Coke or Pepsi

Coke or Pepsi is a commercial metaphor for the forced choice imposed on dealers in Baja California: they must align with either Güero Méndez or Adán Barrera’s faction, and cannot serve both. The expression gives the cartel conflict the surface of an ordinary consumer choice, while exposing how economic incentives and the threat of violence jointly determine who may do business.

The Plaza as a Forced Choice

In the contest for La Plaza, Raúl Barrera presents local dealers with a choice between rival brands. The comparison makes allegiance sound familiar and uncomplicated: Coke or Pepsi, Ford or Chevy, Hertz or Avis. But the point is not simply that the market contains competing products. A dealer must choose a side; trying to distribute for both is not an available compromise. The slogan translates a struggle for territory and loyalty into the language of everyday commerce.

The distinction has immediate consequences. Alejandro Cazares, a San Diego real-estate investor, businessman, and drug dealer, chose Coke by declaring loyalty to Güero Méndez. His body was later found in his car in San Ysidro. Billy Brennan, another San Diego dealer, was found dead in a motel room in Pacific Beach. Each had a Pepsi can in his mouth, a sign that left American police puzzled. The placement turns the brand comparison into a message: in this conflict, the rival label is not merely a preference but an accusation and a warning. The expression’s breezy familiarity therefore sits beside an unmistakable enforcement of the choice.

The Economic Case for Pepsi

Adán’s rebuilding of his Baja cartel supplies the metaphor with a practical economic foundation. He encouraged people in his organization to become entrepreneurs, reduced the cartel’s fee to 12 percent, offered low-interest start-up loans, and gave members access to financial services that included money laundering. In return, he required loyalty. The lower rate was not generosity without purpose: it was a way to make affiliation more attractive and expand the number of people doing business under his protection.

Adán explained the arithmetic to Raúl as a choice between collecting a smaller share from many businesses and a larger share from a few. The logic recalled lessons he had observed in the Reagan Revolution: lower rates could bring more entrepreneurs into the system, enlarge their profits, and produce greater total revenue. The brand metaphor makes this competition legible. A dealer could sell under a higher-overhead arrangement and earn less, or join the lower-cost network and retain more. The attractive offer did not eliminate the need for loyalty; loyalty was the condition that made the offer available.

The contrast also helps distinguish Adán’s explanation of the war from Raúl’s. Raúl believed that lead, rather than a new business model, was defeating Güero Méndez, and the killings gave his view force. Adán believed the more decisive advantage was economic: the Barreras could undercut their rival. The book does not make these explanations mutually exclusive. The lower price draws distributors toward Adán, while the threat represented by Raúl makes the choice binding. The “Silver or Lead” Principle expresses that double structure: a favorable commercial offer operates alongside coercion, not in place of it.

Why Méndez Could Not Match the Offer

Güero Méndez was slow to adjust to the Barreras’ lower-cost model. By the time he faced the need to cut prices, he could not move enough cocaine through La Plaza. Sending product through Sonora or the Gulf required paying 30 percent to move it, leaving him unable to compete on the same terms. The disadvantage was therefore structural as well as tactical: the route available to him carried costs that undermined a price reduction.

This imbalance gave the Coke-or-Pepsi choice a material consequence beyond the slogan. Distributors were not comparing two labels with identical costs. The Barreras offered a cheaper arrangement, while Méndez’s access to routes had become more expensive. Raúl later had to concede that the 12 percent deal had been an act of genius. The new model helped tip Baja against Méndez, although the violence surrounding the war ensured that market preference could not be separated from physical danger.

A Commercial Language for Power

Elsewhere, Adán describes the Federación’s reach in similarly practical terms. He presents Guadalajara as a safe place from which to serve the organization and offers García Abrego shared access to his friends and protection, for a fee. The conversation makes protection part of a system of exchange: an alliance brings security and connections, while the price remains explicit. It is not the Coke-or-Pepsi choice itself, but it clarifies the larger world the metaphor belongs to, where business, loyalty, and protection are bound together.

The same logic extends into politics. The Federación helped the incumbent Mexican president steal the 1988 election; when vote-counting computers malfunctioned, the opposition candidate’s expected victory was reversed. Years later, after the new president took office in 1994, the organization bought tesobonos, withdrew capital from Mexico’s national bank, and profited from the peso’s devaluation and subsequent recovery. Adán agreed to bring the organization’s money back only in exchange for a favorable trade environment. These episodes do not turn Coke or Pepsi into a political catchphrase, but they reveal a related pattern: the organization converts money, access, and protection into leverage over the choices available to others.

As an expression, Coke or Pepsi compresses that pattern into a memorable binary. It sounds like consumer preference, yet in the Baja conflict choosing a brand means choosing an organization, its costs, its protection, and its risks. The comparison’s irony is that the choice is presented as simple precisely where the consequences are not: market incentives can attract allegiance, but the cartel war ensures that refusal or divided loyalty is not treated as a harmless preference.