The art of a shared past & a bright future

Did you know that with Coca-Cola FEMSA’s $1.2-billion investment in the Philippines two years ago, Mexico became one of the biggest, if not the biggest, sources of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the Philippines? FEMSA’s investment has made the strong ties between the Philippines and Mexico go beyond tacos and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“Mexico today continues to be very much present in the Philippines. Our relationship represents, however, more than culture and strong links to the past. The investment of CEMEX since 1997, the arrival of FEMSA in 2013, the presence of many Mexican call centers, as well as the recent arrival of MABE represent investments of close to $3.5 billion of Mexican companies in the Philippines,” revealed Mexican Ambassador to the Philippines Julio Camarena during the inauguration of an exhibit on Mexican art at the Ayala Museum.

 Dubbed Mexico: Fantastic Identity, 20th Century Masterpieces from the FEMSA Collection, the exhibit brought together 60 masterpieces of renowned Mexican painters, including Diego Rivera (who inspired our late National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco), Ángel Zárraga, Frida Kahlo, Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Rufino Tamayo, Roberto Montenegro and Carlos Merida.

 FEMSA owns the most extensive collection of Mexican art in the world, with over 1,200 works. It is recognized as one of the most important modern and contemporary Latin American art collections in the world.

The FEMSA collection has been showcased around the world, but it is the first time it is being presented in Asia — in the Philippines at that. It is also FEMSA’s 100th exhibit of its prized collection.

Coca-Cola FEMSA is the largest franchise bottler of Coca-Cola products in the world — but it shares more than Coke with the Philippines. With the exhibit, it is sharing the ties that bind both the Philippines and Mexico. With every brushstroke.

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“We decided to invest in this country because we are confident in the strength and resilience of the Filipino economy, and the opportunities it provides. Apart from the initial investment, we have also made significant investments in our supply chain. We installed a new line in the Misamis Oriental Plant and acquired a PET plant from San Miguel Corp. in Davao del Sur. We also installed two of the fastest bottling lines in the world in our Canlubang Plant,” Carlos Salazar, chief executive officer of FEMSA, said.

President Noynoy Aquino, a lifelong Coke drinker, will inaugurate the new plant in the first week of November. The Coca-Cola FEMSA Canlubang plant has the fastest bottling lines in the world, at 81,000 bottles an hour.

“Our principal interest of bringing this exhibit to the Philippines is to satisfy our desire to bring a vision of the most representative art of our country in order to generate ties with the Filipino audience…” Salazar said.

“It has been said that this exhibit is the first of its kind in the Philippines. We at Coca-Cola FEMSA are grateful for the opportunity to host another important milestone to share with this wonderful country, our first home in Asia. It has also been said that this exhibit will continue to strengthen the strong bond that once existed between the Philippines and the country of Mexico,” added Juan Ramón Felix, CEO of Coca-Cola FEMSA Asia.

  According to Leon Gallery’s Jaime Ponce de Leon, Frida Kahlo must have surely influenced our very own H.R. Ocampo. Filipino artist Romeo Tabuena lives in Mexico, and his works are one of the most sought after in the art scene.

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The time-honored ties between the Philippines and Mexico  began with the Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade, and in fact, the first 250 years of  Spanish rule over the Philippines was done so through Mexico. The Philippines was part of Spain, but was ruled by the vice kingdom of New Spain, which is now Mexico.

 “It is therefore no surprise that Filipino culture possesses many expressions of Mexican art and tradition,” pointed out Camarena. “Thirty percent of Tagalog is Spanish, yet five percent of Tagalog includes words from the Aztec language. For example: kamote, sayote, tiangge, palengke, tomate, among others. The traditions of fiestas, piñatas and bandaritas continue to exist in many towns of the Philippines. The Virgin of Guadalupe is most praised in Mexico as well as the Philippines.”

And when we look at Mexican paintings, we see ourselves. We see sunny colors, earth colors, figures with our likeness.

 According to Felix, while Coca-Cola has been present in the Philippines for over 100 years, Coca-Cola FEMSA has only been here for almost two years now, when it purchased what was then known as Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines. Coca-Cola FEMSA is the largest manufacturer of Coca-Cola products in the world and operates in nine countries in Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Venezuela, Argentina and Colombia).

“The Philippines is our first venture outside of Latin America and will be our foothold for our entry into the rest of Asia,” he said proudly.

So with its whopping investment in the Philippines, and its investment as well in our shared cultural ties, Coca-Cola isn’t only sharing a Coke with us.

It’s sharing a life — past, present and future.

(The exhibit runs till Nov. 9.) (You may e-mail me at [email protected].)