Those from Below
Police containment and cordoning off were the strategy in the days leading up to and on the opening day of the World Cup in Mexico. The enemies to be defeated: dissident teachers, families of the disappeared, and students of the normal schools, stigmatized as part of the far right—which, indeed, were the ones occupying a stadium that was the last place anyone wanted to hear, that all around them, another Mexico was being pushed back by thousands of police so they wouldn’t get in the way with their legitimate protest.
“Don’t come any closer. You stay over there, and we’ll stay here,” declared the local government secretary, César Cravioto. The goal was never to address their demands, but rather to ensure that the mothers—holding portraits of their missing sons and daughters, carrying a candle, a flower, and infinite grief—were not seen. The same went for the teachers demanding a decent retirement. They were held back further away. First, like the searchers, by government workers dressed in white vests—a new security cordon that served as the first barrier—and then by the “invisible” riot police and mounted police surrounding the stadium.
In Toluca, Puebla, and Mexico City, the pattern of harassment and disruption of transportation—which reached its peak with the Ayotzinapa students—was repeated. The police detained 17 buses carrying mothers, fathers, and students from Ayotzinapa on their way to Mexico City. They weren’t even allowed to step outside for four days. Their mere presence is a symbol of a litany of injustices, inaction, impunity, and complicity that should not be seen.
People dressed in civilian clothes, as in the old days, removed missing persons posters on Tlalpan Avenue, as well as the anti-mural placed under the stadium overpass, despite an agreement to keep it there. And agents in maroon vests harassed the Regional Network of Migrant Families and Casa Tochan, who were holding a cultural event at the +72 anti-monument on Avenida Reforma.
Two journalists were arrested on the morning of the opening day, and students from UNAM and UAM were arrested in the afternoon. And more. But despite everything, the people from below took to the streets and, of course, they didn’t give up—nor will they ever.
Original text by Gloria Muñoz Ramírez published in La Jornada on June 13th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.