Mexico archbishop, Anglican leaders express World Cup safety concerns

[Episcopal News Service] Mexico, Canada and the United States will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup June 11-19. The quadrennial soccer championship is expected to attract millions of spectators across 104 matches played throughout North America.

All three host countries are increasing security in an effort to prevent crime during the 48-team tournament, including human trafficking, theft, prostitution, disappearances and violence.

Anglican leaders, including Archbishop of Mexico Alba Sally Sue Hernández García, expressed concerns over World Cup security during the United Society Partners in the Gospel’s “For Christ is our Peace” conference June 2-4 in Hoddesdon, England. 

“The situation is very difficult, with challenges including the presence of drug cartels, forced disappearances, violence against girls and women, the exclusion of Indigenous communities and armed attacks to seize territory from communities that have been displaced from their lands, among others,” Hernández García said during a conference session, where she was a guest speaker. 

For instance, Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, which will host the opening match between Mexico and South Africa, sits on land the Mexican government expropriated from the Santa Úrsula Coapa, an Indigenous community, in 1962. In the area surrounding the stadium, many people live in poverty, and the community frequently experiences water shortages. The stadium’s owner, multimedia conglomerate Televisa, exacerbated the water shortage in 2018 when it privatized a community well for the stadium’s use as its infrastructure was expanded to add new shopping and leisure centers ahead of the World Cup.

Even though the cartels, which are active in the other two Mexican host cities, Monterrey and Guadalajara, are supposedly scaling back their activities during the World Cup, the government isn’t relying on potential truces. The country is deploying nearly 100,000 security personnel to tourist zones, airports and transit hubs across the three host cities, according to news reports. Mexico will host 13 matches.

“As we get caught up in football fever at the World Cup in North America this summer, we must remember the lives being impacted by the situation in Mexico,” Rev. Duncan Dormor, the USPG’s general secretary, said. “It is almost always the poor who suffer the most, and it is within these communities that the Anglican Church of Mexico is standing up, speaking out, and taking action to address issues of deep injustice, conflict, and violence.”

Tournament planners in Canada, which will also host 13 matches, are using federal, provincial and local resources in host cities Toronto and Vancouver to focus on extensive crowd management, airspace defense and infrastructure protection.

Security plans are the most extensive in the United States, which will host 78 matches across 11 cities, including the final in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Unauthorized drones, illegal border crossings and bomb threats are among the country’s biggest concerns in advance of the World Cup. The United States has tightened entry restrictions, including travel bans and visa restrictions on some of the 48 countries sending teams, leaving many ticket holders unable to watch their teams play in person and scrambling to resell their tickets, according to news reports. 

The USPG, an Anglican agency, partners with churches worldwide “in God’s mission to rethink mission, energize the church and champion justice.” During the annual conference, delegates and guest speakers from the Anglican Communion reflect theologically and practically on the relationship between justice, peace and conflict through keynote addresses, workshops, panel discussions, Bible study and worship.

Jude Lal Fernando, director of the Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict Justice in Dublin, Ireland, lamented that World Cup security concerns are being prioritized over the basic needs of communities, like food security.

“When space for peace and dialogue decreases, the space for violence and oppression increases, especially for women and children,” Fernando said.

Hernández García echoed a similar sentiment.

“While the World Cup will generate passion and some economic activity, there will be no profound changes or answers to the true needs of the Mexican people,” she said.