Frustrations on multiple fronts set to collide with Mexico City World Cup opening day

David Estévez Gamboa says he’s from the “old school,” having spent more than 40 years behind the wheel of a transport truck. But he apologizes when emotion overtakes him while discussing the killings of truck drivers during robberies and hijackings that plague Mexico’s highways.

Between 30 and 50 transport trucks are robbed, often at gunpoint, every day across the country, said Estévez Gamboa, president of the Asociación Nacional Transportista (ANTAC), a national truck drivers’ group.

“We do this work with love; that’s why it hurts when they attack our colleagues,” Estévez Gamboa said, as he drove through a winding highway with long, sloping switchbacks between the states of Puebla and Veracruz.

Truck drivers are also subject to extortion from the very federal authorities meant to protect them, he said. Stopping this is one of the drivers’ main demands. It’s something the Mexican government could end “with a snap of their fingers,” Estévez Gamboa said.

“It hurts a lot, what we are living through in this country.”

That’s why Estévez Gamboa’s association is joining several movements planning protests and blockades on highways across the country, targeting the FIFA World Cup’s opening day in Mexico City on June 11. (Mexico is co-hosting the event with Canada and the U.S.)

Soccer is a national passion in Mexico, which previously hosted the 1970 and 1986 World Cup tournaments, and the games draw in tens of millions of fans nationwide. But this year, teachers’ unions, farmers, social justice groups and family organizations — called collectives — searching for the estimated 133,000 disappeared in the country are all planning to protest while the global spotlight shines on Mexico.

‘The world is watching Mexico’

Conflict has already arrived on the streets of  Mexico City.

The National Co-ordinator of Education Workers teachers’ union launched a national strike on Monday calling for changes, including better pay and pension reform.

They’ve set up protest camps in central parts of the city while blockading main traffic arteries and have stormed the offices of the education secretariat and toppled the statues of soccer players.

Union members faced flash-bangs and tear gas earlier this week as they attempted to topple steel fencing blocking a main route to the Zocalo, the heart of the city’s historic centre, which is also the site of an under-construction FIFA fan zone. 

“We call on the mothers of the disappeared to form a common front … also the truck drivers, farmers and farmworkers, the other union members … this is a common struggle,” said Pedro Hernández Morales, who leads one of the union’s Mexico City units, during a speech on Monday launching the strike.

“Let this become a celebration of the people, in the widest possible meaning of that word.”

In an interview with CBC News, Hernández Morales would not dismiss the possibility of protests on June 11 aimed at shutting down the city.

“The World Cup is a global event; it’s a window to show, before the world, that in this country we don’t resolve our problem,” he said.

“This is a unique opportunity…. The world is watching Mexico.”

No ‘repression,’ says Mexican president

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said her administration is always open for dialogue but that the union’s demands would place a heavy burden on the current federal budget.

On Wednesday, she pledged not to repeat the mistakes of the past, invoking the Tlatelolco Massacre in 1968, when the military opened fire on students at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas days before the Summer Olympics began in the country.

“I am against any form of repression,” Sheinbaum said. 

Estévez Gamboa said truck drivers have been fruitlessly pushing the government for months to implement changes to increase security on highways with aerial and real-time camera surveillance.

“We want the world to help us protest, to pay attention to us so there won’t be so much corruption and so many unresolved issues we live with in this country,” he said.

Estévez Gamboa said his organization is also backing the families of the disappeared, of which there are an estimated 133,000 in Mexico, according to a federal registry. That puts the country on par with war-torn nations like Syria and Colombia.

Collectives of the families of the disappeared are expected to hold a candlelight walk on the evening of June 10 and a daytime march on June 11.

“They put so many resources into the World Cup, but for our searches, not so much,” said Carolina Espinosa Cano, a member of the Light on the Path collective in Mexico City.

“They tell us they have no resources.”

‘I am disillusioned’

Cano said federal and state governments have also failed to properly fund forensic services that has led to a backlog that some studies say has reached about 70,000 unidentified bodies in morgues across the country.

Cano and other family members and volunteers, backed by Mexico City’s missing persons search commission, scoured the rugged and remote terrain this week of the Cumbres del Ajusco National Park, along the southern edge of the city. 

Their main goal was to find evidence of Cano’s husband, Dr. Ignacio Santiago Pérez, who was allegedly kidnapped after he left work on June 12, 2020.

Cano said that evidence from a suspect arrested three years ago suggested her husband’s body may have been dumped in this area. However, she said the search was delayed due to jurisdictional confusion between agencies. 

Inés Enriqueta Lázaro, another collective member, joined the search in hopes of also finding some evidence of her son, who vanished on the morning of April 26, 2018, from a neighbourhood near the national park while on his way to pick up his wife for breakfast. 

“I am disillusioned with our government, with our authorities … for them, the World Cup is more important than the disappearances of our children, our husbands. We don’t count; they leave us as second class,” Lázaro said.

“They [the government] say that the disappearances, the killings, are decreasing, but that’s a lie.”