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The thunderous cry rings out over a crowd gathered in front of a television propped up on plastic tables and past a maze of vendors lining a bustling working-class neighborhood in downtown Mexico City. It echoes over fans across the Latin American nation, who roar as they watch\u00a0Mexico\u2019s national team win\u00a0another match in the\u00a0FIFA World Cup\u00a0with eyes glued to screens set up in plazas, below highway underpasses and tucked away in taco stands.<\/p>\n
Priced out of stadium tickets to the tournament their country is hosting alongside the U.S. and Canada, many Mexicans are reclaiming the event and staging their own celebrations on the streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, there\u2019s nothing like going to the stadiums, but I prefer being here in the street. \u2026 For me it\u2019s like watching the game from my living room,\u201d said Esmeralda Serrato, who watched a TV in the street with dozens of neighbors. \u201cI feel the blood rushing through my veins saying \u2018This is the World Cup.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
World Cup festivities in Mexico have generated an almost incalculable buzz as hundreds of thousands of people gather in mass celebrations in host cities including\u00a0Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey following the country\u2019s two consecutive victories.<\/p>\n
But the street parties also come after months of scrutiny as FIFA has faced\u00a0searing criticism across the globe for soaring World Cup ticket prices. In Mexico, where the average worker\u00a0earns around $433 a month\u00a0and soccer is considered a sport that unites people across class, the gap between who can and cannot get into games is felt acutely.<\/p>\n
That has\u00a0fueled social tensions\u00a0and left many Mexicans feeling as if \u201cit\u2019s a party we weren\u2019t invited to,\u201d said Diego Merla, fiscal justice coordinator for Oxfam Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe World Cup is built around the logic of squeezing as much value out of it as possible,\u201d Merla said. \u201cIt\u2019s about getting those who are willing and able to pay the absolute maximum. And that ends up excluding a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, tickets went on sale at prices ranging from $140 to $8,680, but have since skyrocketed, with some tickets to the World Cup final costing around $32,970.<\/p>\n
In the wake of mounting criticisms, FIFA President Gianni Infantino has\u00a0defended high ticket prices\u00a0as fitting the U.S. market.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot go to watch in the U.S. a college game, not even speaking about a top professional game of a certain level, for less than $300,\u201d Infantino said. \u201cAnd this is the World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n
For fans like Guillermo Ram\u00edrez, the solution was to take things into their own hands.<\/p>\n
Ram\u00edrez, 49, is a native of\u00a0Tepito, the working-class Mexico City neighborhood that is home to sprawling street markets packed with pirated World Cup jerseys.<\/p>\n
Here, soccer is a symbol of resistance and local identity in an area of the city most commonly associated with crime. Nestled in the heart of the dense markets is a soccer field named after Bernardo Manolete Hern\u00e1ndez, a renowned Mexican soccer player born in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Just a block away from the field, Ram\u00edrez, wearing a bright green and white Mexico jersey, set up a TV screen and speakers on top of two plastic tables in front of his house and small corner shop before\u00a0Mexico faced off against South Korea. He remembers as a young boy watching the 1986 Mexico World Cup from TVs set up by neighbors unable to get into stadiums.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of us who simply can\u2019t afford to go to the stadium,\u201d Ram\u00edrez said. \u201cTepito is a soccer barrio, and when there\u2019s a match on, everyone takes out their TVs to watch, especially now during the World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throngs of neighbors crowd around his screen, wearing green and red lucha libre masks, cradling their kids and cracking open a beer from Ram\u00edrez\u2019s corner shop.<\/p>\n
When their team wins, Ram\u00edrez\u2019s neighbors and large swaths of Mexico City erupt, with tens of thousands of people flooding the streets and flocking to Mexico City\u2019s central monument, the Angel de la Independencia.<\/p>\n
Mexican President\u00a0Claudia Sheinbaum\u00a0has also criticized the costs and said last week that FIFA leaders\u00a0should reflect on their pricing decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoccer has to be something else,\u201d Sheinbaum said.<\/p>\n
Sheinbaum has encouraged fans to gather in free public watch parties set up by local governments and FIFA in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. Nearly 20 such venues dot the Mexican capital, including in lower-income areas of the city.<\/p>\n
For one game, over 200,000 Mexican and foreign fans packed into the city\u2019s main plaza, the Zocalo, as a sea of Mexico jerseys threw crowd surfers into the air.<\/p>\n
Armando Soriano, his wife and two children traveled from the fringes of the city to a smaller Fan Fest in a plaza just a mile from where Ram\u00edrez lives, where locals rolled up to the screen before them on motorcycles and beer, tequila and snacks were sold from plastic tubs strapped to moving carts.<\/p>\n
To him, it felt more Mexican than the central FIFA event, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want (my family) to be swept up in the spirit \u2014 to feel, more than anything, what it means to be Mexican, and to experience the traditions that people here live and breathe,\u201d Soriano said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#FIFA #priced #World #Cup #Mexicans #TVs #street<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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