Absolut Insult

The Absolut Vodka company is planning on running an advertising campaign in Mexico using this image:


The map represents the pre-Mexican War boundaries of the U.S. and Mexico. After that war in 1848, the two northernmost territories of Mexico, Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico, became State property and sovereign territory of the United States of America. People in Mexico think they were robbed of their rightful land, but it was really just sparsely populated land on the fringe of their territory that Americans migrated to in huge numbers. You can't stand in the way of Manifest Destiny.

Eventually war became inevitable and after a few battles in southern Texas, a small army of mostly volunteers and led by the general-in-chief himself, Winfield Scott, made an amphibious landing at Vera Cruz, on the east coast of Mexico. The army, whose junior officers were mostly men who went on to become leaders in the Civil War (Grant, Lee, Sherman, etc.) outmaneuvered and outfought the Mexicans all the way to Mexico City. They took the capital and negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which created the border we have today.

Absolut could not put forward a more inappropriate image as a marketing tool. Besides the fact that it is upsetting to any patriotic American, with the current border crisis going on it is extremely ill-timed. Just think if someone tried to sell beer in Iran or Syria with pictures of the map before Israel existed was pictured on the cans?

Thanks for nothing Absolut, except giving me a good reason to drink any other type of vodka besides yours.