Different groups in favor of the right to housing defended this Friday a boycott in Mexico of this year’s Soccer World Cup, ensuring that the sporting event will accelerate “gentrification” and “dispossession” of local communities in Mexico City.
In a press conference, organizations such as Obrera Ciudad de México or the Interuniversity and Popular Assembly in Solidarity with Palestine (AIPSP) stressed that the 2026 World Cup will “seriously” harm the neighbors of Mexico – one of the host countries along with the United States and Canada – because “it represents an opportunity to accelerate the process of dispossession, social cleansing and gentrification” in the Mexican capital.
“The World Cup brings countless consequences ranging from pollution, the forced displacement of popular families, communities and indigenous peoples, the dispossession of common goods such as water or the increase in the cost of rent by 155%,” denounced Diana, a young woman in charge of reading the manifesto next to the clock in Bosque de Chapultepec that marks the countdown in the capital for the soccer tournament to begin.
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With banners that read slogans such as ‘No to the World Cup of Dispossession’, the organizations declared that the World Cup event aims to “wash away decades of narco-state, generalized public and political violence and the annulment of indigenous communities and peoples.”
Furthermore, they accused Morena of seeing this celebration as a “window of possibility to accelerate the dispossession, contempt and displacement of the indigenous communities and peoples” that inhabit Mexico City, which will host five of the thirteen parties that the country will host.
In the manifesto they demand a city that “does not expel them” from their neighborhoods, while urging the authorities to guarantee housing “that does not lend itself to financial speculation”, a problem that – they consider – is being “aggravated” by the works planned for the World Cup.
The Mexican and South African teams will play the opening match of the World Cup on June 11, which will take place at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
With information from EFE
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