Early in Mexico’s World Cup extravaganza this summer, a video went viral of a white duck waddling through Mexico City wearing a green and white soccer jersey in support of the national team. Merlín the duck eventually appeared at President Claudia Sheinbaum’s morning press conference, where it nipped at the Mexican leader’s finger and became yet another prop in the country’s populist politics.
“We are very honored to be here with the president,” Carla Ivette Gómez, the duck’s owner, told the country. “It’s an honor for us to be before you all and for the whole world to know what the beautiful side of Mexico is.”
The family’s sudden duck-related fame “isn’t making us feel superior to anyone else; we are equal, we are el pueblo,” she added, identifying with a trope, “the people,” used often by Ms. Sheinbaum and her predecessor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It is one intended to separate everyday people—like Ms. Gómez, a vendor of drinks in the Mexico City center—from supposed Mexican elites.
The president’s hosting of the informal World Cup mascot at one of her daily press conferences generated plenty of positive press. But it also provoked critical questions from the families of Mexico’s missing. They had been protesting in the days ahead of the World Cup’s opening match on June 12 at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City and later outside the stadiums in Monterrey and Guadalajara.
“I have to disguise myself as a duck, so the president looks at us,” read one sign held up by a demonstrator in a duck costume at a protest led by madres buscadoras, the “mothers who search,” a movement of women who have been seeking information about their missing children, most likely victims of cartel violence, kidnappings and murders that have plagued Mexico for years.
The vast majority of such crimes and disappearances are never resolved, and many are barely investigated. Many victims “disappeared” over the past 20 years as drug cartels engaged in fierce disputes over territory, forcibly recruited civilians and carried out too many atrocities to count.
The Merlín escapade encapsulated the excitement of the World Cup, the surreal nature of Mexican fandom and the frivolity of Mexican politics. It came into especially sharp relief as the Sheinbaum government tried to downplay neuralgic issues like the nation’s missing persons, a problem that began in the 1950s but which accelerated over the last two decades as cartel violence increased.
The government’s narrative of that experience, not unique to Ms. Sheinbaum, “tries to portray a reality that doesn’t exist, claiming there’s been progress on security issues,” Jorge Verástegui González, an activist for Mexico’s missing people, said. His brother and nephew disappeared in 2009.
Progress on crime?
Ms. Sheinbaum boasts that the homicide rate has plunged 46 percent since she took office in October 2024. Observers do not dispute the decline in homicides, which they attribute to Ms. Sheinbaum’s abandonment of her predecessor’s security policy of “hugs, not bullets.”
The president, to some extent, has reversed course, capitulating to U.S. pressure to take a more aggressive stance against narco-traffickers. Political analysts also point to the widespread use of preventive prison, with suspects held without trial, as a possible factor in declining homicides.
The reduction “means something is changing and things are being done right, and we need to keep doing that,” María Luisa Aguilar, the director of the Jesuit-sponsored Centro Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, said. “The truth is, there are other issues that require more focused action, such as disappearances.”
Since Ms. Sheinbaum’s election, the number of the disappeared has increased by about 15,000 people, an average of about 40 people each day.
Ms. Sheinbaum insists that she has met with families of the disappeared but does not want to draw attention to the encounters. Observers say government discussions with the families have produced few results, and families complain that Ms. Sheinbaum is ignoring the issue. They point to Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez announcing an investigation into the funding of the madres buscadoras pre-World Cup protests rather than deploying more resources on finding their missing kin.
That government response contrasted with the response to the madres buscadoras from Swedish fans who stopped to embrace the families protesting outside a match in Monterrey and to listen to their stories of anguish.
“The president’s initial response was to downplay their marches—at one point using a specific phrase and a very sardonic laugh to claim there were more government officials than mothers present. Then there was the interior minister’s response, which criminalized the families’ protests,” Ms. Aguilar said.
