“Coca-Cola or Pepsi” Loyalty Rule

The “Coca-Cola or Pepsi” Loyalty Rule is the Barreras’ demand that local dealers choose between their organization and Güero Méndez’s in the struggle for La Plaza. It makes allegiance legible through a consumer-branding analogy, but the choice is not a joke or a neutral business preference: each side uses killings and threats to punish the other’s supporters. Under Adán Barrera, the rule also acquires an economic dimension, as lower fees and business support make the Barreras’ side more attractive to dealers.

A binary choice for La Plaza

The rule emerges during the Barreras’ war with Güero Méndez. A steady supply of cocaine from the Orejuela brothers gives the Barreras the money and manpower to fight, and Raúl Barrera presents local dealers with a simple choice: distribute for one cartel or the other. The analogy excludes neutrality and double-dealing. Loyalty becomes a public commitment to one side of a sharply divided market.

The branding language gives the conflict a plain, everyday form: Coca-Cola or Pepsi, Ford or Chevy, Hertz or Avis. Yet the apparent simplicity conceals the stakes. The Barreras are contesting control of La Plaza with a rival whose influence reaches from Culiacán into the same trafficking territory. The rule makes each dealer’s affiliation a test of which organization can protect, punish, and ultimately control local business.

Violence makes allegiance visible

The fates of several San Diego-area dealers show what the choice means in practice. Alejandro Cazares, a real-estate investor, businessman, and drug dealer, had declared loyalty to Güero Méndez; his body was later found in his car in San Ysidro. Billy Brennan, another dealer, was found dead in a Pacific Beach motel room. American police were puzzled by the Pepsi cans placed in the victims’ mouths, an identifying sign in the cartel’s brand-coded contest.

Güero Méndez retaliates against dealers who had sided with the Barreras. Eric Mendoza and Salvador Marechal are found dead in their cars in Chula Vista, and the Barreras answer in kind. For a few weeks, the city becomes a recurring scene of burned-out cars containing the dead. The cycle is more than retaliation for individual defections: it is a demonstration intended to persuade dealers that the Barreras are locally present and able to reach people who choose the rival side.

The message is also geographical. Güero Méndez is trying to direct La Plaza from Culiacán, while the Barreras stress that they are on the ground in Baja and San Diego. His failure to strike them in their own territory is presented as evidence of weakness. Meanwhile, his dependence on other routes—paying El Verde to move product through Sonora or García Abrego to move it through the Gulf—raises his costs and narrows his options. The loyalty rule thus combines targeted violence with an argument about which cartel can actually operate in the contested territory.

Loyalty as an economic offer

Adán Barrera’s strategy goes beyond making refusal dangerous. In rebuilding the Baja cartel, he cuts the organization’s taxes to 12 percent, offers low-interest start-up loans, and provides access to financial services, including money laundering, in exchange for loyalty. His reasoning is that a smaller share collected from many entrepreneurs can yield more than a larger share taken from a few. The deal gives local operators room to expand while binding their business to the cartel.

This policy changes the balance behind the brand choice. Raúl Barrera attributes the war’s progress chiefly to force; Adán believes the Barreras are also undercutting Güero Méndez. Lower overhead means a dealer can make more money with the Barreras, while the rival’s constrained supply and higher transportation costs make it difficult for him to match the offer. The rule’s two halves—silver or lead—therefore work together: Adán offers a more profitable arrangement, while Raúl supplies the threat that makes the alternative costly. Even Raúl later acknowledges the ingenuity of the 12-percent policy.

A cartel principle with political echoes

The rule belongs to a wider system in which Barrera offers protection and expects loyalty in return. In an earlier arrangement with García Abrego, Barrera describes Guadalajara as a safe base from which to serve the Federación and promises to share his resources, friendships, and protection in exchange for a fee. The language of partnership does not erase the hierarchy: protection is a service controlled by the powerful party, and the price is part of the arrangement.

That influence also reaches into national politics. The Federación is said to have helped the incumbent president steal the 1988 election after vote-counting computers malfunctioned. Later, following the 1994 presidential transition, the organization’s brokerage houses buy government bonds before cartel capital is withdrawn from the national bank, triggering a peso devaluation; the Federación then profits from the crisis and returns money to the country in exchange for a favorable trade environment. These political transactions are not the dealer-facing rule itself, but they echo its structure: access, protection, and economic advantage are exchanged for compliance, while the party able to impose costs sets the terms.