WHEN Coca-Cola tried to strongarm Raquel Chávez out of selling a cheap Peruvian rival brand in her tiny corner shop in Mexico City, they underestimated her tenacity.

Two years later the multinational corporation has come to rue that error. It is facing up to $68 million (£40 million) in anti-monopoly fines — the highest in Mexican history — and has had a taste of the 49-year-old shopkeeper’s grit.

Señora Chávez ran foul of the soft drinks company in 2003 when some of her customers asked her to stock Big Cola, a cheaper Peruvian soda preferred by some people in Iztapalapa, her working-class suburb of Mexico City. The local distributors of Coca-Cola quickly asked her to stop selling the rival brand.

“I always told them ‘no’. I knew that Mexico was a free country and I was free and that in my shop I’m the boss,” said Señora Chávez, a mother of three, whose cramped shop is in the corner of a small parade.

The distributors stopped delivering Coca-Cola. Señora Chávez told the manager that his sharp practice was unconstitutional but he was unimpressed, telling her: “We can do whatever we want. CocaCola has so many lawyers and so much money that no one can do anything to it.”

The deliveries stopped, Señora Chávez’s customers drifted away and she started to feel the pinch. “For me, that meant ruin,” she said. “If a store doesn’t sell Coca-Cola, it’s condemned to failure, to ruin. That’s why Coca-Cola has been able to dominate everyone.”

Even her husband told her to drop her battle with the company and, without telling her, cancelled her order with Big Cola.

When Señora Chávez found out, she was furious. She said: “I told him that I wouldn’t accept that from him, either, because in my store I can sell whatever I want. So I told the Big Cola people to keep on selling to me.”

To survive she started to buy Coca-Cola from a retailer and drive it back to the shop in her jalopy. Sometimes she would be up until midnight hauling crates into her shop, but her profits still fell. Still she refused to relent. “The reason I didn’t give in was pride, and anger,” she said. “I didn’t want them to humiliate me.”

Finally she took her complaint to the Federal Competition Commission. Initially it told her that she had no case. For months she berated them, asking the organisation whose side it was on. Finally it agreed to launch an investigation and now it has ruled. Fifteen local distributors were found guilty of unfair practices and fined $15 million.

In a separate case, the commission also fined 54 other distributors $1 million each for bullying tactics. The Mexican subsidiary of Coca-Cola denies the charges and is appealing against the fines, which will largely be imposed on bottlers and distributors. Though she will receive nothing herself, Señora Chávez is happy with her unexpected victory and has resumed selling Coca-Cola.

“This is a message to everyone,” she said. “To the big guys who are strong, that they need to let the little ones grow. And the little ones have to learn to defend their rights, because if they don’t do it, no one will do it for them.”

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