Anti-Austerity Protests Rock World Cup Kick-Off in Mexico

We continue our World Cup coverage in Mexico City, where local protesters are using the global event to bring attention to their causes. A sit-in by a teachers’ union is targeting World Cup festivities. And “the mothers of disappeared people have been protesting, trying to reach the stadium in the far south of the city,” says José Luis Granados Ceja, who covers Latin America for Drop Site News. Meanwhile, due to high ticket prices, “the people who love this sport are not going to be able to attend the games. They have been extraordinarily inaccessible to the population,” adds Granados Cejas.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, I’d like to bring in José Luis Granados Ceja. You’re covering Latin America for Drop Site News and also the co-host of Soberanía. If you could tell us — you are in Mexico City. The first match of the World Cup is happening there. If you could describe what the situation is on the ground? And also, talk about this — we spoke about it earlier with Jules — how much tickets cost there, and the protests surrounding the cup.

JOSÉ LUIS GRANADOS CEJA: So, here in Mexico, the conversation has been: Are these protests, that are happening right now as we speak, in the streets of Mexico City, which include a sit-down protest by a dissident teachers’ union called La CNTE, or — if they’re going to affect the actual event? Now, the messaging from the government has been that, no, everything is going to proceed as normal. There have been negotiations. Just yesterday, they were in closed-door negotiations with the secretary of the interior, or the Secretaría de Gobernación here in Mexico, for six hours to try to reach an agreement. It’s not clear as of yet. It’s the morning of the opening match, and we still don’t know.

But, of course, yes, here, you know, soccer is the most popular sport by far, and the people who love this sport are not going to be able to attend the games. They have been extraordinarily inaccessible to the population. And unfortunately, because also of these protests, maybe the fan fest, which is going to take place, the main one, in the Zócalo — anybody who’s been to Mexico City knows this massive public square. There’s a huge screen there. But right now it’s totally surrounded by high fences in order to keep the demonstrators out.

I think it’s important to mention these demonstrations, of course, are legitimate. The protesters are highlighting the important issues. In the case of the teachers, they’re asking for a repeal of a 2007 neoliberal law, which essentially privatized pensions in Mexico. They’re also asking for wage increases. We’ve seen other collectives come together. The the mothers of disappeared people have been protesting, trying to reach the stadium in the far south of the city. Other groups have been trying to use this occasion that the world’s attention is on Mexico as the host, as one of the three hosts, and the country that will have the opening match here, to highlight their issues. And I think it’s a perfectly legitimate thing.

The challenge, though, is that there are also reactionary forces. There are anti-popular groups who are trying to latch on to these protests, who are trying to create this scene as if there is chaos happening in Mexico. It’s not the case. I did a little walk through downtown Mexico City to see how things are like. You know, things are calm. I happened to talk to many visitors who are here, who already have arrived here in Mexico to enjoy in the festivities, and they all said that they’re more than happy to take part in everything that’s going to be available to them. They, of course, understand that there are social issues happening here in Mexico that are leading to these kinds of protests. But the expectation is that at least there will be a sense of calm, that there won’t be disruptive events to affect the enjoyment of the opening match here in Mexico.

AMY GOODMAN: And, José Luis, if you could also talk about the Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s response, both to the protests of the teachers and the others and the Indigenous people, about the disappeared, using this as a moment to highlight that issue, and President Sheinbaum’s solidarity with the Iranian team, and the deal that was worked out that they could train in Tijuana?

JOSÉ LUIS GRANADOS CEJA: Yes, of course. So, actually, the Iranian ambassador to Mexico made the proposal, actually, to have the games for — that involve the Iranian team be played in Mexico. It seemed perfectly reasonable, and it was actually something that President Claudia Sheinbaum embraced. Ultimately, it was FIFA who said that that wasn’t going to be possible, that they would play in the United States. We know that some of the trainers, some of the staff have not been issued visas and that they’re forced to fly in and fly out immediately.

But, certainly, here, also the Mexican population has embraced the Iranian team. There were crowds waiting for them, to receive them in Tijuana. So, it’s a very different attitude here in Mexico. There is this — you know, this embrace of the idea, which is a good idea on the surface of it, that this should be an occasion for us to come together and to celebrate, you know, the world’s game. But again, you know, the challenge has been that there are geopolitical considerations at play here.

