{"id":21763,"date":"2026-06-05T22:45:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/protests-in-mexico-city-capitalize-on-world-cup-celebrations-to-pressure-government-news4jax\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T22:45:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:45:01","slug":"protests-in-mexico-city-capitalize-on-world-cup-celebrations-to-pressure-government-news4jax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/protests-in-mexico-city-capitalize-on-world-cup-celebrations-to-pressure-government-news4jax\/","title":{"rendered":"Protests in Mexico City capitalize on World Cup celebrations to pressure government &#8211; News4JAX"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Megan Janetsky<br \/>Associated Press<br \/>Published:\u00a0<time datetime=\"2026-06-05T21:19:18.000Z\">June 5, 2026 at 5:19 PM<\/time><br \/>Megan Janetsky<br \/>Associated Press<br \/>Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved<br \/>A World Cup statue, with graffiti that reads in Spanish, &#8220;The National Educational Workers Coordination lives&#8221; lies sideways during a teachers&#8217; protest for higher salaries sit in Mexico City, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jon Orbach)<br \/><strong>MEXICO CITY<\/strong> \u2013 Teachers, families of <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/mexico-cartel-violence-guadalajara-disappeared-world-cup-bc58ae115bb17568359f56296d6a68e6\">Mexico&#8217;s 130,000 missing people,<\/a> animal rights groups and a range of other social movements in Mexico are capitalizing on impending <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/fifa-world-cup\">FIFA World Cup<\/a> celebrations next week to put pressure on authorities and make demands.<br \/>Protesters from the country&#8217;s teachers&#8217; union, CNTE, blocked main throughways in Mexico City, bringing central parts of the city to a standstill this week to demand better working conditions. Demonstrators knocked down figures of World Cup soccer players, broke into a government building and on Friday played a soccer match on a blockaded street. At the same time visitors from across the world began flooding in to the Mexican capital ahead of the competition that starts June 11.<br \/>Recommended Videos<br \/>\u201cThe proximity of the World Cup places a lot more pressure on the government,\u201d said Abel Escalante, a 52-year-old special education psychologist who traveled from the southern state of Chiapas to protest, who was blocking the street around the city\u2019s iconic Angel de la Independencia monument on Friday.<br \/>The protests come just days before Mexico City hosts the tournament&#8217;s opening ceremony, co-hosted by Mexico, the United States and Canada. In addition to kicking off the competition, the Mexican capital, <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/world-cup-2026-guadalajara-9d448c5f9d8cfcd0fdaf4546199f0879\">Guadalajara<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/world-cup-2026-monterrey-dceb0d8e99088e1b4a925265f2f6877d\">Monterrey<\/a> will also host a number of matches.<br \/>They are joined by a range of other social movements that have jumped on the World Cup to increasingly place pressure on the government of <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/claudia-sheinbaum\">Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum<\/a> at a time when authorities seek to <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/mexico-president-sheinbaum-world-cup-security-violence-jalisco-4176aa4ea1aacb24b90837b4fd891424\">present a friendly face to the world. <\/a><br \/> \u201cThis isn\u2019t an event for the Mexican people. Tons of people are going to come, but they\u2019re going to be people with all this disposable income. It\u2019s for the elites. The few average people who do go will have to scrape together all the money they have to live off of,&#8221; Escalante added.<br \/>Sheinbaum responded to mounting protests on Friday morning, saying that \u201cthe door is open\u201d for teachers to negotiate with the government over their demands for better retirement packages. <br \/>But she added groups of protesters, who broke in to a government building the day before, were trying to provoke a violent reaction from authorities, which she said was not going to happen. She promised that Mexico&#8217;s main square known as the Zocalo, which the teachers tried to take over at the end of May to stage a sit-in, would remain open for World Cup events. <br \/>Sheinbaum&#8217;s government has come under criticism by activist groups for prioritizing World Cup celebrations over pressing social needs, like addressing the soaring cost-of-living <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/mexico-tourism-gentrification-xenophobia-airbnb-digital-nomads-3139c76f7253acec8dddca372ae66e89\">fueled in part by foreign tourism<\/a> or the country&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/mexico-disappearances-missing-people-government-report-528f5fa913c34129b28e61279e020a4e\">forced disappearance crisis. <\/a><br \/>More groups planned protests in the coming weeks as celebrations were slated to kick off. Building on top of all that is a robust protest culture in the Mexican capital, with unions and activist groups that regularly take over public spaces in demonstrations. <br \/>Protests of families searching for their disappeared and rural teachers pushing for better working conditions have mounted as the local government has made a push to beautify the city. <br \/>Local workers have painted bridges bright purple, planted orange Mexican marigolds across the city and plastered streets with cartoon axolotls, an endangered species that has become the sort of mascot of Mexico City. <br \/>Last weekend, families searching for their loved ones plastered the faces of the disappeared people across the city and sprayed graffiti next to one of those bright purple bridges now lining the city&#8217;s streets.<br \/>\u201cMexico, champion of disappearance,\u201d it read.<br \/>___<br \/>Follow AP\u2019s Latin America coverage at <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/latin-america\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/latin-america<\/a><br \/>Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. 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All rights reservedA World Cup statue, with graffiti that reads in Spanish, &#8220;The National Educational Workers Coordination lives&#8221; lies sideways during a teachers&#8217; protest for higher salaries sit in Mexico City, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jon Orbach)MEXICO CITY \u2013 Teachers, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}