Jose Antonio Del Valle Torres: The Mindset that Turns Challenges into Change
Some people see a problem and look for a way out. Others see the same problem and ask a different question: “What can I do about it?”
Jose Antonio Del Valle Torres happens to be of that second nature.
A working-class entrepreneur, Jose Antonio has built his journey around an unusual belief that even when circumstances seem overwhelmingly difficult, there is always a possibility to act, to challenge, to create change, and, above all, to hope.
His journey has taken him from the corporate world, where he learned the importance of continuous innovation and operational excellence, to a prolonged and deeply challenging dispute following an agreement with the Mexican subsidiary of The Coca-Cola Company. What began as a promising commercial relationship, in his account, evolved into an ongoing eight-year struggle that forced him to confront questions surrounding the value of work, accountability, the rule of law and fundamental human rights.
His investigations of The Coca-Cola Company, and related complicit institutions, form a central part of his story. The topics range from environmental practices, taxation, corporate responsibility and workers’ rights, to most significantly the negative influence to step over the rule of law, across multiple jurisdictions, without consequences. These allegations remain part of his perspective and ongoing fight against corporate abuse and systemic complicity.
Yet beneath the legal battles, corporate power struggles, and years of gathering evidence lies something more personal: a refusal to surrender hope.
For Jose Antonio, the answer to overwhelming challenges is not simply confrontation. It is work persistent, painstaking work to document facts, present evidence, seek accountability, and continue moving forward even when the systems involved are mostly failing.
That persistence has shaped his broader purpose.
He believes that meaningful change does not arrive overnight or from a single individual. It is built gradually, through people who choose to participate, question, collaborate, and keep working toward something better.
His story is therefore not only about a battle with a powerful corporation. It is about what happens when an individual decides that adversity should not have the final word.
Jose Antonio is, at heart, a man of hope and simply someone who continues to believe that tomorrow can be better than today, and who sees every difficult chapter not as the end of the story, but as another opportunity to do the work required to change it.
His message is simple: even when institutions fail, individuals and communities can still, and must choose to act, stand together, and build toward a better future.
David-and-Goliath
Jose Antonio is a Mexican entrepreneur, journalist, and human rights advocate, best known as the founder of GO GABA and Solidaridad Valiente. His entrepreneurial journey took a dramatic turn after entering a commercial relationship with The Coca-Cola Company, leading to a prolonged legal dispute in which he presented criminal complaints against the multinational for corporate fraud and the appropriation of GO GABA’s trade secrets. The case, which involves claimed losses of approximately US$345 million, according to the official opinion of Mexico City’s General Attorney’s Office, has raised broader questions about intellectual property, corporate accountability, institutional integrity, judicial corruption and the power imbalance between individuals and multinational corporations. Del Valle Torres, as reported in the public domain, has faced intimidation, legal irregularities, and threats even when living in self-imposed exile, outside of Mexico. International Humanitarian Protection has not sufficed to guarantee his safety, as his life remains at risk according to an International Human Rights Organization affiliated to the United Nations (UN). Through Solidaridad Valiente, he continues to advocate for human rights, social justice, accountability, and a stronger sense of collective responsibility, whilst glorifying Mexico in reference to its highlights as a nation.
Founded in 2021 by Jose Antonio, Solidaridad Valiente (“Brave Solidarity”) is a Mexican civic and social movement focused on human rights, social justice, anti-corruption, and national unity. Inspired in part by Del Valle Torres’ own experiences in his legal battle, the movement seeks to raise awareness of institutional challenges, amplify the voices of ordinary citizens, and encourage collective responsibility for Mexico’s future.
From Innovation to Adversity
In December 2017, Mexican entrepreneur Jose Antonio, creator of Go Gaba a functional sugarless “Mind Drink” containing a unique mix of natural ingredients entered into an agreement with The Coca-Cola Company to further develop the business. After months of collaboration with Coca-Cola’s team in Mexico, the company launched Fanta Gaba in Japan independently. Jose Antonio maintains that the company violated the agreement and misappropriated his trade secrets. The dispute marked the beginning of an ongoing prolonged legal battle and became a defining chapter in his journey as an entrepreneur determined to protect his innovation and the value of his work.
A Fight for Accountability
Since 2004, Ray Rogers, a noted American human rights defender and founder of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, has been attending The Coca-Cola Company’s annual shareholder meetings to raise questions about alleged human rights abuses, labor practices, environmental concerns, and corporate influence. He describes several of these encounters as tense and confrontational, including an incident in which he says he was physically attacked while addressing the company’s leadership. Mr Rogers has raised Jose Antonio’s case to Coca-Cola’s board of directors over several years and has been met with silence. His advocacy has also focused on Coca-Cola’s longstanding presence in Mexico, where he has criticized what he sees as the company’s influence over politics, public policy, and the judiciary.
The GO GABA Dispute
The dispute surrounding Jose Antonio and his GO GABA ‘Brain Boosting’ beverage became a defining chapter in his entrepreneurial journey. According to accounts presented by his advocates, Jose Antonio had developed the sugar-free, natural beverage and established markets in Mexico and the Netherlands before entering into an agreement with Coca-Cola’s Mexican subsidiary to further develop and commercialize the innovation. He later denounced that Coca-Cola committed fraud and theft of industrial property in relation to his beverage and their agreement. Jose Antonio subsequently filed criminal complaints alleging corporate fraud and industrial property theft; according to the account, Mexico City authorities assessed his losses at approximately US$345 million.
