MEXICO CITY (EFE) – A recovering alcoholic is offering to Mexico’s non-drinkers the congenial and festive atmosphere of the traditional cantina but without the booze, something he hopes will augment civility in this capital’s often raucous nightlife.

“The people who come out of here will never have problems, neither drunken fights nor fear of the Breathalyzer,” Othon Gomezcesar, owner of BarSin, told EFE.
“Sin” means “without” in Spanish. Visiting speakers of English drawn to it by its name wth perhaps other objectives in mind may find the nightspot’s degree of licentiousness moderated by the absence of inebriating social lubricant.
The canteen, which opened last weekend, offers like-tasting substitutes for whisky, tequila, rum and champagne, along with fruit juices and 17 original cocktails.
Gomezcesar said he hopes his establishment will become an alternative for those who want to quit drinking or who simply don’t enjoy alcohol, and that those who come to BarSin “get drunk on joy in a festive and cantina-like atmosphere.”
“It’s only the alcoholic who goes to a bar mainly for the alcohol. The guy who gets a little buzz on once in a while, what he is looking for is the ambiance, share some time with friends. And if you can make him or her feel good, maybe they won’t miss the booze,” he said.
“My objective is to give an alternative to people who don’t drink alcohol by their own choice, by (doctor’s) prescription or obligation. Because be-fore they didn’t have the option of a place like this, and (in other bars) they would feel pressure from friends and their surroundings to drink,” he said.
The cantina offers 17 libations created by barman David Benneth and manager Juan Carlos Gallo, ho is a nephew of Gomezcesar.
Only the wine, which Go-mezcesa imports from Argentina, and three brands of beer contain any alcohol at all, and even they fall short of Mexico’s threshold – 2 percent – to qualify as alcoholic beverages.
“I have put it to the test: I have had as many as 15 of those beers ad I stopped because I felt full, not for any other reason,” says Gomezcesar, a self-de- scribed recovering alcoholic.
As in any other Mexican cantina, patrons can enjoy cheese with sausage and mushrooms, salads, pasta, ravioli, consommes and enchiladas, as well as platters with beef, fish, chicken and pork.
While Gomezcesar’s initiative has been hailed by many, some local chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous argue against what they characterize as substituting other substances for alcohol rather than addressing the issue of dependency.
BarSin’s owner responds by saying that the idea behind his cantina “is replacing a bad way of enjoying yourself with a good one.”
“We don’t preach against alcohol and we don’t cure sick people,” Gomezcesar said. “We’re just trying to offer a new alternative, nothing more.”
The “project with social benefits,” as Gomezcesar calls BarSin, is open daily from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. and charges a flat price of 35 pesos ($3.20) per drink.
The opening of the bar comes several months after a key figure in Mexico’s battle against addiction said tobacco, alcohol and synthetic drugs were a greater threat to public health than cocaine, increasingly available due to Mexican criminal organizations’ connections with Colombian traffickers.
The technical director of Mexico’s Conadic anti-addiction agency, Angel Prado, said in February: “Our real concern is the consumption of tobacco, alcohol and so-called synthetic drugs like Ecstasy, because demand for cocaine is stable and even shows a downward tendency.”
Officials calculate that Mexico’s population of just over 100 million includes 3.7 million “heavy drinkers” and another 9 million people given to binge drinking.
Non-governmental organizations estimate that 5.7 percent of Mexican youths consume some kind of addictive substance and that traffic accidents due to drug- or alcohol-im-paired drivers constitute the leading cause of death among people under 30.