demand of the indigenous people in the Mexican highlands (Barker 164). “Advertising…is no longer built around the idea of informing or promoting people in the ordinary sense, but is increasingly geared to manipulating desires and tastes…” (Harvey 287). The use of indigenous language and the images of indigenous people in Coca-Cola advertising is a successful capitalist strategy to transform the global product into the local attribute in the minds of indigenous community in order to enhance their devotion to the consumption of soft drinks (Barker 164). Ironically, Coca-Cola, which was originally advertised to indigenous population as a drink with the positive effect on health and is still used by healing practitioners to ‘cure’ the diseases of their patients, is notorious in the western world for causing different types of health problems, such as the dehydration of infants, obesity, diabetes, cavity, etc., due to its high sugar content (Nash 635). However, apart from the obvious and immediate problems generated by the regular consumption of Coke, there are also hidden and indirect ones that become noticeable only with time. In a modern-day economy guided