Prof. Adriana Pantoja de Alba.
Profesora Titular, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente. She specializes in the intersections of culture, politics, and economics.
Email: apantoja@iteso.mx
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3492-8565
Dr. Toby Miller
Profesor Distinguido, Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey. His latest book is Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They?
X: @greencitizen
We live in Guadalajara, Jalisco’s capital and host to four Cup games at the Akron stadium. Its name hidden from view for the duration by authorities bending the knee to FIFA’s preferred extractive sponsor Aramco, AKA Saudi Arabia.
Because of FIFA’s insatiable drive for “growth,” the ‘slow violence’ of environmental degradation is gaining pace across the football globe. Since 2000, World Cup emissions have ranged between 1.65 and 3.63 million tonnes of CO2e. Travel is an obvious contributor, while construction accounts for a third of energy use and emissions. Then there is the electricity required to televise, watch, and bet on fixtures. And each person attending the Cup averages between 0.25 and 7kg of waste a day, thanks to fast food and drink.
Mexican authorities spent untold millions of dollars ‘on infrastructure, promotion, and logistics to welcome tourists during the World Cup,’ with airports remodeled to qualify as ‘Aeropuertos FIFA.’ Precious little was dedicated to the needs of the local population, at a time when vital public works were being reduced as interest rates soared.
Water is scarce and contamination common in Guadalajara, courtesy of climate catastrophe, poor planning, and inadequate infrastructure, notably purification; these are not the showy priorities of football hosts (the government of Jalisco allocated millions to musical events for the Cup).
The Akron is located at the El Bajío groundwater recharge zone, about 1.5km from Bosque La Primavera (Spring Woods), home to pumas—which are close to extinction—deer, migratory birds, and golden eagles. Along with hundreds of flower varieties, seven fishes, fifty reptiles, and numerous water resources, they are imperiled by redevelopment, spectators, and vehicles.
There are other kinds of violence: 78% of Mexican women involved in football’s top flight have experienced assault, and history is laden with stadium brawls. State and para-statal groups subject many people to degrading treatment: 2025-26 saw the brutal clearance of street dwellers and sex workers by authorities desperate to present a purportedly civic face to football tourists and journalists.
Then there is the violence of narcos against the disappeared and executed, often with police or military collusion, and struggles between cartels. New York Times and Guardian videos about such horrors reveal the authorities’ obsession with militaristic security to protect visitors.
These occasional themes for liberal fractions of the international bourgeois media are daily concerns for local reporters and activists: ‘While some are celebrating goals, others are getting massacred by drones carrying bombs.’
Foreign papers generally buy into FIFA’s feel-good propaganda, per the Association’s laughable claim that “Football Unites the World.” Pitiful puff pieces proliferate.
Of course, there is always counter-power. ‘Más agua, menos mundial’ (More water, less World Cup) cry residents. On World Water Day, they marched for ‘Agua limpia, no obras mundialistas’ (Clean water, not Cup construction).
Readers around the world recognize Panini album stickers—treasured memories of Cups gone by. The mothers of Luz de Esperanza (Light of Hope) reclaimed that design to draw attention to 135,000 disappeared children via images printed on t-shirts and taped to posts, walls, and benches across town, with one word beneath each person’s details: ‘DESAPARECIDO.’ Parents and other activists protested with banners and balloons reading ‘Jalisco, campeón en desaparición’ (Jalisco, disappearances champion) and ‘FIFA, tu mundial es cómplice’ (FIFA, your World Cup is complicit).
Every week, Luz de Esperanza and similar collectives dig at informal gravesites where they have received tips that the bodies of loved ones may be found. Risking life and limb in the face of narco violence, perilous abseiling, and arduous excavations, off they go on a seemingly endless quest, including near the Akron, where clandestine burial grounds and a torture house have been found. Not only naming rights and pumas are at risk.
Luz insists ‘No somos investigadores ni forenses. Somos familiares que convertimos el dolor en acción y comunidad’ (We’re neither investigators nor forensic experts. We’re family members who transform pain into action and community).
As the event draws to a close, these are our World Cup highlights: nature endangered, resources misused, violence ongoing.
Of course, Jalisco is just one state in a worldwide map of authoritarian horrors and colonial-capitalist legacies; incarnate in these Finals, concealed by their rhetoric. In reality, slow and quick violence fuse at football’s feet in a ‘VIP World Cup.’ As the New Yorker put it, FIFA is ‘a rancid institution.’
So let’s abolish the Cup: end it forever, not just when this summer’s edition fades away. July 19 2026 can delegitimize football violence and rebirth our beloved sport.
