Guadalajara World Cup Venue: City of Culture; Capital of Organized Crime
The Football Fest Underlines Mexico's hopes and pains
I’m stoked to introduce new CrashOut contributor Stephen Woodman, a fellow Brit who has been living in Guadalajara since 2012 and is perfectly placed to write this revealing report on the joys and pains of the capital of mariachi as we head into the World Cup.
By Stephen Woodman
Carved into the northwestern edge of Guadalajara, the Akron Stadium is an impressive work of high-tech architecture and has a roaring atmosphere as the home of Chivas, known as the Equipo del Pueblo, or “team of the people.” Uniquely, the club only employs Mexican footballers, and as a result has the most players in Mexico’s just-announced national squad, or El Tri.
The stadium will host four games in the World Cup, which is kicking off next week. For the tournament, it has been rebranded as the Estadio Guadalajara, underlining its location in the capital of Jalisco state, famed as the birthplace of tequila and mariachi. I’ve been living in the sprawling city of five million since 2012, and it also boasts glitzy housing complexes, Michelin star restaurants, booming night clubs, and major cultural events including the biggest book festival in Latin America.
Yet, it has a serious dark side.
A short walk from the stadium was a cartel safe house, which Mexican federal forces stormed in January, detaining five suspected kidnappers. The group had allegedly seized and imprisoned six men, who were freed from another building.
The tragedy is that local people were not even shocked as the city is the bastion of the feared Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the most powerful crime mob in Mexico. In February, this grabbed global attention after Mexican soldiers shot dead the Jalisco Cartel boss Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera and his thugs assassinated soldiers, burned buildings and blockaded roads across Mexico.
In Guadalajara, the government activated a code-red alert, suspending public activities and prompting businesses to shutter. The city fell silent as residents sheltered indoors, and schools were closed for two days, leaving parents (including myself) to struggle to explain to their young children what was happening outside.
Jalisco also has the worst rate of disappearances in the country, with many victims dragged off by cartel gunmen. There are 16,000 missing people in the state according to the official count, while collectives of family members estimate there could be up to 26,000 disappeared.
“We could be watching the match around the stadium… and they could have [victims] in safe houses, shackled, handcuffed, literally chained like in the age of the Inquisition,” said Isabel Velarde, whose own son was seized by an armed group in 2018.
Cleaning streets and painting buildings for the World Cup is an attempt to “sportswash” the problems, activists say. “It’s like when someone comes to your house unexpectedly and you tidy up as best you can,” Velarde said.
This clash of culture and progress with violence and pain reflects a bigger paradox in Mexico, the co-host of the 2026 World Cup along with the United States and Canada. The opening game of Mexico versus South Africa will be played at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City on June 11 and the government has been frantically painting and decorating the unruly metropolis. In total, 13 games will be played between Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, close to the border with Texas.
Over the last decade, Mexico has seen a reduction in extreme poverty, a big boost in the number university students, and is the sixth most visited country for tourists. Yet it’s still in the throes of relentless cartel wars, which could account for more than 300,000 murders since 2006, while the government has a list of more than 130,000 disappeared.
Activists in Guadalajara plan to use the World Cup to highlight these tragedies. A collective of families of the disappeared, called the Light of Hope, published its own chilling version of the Panini football sticker album. In place of footballers, the stickers display…
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