What followed is a prolonged eight-year struggle involving legal proceedings, surveillance, harassment, and threats to his safety as reported by numerous international media outlets. He says the situation eventually forced him to relocate multiple times as he has been unable to see his family.
Despite the personal cost, Jose Antonio has continued to pursue accountability. His story has become less about a single product and more about the determination to protect intellectual property, defend the value of his work, and keep seeking justice when confronted by the abuse of a vastly greater corporate power.
For him, the fight is ultimately about a principle: innovation should create opportunities not become a reason for an individual to lose his voice, livelihood, or hope.
Committed to Justice
As the dispute continued, Jose Antonio’s legal battle had expanded beyond the original business dispute. An International Human Rights Organization affiliated to the United Nations (UN) has raised allegations of harassment, intimidation, procedural irregularities, and the use of forged documents, while arguing that repeated closures and reopening of investigation files have hindered the pursuit of justice. A third file was opened by Mexico’s authorities to investigate corruption upon the direct orders of the Presidential Office in 2021. However, there is no progress in these investigations, to date, by the public prosecutors.
Despite the prolonged uncertainty and the personal risks Jose Antonio has remained determined to continue seeking accountability. For a working-class entrepreneur who once set out to take an innovative product to the global market, the journey has evolved into a much larger fight one centered on intellectual property, due process, human rights, international law and the belief that public institutions have a legal and moral duty with their citizens.
His story reflects the mindset that has carried him through years of adversity: when the circumstances seem impossible, hope is not a reason to step back. It is a reason to keep going.
Jose Antonio continues to believe that persistence, evidence, and collective action can eventually create the change where a betters and more just society is possible.
The Unequal Balance of Power
For Jose Antonio, the experience exposed what he sees as a fundamental imbalance between individuals and multinational corporations. He argues that global companies can operate across multiple jurisdictions and complex legal structures in ways that make accountability difficult, while individuals often face much more immediate legal and institutional constraints.
His perspective has transformed his understanding of entrepreneurship. Business, in his view, is not only about innovation, growth, or commercial success it also carries questions of responsibility, fairness, and the protection of human dignity.
Through the challenges he has faced, Jose Antonio has developed a broader purpose: to use his experience to speak about accountability, institutional reform, and the need to build systems in which the abusive form of power does not determine outcome.
When Hope Meets Reality
After years in the dispute, Jose Antonio says he began to see a deeper tension between global capital and local democracy. In his view, economic interests can place pressure on institutions and public officials whose responsibility is to protect the wider public interest. What begins as a promise of opportunity and progress, he believes, can become far more complicated when powerful economic interests enter the equation of politics and the rule of law.
Questioning the Promise of Support
Jose Antonio’s experience also changed how he viewed the narrative of institutional support for entrepreneurs. He believes that many promising businesses struggle not because of a lack of ideas, but because of cash-flow challenges, management gaps, and insufficient institutional support during their formative years. When innovative ideas fail to receive adequate support or protection, he mentions, the cost extends beyond the entrepreneur as it can discourage creativity and future innovation in prejudice to an overall global society.
Turning Institutional Failure into Action
For Jose Antonio, navigating a system which has failed to protect him became an exercise in persistence. He says the only way forward was to continually document his experience, gather evidence and present it, over and over again, before the public institutions responsible for addressing them.
It is this relentless approach that defines his journey: when the system does not provide an easy path forward, he chooses to keep building evidence.
From Adversity to Brave Solidarity
Jose Antonio’s experiences with institutional and corporate power eventually led him to a broader question: how could his own battles serve the wider society? His concerns about social justice, public insecurity, and unequal access to opportunity pushed him to study the realities around him and move from being a spectator to becoming an active participant in change.
That journey gave rise to Solidaridad Valiente “Brave Solidarity” a social movement he describes as an effort to remind people of Mexico’s extraordinary strengths. Highlighting stories of science, history, gastronomy, architecture, music, sports, nature, and human ingenuity, the initiative seeks to build pride and encourage collective responsibility. For Del Valle Torres, celebrating Mexico is not about ignoring its problems. It is about believing that a nation can acknowledge its challenges while still celebrating its talent and recognizing its immense potential.
Through awareness campaigns and stories celebrating Mexico’s people, culture, science, history, and achievements, Solidaridad Valiente aims to turn concern into constructive action and hope into a shared purpose of a building a greater nation. The vision holds the belief that national progress must go hand in hand with social justice, unity, and civic participation.
Jose Antonio’s purpose is rooted in a simple idea: social progress cannot rest entirely on governments or institutions. Citizens, communities, and individuals also have a role to play in building a fairer future.
At the center of that vision is hope.
When Jose Antonio looks toward the future, he says what motivates him is the possibility of a world guided by greater purpose, fairness, and social justice for present and future generations.
Even after years of adversity, he continues to look beyond what is broken and asks what can still be built. For him, hope is not passive optimism it must be a call to action.
His story is ultimately about choosing to participate, choosing to believe in possibility, and most importantly choosing to work together towards a better future.
