Perhaps more than any other, this World Cup highlights the contradictions surrounding the football industry and the interests it mobilizes. The media tries to present it as a tournament meant to unite humanity around the beautiful game, but the anti-globalization assembly of Santa Ursula, the Mexico City neighborhood where the Azteca stadium is located, denounces FIFA's management of the tournament according to extractive models. Just as multinationals extract gold from Mexican territories, leaving communities with only pollution and poverty, FIFA extracts public resources, common goods, and colossal profits with the complicity of the government. Parliament, where Morena, the party of "President"-as she likes to be called-Claudia Sheinbaum, holds an absolute majority, has indeed approved special laws that exempt FIFA from paying taxes on the billions in profits generated by the tournament, thus diverting resources that could be used for health or education.
Environmental devastation
First, the World Cup exacerbates existing tensions between urban development and environmental preservation, putting a severe strain on already depleted water resources and ecosystems. To operate a stadium like the Azteca, authorities have had to cut off water to several neighborhoods within a radius of several kilometers. Residents complain that while their taps run dry, the stadium and FIFA's commercial complexes consume millions of liters of this vital resource. Meanwhile, construction work around other World Cup venues in Guadalajara and Monterrey has impacted protected forest areas, waterways, and groundwater. Overall, it is estimated that this World Cup will generate between 9.5 and 15 million tons of CO₂, making it the most polluting tournament in history.
Gentrification
The surge in speculative rental prices, aimed at boosting luxury tourism and platforms like Airbnb, has exacerbated gentrification. The trend is to "cleanse" the area of low-income residents in order to better promote the World Cup in the country. Besides the water shortage, the residents of Santa Ursula, who are fighting for their rights, are suffering from rising rents. These days, since the area is closed not only to vehicles but also to pedestrians, residents must present a special permit to enter and leave their homes. It's like living in a ghetto. Furthermore, the vast majority of Mexicans cannot afford tickets for the matches. To give you an idea, yesterday, the opening day, the cheapest ticket cost around 330 euros (but at least 2,000 euros on the black market or resale sites), while the average wage for a worker in Mexico City is no more than 600 euros per month.
An international sounding board
That said, for Mexican social movements, the 2026 World Cup is a unique opportunity to denounce the country's many problems. Mexico has a government that defines itself as center-left, but which is increasingly shifting to the right. With thousands of foreign journalists, television crews, and fans present in Mexico City, the impact of a road blockade is being felt worldwide. In recent days, the barometer of social discontent has been rising steadily. Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated in various parts of the city and around the stadium. Yesterday, violent clashes occurred between the Black Bloc and riot police, including mounted officers, near Gate 8 of the Azteca Stadium. Further disturbances took place on the Calzada de Tlalpan, the main thoroughfare that runs through the city from the center to the south, on the surrounding avenues, and near the Gran Sur neighborhood. Yesterday, the Mexican capital presented the spectacle of a militarized city, besieged by thousands of police officers.
Three major protest movements
The most feared movement is that of the democratic teachers, the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE), which has several hundred thousand members in almost every state of the Republic, particularly Chiapas, Oaxaca, Michoacán, Guerrero, and Mexico City. It is the most powerful and best-organized opposition movement in the country, the only one with a national presence.
To understand what it represents, it is important to remember that in Mexico, the figure of the schoolteacher has always been a point of reference for communities, especially in rural areas, but also in the working-class neighborhoods of large cities. Teachers have played a fundamental role since the time of the Revolution (1910), and even before. Librado Rivera, the famous comrade of the Flores Magón brothers, was a schoolteacher. Otilio Montaño-co-author of the "Plan of Ayala" with Emiliano Zapata-was also one. In the 1960s, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), then the ruling party, accused Othon Salazar, another teachers' leader, of being an agent of imperialism. Reactionary priests, for their part, have always accused teachers of being emissaries of the devil.
Even today, CNTE activists are labeled vandals, thugs, and provocateurs by the mainstream media and, with rare exceptions, by political parties. Very few of them try to understand why they are fighting.
The Coordination was founded in 1979 as the democratic wing of the National Union of Education Workers, one of the most corrupt and mafia-like unions in Mexico. Over the past 47 years, two generations of democratic teachers have fought against every successive government. They have paid a heavy price simply for protesting. One of the songs by the renowned composer and performer José de Molina, "La Marcha al magisterio independiente" (The March to Independent Teachers), is dedicated to one of these victims, Misael Núñez Acosta, who was murdered in 1981.
Journalist Luis Hernández Navarro estimated that between 1979 and 2002, approximately 150 teachers from the CNTE (National Coordination of Teachers of Mexico) were killed. Precise figures for subsequent years are unavailable. And let's not forget that the teachers of the Coordination (Section 22) were key figures in the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), one of the most significant urban uprisings in Mexican history, whose twentieth anniversary is being commemorated these days.
What does the Coordination want? Historically, it has fought for three main objectives: 1. Democratizing the union; 2. Democratizing public education; 3. Democratizing the country. Within its ranks, various political tendencies coexist, from anarchism to Leninism, Trotskyism, and even neo-Stalinism. They have many disagreements on ideological issues, but are united in the struggle. Until recently, some, perhaps the majority, were close to Morena. Proceso González, a teacher who lost an eye in recent days due to a rubber bullet fired by the police, campaigned for López Obrador in 2018 and for Claudia Sheinbaum in 2024.
Currently, the CNTE's main demand is the repeal of the 2007 law that privatizes public sector pensions by transforming the public system into individual accounts called AFORES, managed for their own profit by international financial consortiums. The CNTE has been advocating this demand for nearly twenty years and has not given up. It has been said that this is a self-serving demand. This is false. The CNTE is fighting for all public sector workers. During the election campaign, Claudia Sheinbaum (and, before her, López Obrador) promised to repeal it, but she later changed her mind and did not do so, which is why teachers feel betrayed.
Another demand is to deal directly with the President, but she refuses and delegates to her ministers - some of whom, like the Minister of Public Education (SEP), Mario Delgado, are particularly disliked. And yet, Sheinbaum, who constantly refers to "the people," continues to meet with major capitalists like Carlos Slim (one of the richest men in the world) and other representatives of business organizations.
It was in this context that, on June 1st, teachers began a series of mobilizations in strategic locations in Mexico City and in some twenty other states where they are present. The government sealed off the Plaza de la Constitución - commonly known as the Zócalo - to prevent the CNTE from setting up a protest camp there.
However, they pitched their tents in the surrounding streets and, in recent days, attempted to reach the Azteca stadium en masse. They failed, but disrupted the already congested traffic. Now, the government accuses the CNTE of playing into the hands of the far right. And it's going even further: it promises to consult directly with teachers, school by school, bypassing the union.
Another important movement that has emerged in recent days is that of the madres buscadoras ("searching mothers"), groups dedicated to finding their missing children and loved ones. This tragedy stems from the very serious crisis of violence, drug trafficking, and enforced disappearances plaguing Mexico. Armed with shovels and picks, the buscadoras scour deserts, countryside, and abandoned land in search of clandestine graves. They often do so based on anonymous tips. They take great risks because they operate in territories controlled by drug cartels. According to Amnesty International, almost all of these activists face threats, attacks, or extortion. Dozens have been murdered. In recent days, Mexico City police have blocked groups of these mothers searching for their children near the Azteca Stadium, leading to moments of high tension and heartbreaking scenes.
Unlike the CNTE, which employs the so-called "mobilization-negotiation-mobilization" tactic, some of whose actions can be violent (but never against individuals), the missing persons mothers seek only to raise public awareness of the problem of the disappeared. The figures are appalling: more than 134,000 registered cases (but how many unreported cases?) and nearly 99% impunity. Since 2018, the situation has worsened due to a renewed symbiosis between organized crime, the political class, and law enforcement agencies. The government repeatedly states that it is not responsible for these crimes, and this is partly true. However, it has created the conditions conducive to the escalation of the phenomenon, primarily through impunity, inaction, and inadequate management. Sheinbaum, Mexico's first female president, stubbornly refuses to meet with the missing persons mothers.
Finally, there are the students from the rural teacher training college in Ayotzinapa and the parents of the 43 young people who disappeared in 2014, who, in recent years, have mobilized tens of thousands of people. They accuse the government of failing to keep its promises and contest the millions spent on the FIFA World Cup, while the country faces an unresolved human rights crisis. On the 8th, hundreds of young people and some parents of the 43 arrived in Mexico City on 16 buses. The authorities responded by launching a large-scale coordinated operation between federal and municipal police to prevent them from reaching the city center. After hours of negotiations, however, the protesters managed to break through the blockade on foot and participated in demonstrations in the following days.
The result? At this World Cup inauguration, two matches were played: one, in the stadium, between the Mexican national team and South Africa, which Mexico won 2-0. The other match, between the government and the protest movements, ended in a draw. The CNTE (National Council of Workers) cannot claim victory because the pension reform law has not been repealed, and yesterday, the teachers' march failed to reach the stadium. However, about fifty buscadoras (female buscadoras) bypassed the police cordon and arrived near the stadium, where they managed to make their voices heard. Another group infiltrated the FIFA Fan Fest, set up in the Zócalo, making their presence known. The government also has little to boast about. The attempt to present Mexico as a modern, developing country where the rule of law prevails has failed spectacularly. The unrest of the past few days has been reported by major news agencies and newspapers worldwide: from the New York Times to Corriere della Sera, from Le Monde to El País. Well, no, gentlemen. The game isn't over.
Claudio Albertani, Tlalpan, June 12, 2026
https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4745
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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