The response from the government in terms of some of these protests, in the case of the teachers, has been pretty much that the government, in this moment, cannot afford to comply with the demands of the teachers’ union, essentially to renationalize the pensions. There are different programs that essentially top up the pensions, and they’ve kind of been consistently emphasizing this as an alternative to this, just because, you know, here in Mexico, since the election of López Obrador, and now with Claudia Sheinbaum, it is a policy that’s called “republican austerity,” which is basically trying to keep spending down to focus on social programs, to focus on investment in infrastructure. Claudia Sheinbaum, in particular, has made a big investment, a big bet, on investing in healthcare, for example. And so, you know, to be able to comply to this, it would essentially require a fiscal reform, and the government argues that just the conditions aren’t in place for anything like that in this moment.

In response to some of these other movements, of course, you know, there have been long-standing tables, places of dialogue, with the mothers of the disappeared, with the parents of the disappeared 43 students from Ayotzinapa. We still don’t actually have all the facts in terms of what happened, why were they disappeared, what happened to them. And, of course, so, that is ongoing. And so, this is a moment where — you know, that makes sense to me that these kinds of groups would try to take advantage of the opportunity to highlight these issues. But like I said initially, the concern is, is that we’ve seen previously here in Mexico, for example, the so-called Gen Z protests. The Gen Z protests that were happening here were actually a astroturf campaign funded by right-wing oligarchs. And so, we saw, actually, as well, a bit of a parallel in the case of Brazil with the protests against Dilma Rousseff. You know, many of these start as genuine, legitimate protests, which obviously much of the population understands why they would take to the streets to bring these issues up, but they can be coopted. And so, one of the lines that the president has been insisting on, one of her messaging, has been that, you know, they want to create this idea that there is chaos, that this is an unpopular government, and that’s just not the case, right? I mean, if you look at the president’s approval rating, she enjoys 70, 80% approval ratings in the country. So, there is, I think, something more surreptitious at play here, that there are forces that are trying to take advantage of this opportunity.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: José Luis, you mentioned that the mothers of the disappeared and the missing are basically trying to use this massive global event to draw attention to the disappeared. And just, you know, to give a sense of how enormous an issue this is, Mexico, first of all, has the highest number of missing and disappeared people in the world: around 130,000. International organizations have referred to this as a humanitarian emergency. So, if you could talk about the people who are protesting, whether they’re mothers or others, and what they hope will come out of this?

JOSÉ LUIS GRANADOS CEJA: So, you know, there are these stickers, the Panini stickers, which are very, very popular. People actually meet up downtown Mexico City to exchange the ones that they do have, what they don’t have. And actually, the mothers of the disappeared have done a very interesting protest in taking the image of these stickers and putting the faces of the disappeared, as a means to say that, you know, all of this enthusiasm, all of this energy, all of this investment that is being made to have these games happen and happen successfully can also be used to find our missing children. And so, that’s been one of the ways that they’ve been trying to communicate this message. And, of course, you know, numerous human rights organizations have pointed to this. Some have called it a humanitarian crisis. And it is, you know? We’re talking about more than 100,000 people who have been disappeared.

And this, of course, is a product of the decision, way back in the government of Felipe Calderón, to engage in a militarized response to the problem of organized crime in this country, and because these organized crime groups learned that, you know, it was easier to disappear somebody than face an investigation if they, you know, came upon the bodies of people. And so, that’s part of the reason why we’re seeing so much of this. This is a legacy of some of the decisions made by previous governments, in the same way that the cup, the World Cup, is, right? This was a decision that was made in the Enrique Peña Nieto government.

And I think, in a lot of ways, they’re doing the best that they can to attend to a situation that they inherited. But I do think that there have been important improvements in terms of the policy of actually having state backing for this very critical mission of finding the disappeared, to give comfort to the mothers of people who have — you know, of disappeared people, in order to make it a more robust system, to improve — for example, the database was apparently very, very insufficient. There was all kinds of missing information. There’s been a determined effort to try to attend to that, to make it more.

And I do think that there needs to be more collaboration with some of these collectives. I think a lot of them, a lot of the mothers, have come together on their own, you know, in a self-organized way, because they’ve been frustrated with the response from state-level authorities, from the federal government, in terms of not giving enough to be able to actually do the work. It’s hard work. It’s quite literally going out into fields where they suspect, or they got a tip, that there could be, you know, the body of somebody who had been disappeared, and digging through the dirt to try to find them. There is something called the Comision Nacional de Búsqueda, or the National Search Commission, which is meant to accompany them. And there needs to be more of this kind of initiative, to make sure that they feel like they really are a company. This is important for the state. The president has said so as much, to say that, you know, this is — this is a debt that we owe to society, to attend to the needs of these mothers, who simply want to know what happened to their children.

AMY GOODMAN: José Luis is speaking to us from Mexico City.