Politicians step up the fight against Mexico’s Coca-Cola habit

政客们加大了打击墨西哥人对可口可乐的嗜好的力度

The pandemic has increased worry about the country’s fondness for fizzy drinks

流行病加剧了人们对该国对碳酸饮料的喜爱的担忧

词汇

fizzy drinks/起泡饮料；汽水

Oct 29th 2020 | 

ON A VISIT in July to Chiapas, a poor southern state, Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s covid-19 tsar, condemned an unlikely culprit for deaths from the disease. Fizzy drinks are “bottled poison”. Every year 40,000 Mexicans, the number of recorded covid-19 victims at the time, die from drinking too many, he claimed. The country’s health “would be different had we not been fooled” by a marketing machine that promotes products “as if [they] were happiness”.

今年7月，墨西哥新冠肺炎疫情负责人Hugo Lopez-Gatell在访问南部贫穷的恰帕斯州时，谴责了一个不太可能导致死亡的罪魁祸首。碳酸饮料是“瓶装毒药”。他声称，每年有40000名墨西哥人死于饮入过量的碳酸饮料，这一数字相当于当时covid-19的受害者人数。如果我们没有被一种推销产品的营销机器所愚弄，这个国家的健康状况“将会有所不同”。这种营销机器推销的产品“仿佛【TA们（饮料/喝饮料的人群）】是幸福的”。

词汇

Tsar/沙皇（大权独揽的人物）

The blasé response to the pandemic by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his administration is a bigger reason why the official death toll now stands at 90,000. But they are correct to point out that sugary drinks contribute to Mexico’s high rates of obesity and diabetes, which make people more vulnerable to the virus. Three-quarters of Mexicans are overweight, up from a fifth in 1996. Although fizzy drinks are a worthier target than some of Mr López Obrador’s nemeses (suppliers of renewable energy, for example), they are also inescapably part of the country’s culture.

总统Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador和他的政府对疫情无动于衷，是官方公布的死亡人数现已达到9万人的更重要原因。但他们正确地指出，含糖饮料导致了墨西哥的高肥胖率和糖尿病率，这使人们更容易感染病毒。四分之三的墨西哥人超重，高于1996年的五分之一。尽管碳酸饮料比López Obrador’的一些仇敌(例如可再生能源供应商)更有价值，但它们也不可避免地成为该国文化的一部分。

词汇

 blasé /使腻烦，使厌倦；使麻木不仁，使无动于衷

nemeses/报应；仇敌

Mr López-Gatell did not single out any brand. He did not need to. Although Coca-Cola is popular across Latin America, it is especially so in Mexico. In 2012, the last time the Coca-Cola Company published data on the popularity of its beverages, Mexicans guzzled 50% more per person than citizens of anywhere else. Drinking Coke “is a ritual, like [drinking] red wine for the French”, says Álvaro Aguilar, who owns burger joints in Jalisco, a western state.

 López-Gatel没有点名任何品牌。他不需要这么做。虽然可口可乐在拉丁美洲很受欢迎，但在墨西哥尤其如此。2012年，可口可乐公司上一次公布其饮料受欢迎程度的数据时，墨西哥人的人均可乐饮用量比其他任何国家的公民都多50%。在西部哈利斯科州经营汉堡店的Álvaro Aguilar表示，喝可乐“是一种仪式，就像法国人喝红酒一样”。

词汇

 Beverage/饮料

 Ritual/仪式；惯例；礼制

Nowhere is the habit, damned by the left as “Coca-colonisation”, more evident than in San Juan Chamula, a town in the hills of Chiapas. There four-month-olds suck Coke from baby bottles. In the town’s church, indigenous Tzotzil medicine men light rows of candles before spilling Coca-Cola onto the flames to vanquish bad spirits.

这种被左派指责为“可口可乐殖民化”的习惯在恰帕斯山区的圣胡安查穆拉最为明显。四个月大的婴儿用奶瓶吸可乐。在小镇的教堂里，当地的Tzotzil药师点燃了一排排蜡烛，然后将可口可乐洒在火焰上，以消灭坏情绪。

词汇

Colonisation/殖民化，成为殖民地；殖民

Mr López-Gatell has blamed free trade with the United States, which began in 1994, for Mexicans’ poor diets. But Coke mattered a lot before that. Backlashes predate Mr López Obrador’s presidency. Since Mexicans popped open their first bottles in the 1920s, Coke has become the cornerstone of an industry. Bottlers, chiefly Arca and Femsa, get the syrup from Coca-Cola and handle the rest. Bottling and distribution directly employ 100,000 people, says Joan Prats of Coca-Cola Mexico. All told, he claims, the company is responsible for 1m jobs and 1.4% of GDP.

