Yanked off the air: Coke ad too 'offensive'

Coca-Cola has apologized for its new "Open Your Heart" ad, which featured a group of white people performing an act of charity for Mexicans in a remote village. (Photo: YouTube, Coca-Cola screenshot)

Race activists in Mexico have convinced Coca-Cola to pull an allegedly "offensive" and "insensitive" ad showing white people performing an act of charity.

The soft-drink giant canceled a commercial for its new "Open Your Heart" Christmas campaign, which took place in the remote Mexican town of Totontepec, Oaxaca.

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The ad, which had just one week of circulation, featured a group of white kids building a wooden Christmas tree for the people of Tontontepec. Text accompanying the ad claimed 81.6 percent of Mexico's indigenous people feel alienated from their country for not speaking Spanish.

"This type of publicity is an act of discrimination and racism," Elvira Pablo, an indigenous lawyer, said at a news conference in Mexico City Dec. 3, Takepart.com reported Sunday. "It is a comment on our type of life and an attempt to put a culture of consumerism in its place."

"It's outrageous for the indigenous," added Diana Turner Dec. 3, a public-relations spokeswoman for Consumer Power, a consumer-rights group, Fox News reported.

"The Death of Free Speech: How Our Broken National Dialogue Has Killed the Truth and Divided America" examines how the news media has created arbitrary, biased and illogical rules for determining what can and cannot be said in the public arena.

Coca-Cola released a statement on the controversy Dec. 2.

"As part of Coca-Cola Mexico's Christmas campaign for this year the video 'Mixe Community Totontepec' was launched on digital channels, seeking to convey a message of unity and joy. Our intention was never to be insensitive to or underestimate any indigenous group. We have now removed the video and apologize to anyone who may have been offended. In nearly 90 years in the country, Coca-Cola Mexico has worked to share messages of unity and friendship to contribute to build a society free of prejudices."

Watch the controversial commercial: