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FIFA Counts Goals, Mexicans Count the Disappeared
The same countries are also currently holding talks to renew the US-Mexico Canada (USMC) North American free trade agreement for another 16 years. The USMCA, an update to the North America Free Trade Agreement, is codified empire, depriving Mexico of corn sovereignty, institutionalizing the US' dominance and Mexico's structural and economic dependence, while sacrificing Mexico's rivers and soil to US and Canadian mines.
The giddy glamour of the World Cup spectacle is not unity but sedation, its stadium lights obscuring the negotiated details of imperialism and the unfestive realities of barbed borders, wage apartheid, and centuries of accumulated harm.
The US and Mexico are employing selective hospitality for the World Cup—or, more precisely, implementing racist and classist measures of city beautification for some, and social cleansing, deportations, raids, repression, and evictions for others.
2. A corporate exploitation bonanza: The soccer ball is the pretext. The World Cup is actually a giant advertising campaign—experiential marketing designed to drive sales for the corporate sponsors and move mass amounts of merchandise.
Behind those sales there is extreme exploitation. Adidas and the company Someone Somewhere paid 150 Indigenous Nahua embroiderers in Naupan, Puebla 36 pesos (US$2) an hour to hand-stitch the Mexico World Cup jersey—which Adidas then sold for 4,000 pesos. Diario Cambio reported that the women were also forced to abandon their traditional sewing techniques and use French knots and zigzag stitching instead to fill in commercial logos—a sidelining of cultural knowledge. The companies also promised the workers social security, in order to justify their "fair trade" branding (and pricing), but never kept the promise.
And while World Cup merchandise floods Mexico's street stalls and shops, an estimated 70% of Mexicans will watch the matches on television, with a corresponding increase in junk food purchases to go with that. Inside statidums, FIFA has prohibited the use of reusable water bottles in the three host countries, meaning spectators must buy water or soft drinks, generating huge amounts of rubbish as well as profits for corporations.
3. Coca Cup: The Cup trophy arrived in a Coca-Cola plane at Mexico City's airport in late February. The Mexican government rolled out the red carpet, with foreign affairs secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente receiving the corporation and the trophy as though they were fellow officials. The trophy and massive Coca-Cola boards then toured the country, including a photo shoot at the sacred and world heritage site, Chichén Itza, and an appearance on the president's daily news show.
Coca-Cola has had advertising at every FIFA tournament since 1950. The promotions and sponsorship are a major part of its strategy to increase consumption during the games, and for acquiring new customers. Coca-Cola, along with companies like Pepsi and Nestle, extract (steal) over 133 billion liters of Mexico's water annually, and Mexico is already the biggest consumer of Coca-Cola globally, at an average of 163 liters of soft drink per person per year. The FIFA-Coca-Cola alliance is spoon-feeding more empire to a country it is already slowly poisoning.
4. Red carpet for tourists, disposable locals: The US and Mexico are employing selective hospitality for the World Cup—or, more precisely, implementing racist and classist measures of city beautification for some, and social cleansing, deportations, raids, repression, and evictions for others.
The US is promoting the World Cup as a way to "showcase" their "hospitality," while simultaneously violating a range of human rights with its closed border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement racial profiling, and illegal and cruel deportations.
In Mexico City over the past month, officials have also held anti-migrant raids, where police, the military, and migration authorities have detained people who are typically irregular precisely because of the closed border to the north and horrific wait times and unfair outcomes from Mexican institutions. Social cleansing for the World Cup also includes removing vendors from the area near the Mexico City stadium and homeless people from parts of the city where tourists are expected. Sex workers report that a new 17-kilometer bike lane built for the World Cup has left thousands of them without work, and local communities, who weren't consulted, said they support bike lanes, but this one cuts through bus stops, endangering pedestrians.
The government is also valuing Mexico's beautiful axolotls more as World Cup mascots than living creatures. It spent 62 million pesos adorning walls around the city and the light-rail with axolotl images, while nearby in Xochimilco, the animals are endangered due to contaminated runoff and public works.
Further, the government is staging Day of the Dead celebrations in June just for tourists, while erecting massive metal perimeters around Mexico City's main square. There is a two-kilometer exclusion zone around the stadium that is causing huge difficulties for locals as well as stopping protesters and protecting the tourists and wealthy who can afford expensive stadium seats.
The government has adorned the light-rail train with axolotls for the World Cup, while the animal itself lacks care and protection. (Photo by Tamara Pearson)
5. Street soccer: "The streets are our soccer fields, and we assert our right to the city, to protest, and to freedom of assembly," said members of the Assembly for the Common Good and Against the War. And indeed, billions of dollars and corporate sponsorships aren't necessary for sport or fun. Known as cascaritas in Mexico—and by other names around Latin America and much of the Global South—informal and improvised soccer games played in parks, parking lots, and in the streets can be easy, free, and truly inclusive.
This soccer is played with a few backpacks or empty water jugs as goal posts, a hand-painted or chalk-drawn court, and an empty can or an old plastic ball. The name, cascaritas, comes from orange peal, because even an orange can be a ball—though it will eventually become quite beaten up and the peal will come off. When the objective is to have fun, any genders and ages can join in, only a few basic rules are followed, and even those watching are more involved, as they are the neighbors and friends of the players.
6. Protest, organizing, and community is what actually brings people together: Over the past few months, movements and collectives around Mexico have held hundreds of events protesting the World Cup and its direct impact, as well as using it to draw attention to the reality in the country, and beyond.
People have held soccer against genocide and for Palestine, feminist soccer, soccer matches against the looting of water and against gentrification with US President Donald Trump's head as a ball, soccer in San Pedro Xolostoc to promote community building, and soccer matches against a rubbish dump on Indigenous lands. In Jalisco, collectives held an Anti-World Cup People's Cascarita to denounce that while the state and national governments prepare for the World Cup, they aren't doing anything about the water crisis, housing, and disappearances. Various groups stood in front of the World Cup Watch to announce the formation of an Assembly for the Common Good and a series of anti-World Cup actions. And of course there have been countless actions for the forcibly disappeared, and the massive education worker strikes and marches—mentioned below.
For Thursday, families looking for the forcibly disappeared have called for a national protest, and will be joined by teachers, retirees, transport workers, small farmers, healthcare workers, and other movements. Already, participants in this protest have faced problems, with a contingent of 17 buses from Guerrero state of student teachers and parents of the 43 Ayotzinapa students that were forcibly disappeared, being stopped by police from reaching Mexico City, Monday.
"The ball is coming home, when will they?" activists painted in massive letters on the road in Mexico City, in front of a wall of posters for the 133,00 forcibly disappeared. Our goals are bigger than getting a ball in net. We want justice, and the day Mexico has that, there will truly be something to celebrate.
7. Safety for the World Cup, but not for women, Indigenous communities, activists, or journalists: Mexico announced that it will deploy almost 100,000 security forces (including police, military, and private security) to the three cities hosting the World Cup. The national government also approved US Armed Forces' entry into the country, to train and prepare Mexican forces for the World Cup. Meanwhile, no such resources are deployed to prevent or solve femicides—with an impunity rate of 95%—nor to clean our dead rivers, monitor workplace abuses, and so on.
8. Students and educators come last: The Mexican government initially announced a massive three-month-long school holiday to accommodate the World Cup schedule, by bringing forward the usual holidays by six weeks. Many teachers are only paid for classroom hours and struggle during holidays, while parents and carers would have had to seek childcare, and children would have missed out on significant learning. After much criticism, the measure was retracted.
Teachers have also gone on strike and threatened to stop the World Cup, holding protests, marches, road blocks, and more since mid May to demand pension rights, among other worker rights, which President Claudia Sheinbaum promised in her campaign but hasn't delivered. Instead, these protests have been blocked with hundreds of police and repressed with tear gas and rubber bullets, with one teacher losing his left eye and sight in the other, as a result. Protesting teachers used rope to tumble three giant statues of soccer players that the government had erected on a key road in Mexico City.
9. Complicit venues: The venue in Mexico City, Azteca Stadium (technically called Banorte), the largest in Latin America, is owned by Televisa via Grupo Ollamani. Last year, the government granted Televisa a water concession next to the stadium for 450 million liters a year—thereby illegally privatizing local public water, and causing water shortages for those nearby. Not only does Televisa own the stadium, but it and TV Azteca are the companies with transmission rights.
In Guadalajara, clandestine mass graves have been found near the Akron Stadium, where four matches will be played. In Guadalajara too, the government is employing heavy machinery to renovate and clean up the city in preparation for the World Cup, but there is no digging equipment available to help searchers find the thousands of forcibly disappeared.
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