Lopez-Gatell先生将墨西哥人糟糕的饮食习惯归咎于始于1994年的与美国的自由贸易。但在此之前，可口可乐的重要性很大。早在 López Obrador成为总统之前，已经有过对于可乐的抵制。自从墨西哥人在20世纪20年代打开他们的第一瓶可乐，可口可乐已经成为一个行业的基石。瓶装商，主要是Arca和Femsa，从可口可乐公司获得糖浆，然后处理其余步骤。可口可乐墨西哥公司的Joan Prats说，直接装瓶和分销雇佣了10万人。他声称，该公司总共创造了100万个工作岗位，占GDP的1.4%。

词汇

Backlash/反冲；强烈抵制

 Predate/在日期上早于（先于）；居先

Mr López Obrador often expresses dismay that Coke reaches every village while medicines do not. Vicente Fox, who in 2000 became the first President of Mexico’s democratic era, was Coca-Cola Mexico’s boss in the 1970s. In his memoirs he writes that his early years criss-crossing the country in a delivery lorry were “like those a US Presidential candidate spends barnstorming from Iowa to New Hampshire”. He gained a feel for Mexico that his predecessors had lacked.

López Obrador 经常对可口可乐能到达每个村庄而药品却不能到达表示失望。2000年成为墨西哥民主时代首任总统的Vicente Fox是上世纪70年代可口可乐墨西哥公司的老板。他在回忆录中写道，他早年驾着货车在全国各地穿梭，“就像美国总统候选人从爱荷华州到新罕布什尔州巡回演讲一样”。他获得了他的前任所缺乏的对墨西哥的感觉。

词汇

criss-crossing /十字交叉型

 Barnstorming/ 在乡间（最初常在谷仓里）作巡回演出；（尤指为政治活动而）在某地巡回

Only in the 1960s and 1970s, as the dangers of too much sugar became widely known, did Mexicans begin to view Coca-Cola as a foreign brand. “The Secret Formula”, a black-and-white film made in 1965, opens with a shot of Coca-Cola being injected into the veins of a hospital patient from a hanging bottle. That produces “a series of nightmares” about his Mexican identity, in the words of Juan Rulfo, who wrote poetry for the film.

直到20世纪60年代和70年代，随着过量糖分的危害广为人知，墨西哥人才开始将可口可乐视为一个外国品牌。《秘密配方》是一部拍摄于1965年的黑白电影，影片的开头是一个镜头:一瓶可口可乐被从一个悬挂着的瓶子里注射到一个医院病人的静脉里。为该部影片作诗的 Juan Rulfo说道：这为该墨西哥人带来了“一系列噩梦”

词汇

 Vein/血管；血脉

Those who would curb the habit are now motivated more by concern for public health than by anti-yanqui ideology. Mr López Obrador’s market-friendly predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto—a Diet Coke drinker—imposed a fizzy-drinks tax of one peso (eight cents) per litre in 2013. It seems to have curbed the growth of consumption. In October this year Mr López Obrador’s administration thwacked big black warning labels on Coca-Cola and other foods deemed unhealthy. Oaxaca, a southern state, has banned the sale of packaged junk food to minors. Other states are following.

那些想要抑制喝可乐习惯的人现在更多的是出于对公众健康的关注，而不是出于反美国人的意识形态。López Obrador的前任Enrique Peña Nieto是一名健怡可乐饮料商，他对市场友好，在2013年对每升汽水征收了一比索(8美分)的税。这似乎抑制了消费的增长。今年10月，López Obrador的管理部门在可口可乐和其他被认为不健康的食品上打上了巨大的黑色警告标签。南部的瓦哈卡州已经禁止向未成年人出售包装垃圾食品。其他州也纷纷效仿。

词汇

Yanqui/扬基人。用于国外，它泛指一切美国人。用于国内，它指的是新英格兰和北部一些州的美国人。

Diet Coke/健怡可乐（可口可乐旗下的低卡/无糖可乐）

Thwack/打；重击

Coca-Cola is adaptable. According to Mr Fox, the company fended off nationalisation in the 1970s with a promise (never kept) to build a desalination plant. In 2018 it cut a third of the sugar out of its Coke recipe for Mexican consumers. At a meeting with Mr López Obrador in October the company promised to buy more Mexican goods for its other drinks—juicing apples from Chihuahua rather than from Chile, for example—and to support the country’s 1.2m pandemic-ravaged Coca-Cola-sellers. The quintessentially American brand is determined to remain Mexico’s national drink. With a shove from politicians, it may succeed at a lower cost to Mexicans’ health.

可口可乐有很强的适应性。根据 Fox先生的说法，该公司在20世纪70年代曾承诺(从未兑现)建造一个海水淡化厂，从而避免了国有化。2018年，可口可乐为墨西哥消费者减少了三分之一的糖分。在10月份与Lopez Obrador先生的一次会议上，可口可乐公司承诺为其其他饮料购买更多的墨西哥产品，比如从奇瓦瓦州而不是智利的苹果来榨汁，并支持该国120万饱受传染病肆虐的可口可乐销售商。这个典型的美国品牌决定继续作为墨西哥的国饮。在政客们的大力推动下，这项计划可能会以更低的墨西哥人健康成本取得成功。

词汇

fend off/避开，挡开

desalination / （海水的）脱盐，淡化

 Recipe/食谱；[临床] 处方；秘诀

 quintessentially / 典型地；标准地

Shove/ 推；挤