“In stark contrast, you have that deeply empathetic image of Swedish fans walking toward the stadium, stopping to ask what the demonstration was about and trying to understand how such contradictions can exist in Mexico,” she added. “I think that is the kind of response one would expect from the authorities and, at a minimum, the society in general.”
Government officials clearly prefer not to talk about the disappeared as World Cup excitement has enraptured Mexico, especially after the national squad sailed through the round-robin first round with a perfect 3-0 record. Hundreds of thousands of fans swarmed the Ángel de la Independencia monument after Mexico defeated the Czech Republic on June 24.
Fans again swarmed the Ángel after Mexico beat Ecuador in the next round on June 30, 2-0—though not after controversy, as rowdy supporters made a ruckus outside the Ecuador team’s hotel the night before, bringing trumpet-playing mariachis, honking horns and setting off fireworks.
“The World Cup is a respite from so many difficult situations we’re hearing about,” said Jorge Atilano, S.J., the director of the National Dialogue for Peace, an initiative for pacifying Mexico sponsored by the Mexican bishops’ conference, the Jesuits’ Mexico province and the Conference of Religious Superiors of Mexico.
“At least there’s a sporting victory,” Father Atilano said. “I think the celebration is powerful because of the pain that exists in the country from so many tragedies and so many things we’ve lost. That’s why today we’re celebrating so euphorically.”
The Mexican bishops’ conference also celebrated the country’s soccer success. But the bishops noted in a statement after the win over the Czech Republic: “We are deeply aware of the efforts of the mothers searching for their missing children, who, during the World Cup events, are making visible a wound that bleeds in our nation: their disappeared children.”
They continued: “We want families celebrating Mexico together and young people pursuing their dreams without their lives being endangered. How we wish that the joy expressed in the streets will translate into a commitment to Mexico and become a source of hope for the most vulnerable.”
A moment of hope
Mexico’s Jesuits also seized on the World Cup energy, suggesting that the people of Mexico adapt the national team’s impromptu motto, “What if yes?” (“¿Y si sí?”) to addressing the nation’s problems, reminding them that “hope is celebrated, but it is also worked for.”
“From the Ignatian spirituality, we could read that ‘What if yes?’ as an invitation to look at reality with hope and discernment,” the Jesuits of Mexico wrote in a brief reflection on social media.
“Saint Ignatius of Loyola teaches us that hope is recognized in what moves the heart, in that which gives us encouragement, takes us out of fear, and impels us to put the best of ourselves at the service of something greater,” the Jesuits said.
“Believing does not mean denying the difficulties, but asking ourselves…What if yes, we can take one more step? What if yes, we can rebuild ourselves as a country? What if yes, we can choose peace over violence? What if yes, we can find all the missing persons? What if yes, we can turn enthusiasm into a force for encounter, fraternity, and the common good?”
The World Cup is being hosted across North America. The United States hosts 78 of the 104 matches, while Mexico and Canada stage 13 matches each.
The tournament was awarded to North America in 2018 in a show of continental unity. But it comes as President Donald Trump threatens to abandon the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement, which permits free trade between the three countries and which he pushed for in his first term. Mr. Trump has also slapped tariffs on both neighbors, while speaking of annexing Canada and musing on military intervention in Mexico to stamp out fentanyl production.
Mr. Trump has not attended any of the FIFA matches in the United States, and Ms. Sheinbaum has done the same in Mexico, preferring to portray the tournament as the bastion of the privileged. She gave away her ticket for the opening match—to a young, female fan from Veracruz claiming ticket No. 00001—watching the match instead with “el pueblo” in a working-class borough.
Analysts saw the president’s austere populism at play, along with an aversion to being booed at the opening match, as her predecessors experienced in 1970 and 1986, the last times Mexico hosted the tournament. Ms. Sheinbaum’s supporters are unlikely to be among the middle- and upper-class Mexicans able to afford World Cup tickets.
“The booing was assured,” despite Ms. Sheinbaum’s approval rating of nearly 70 percent, Diego Petersen Farah, a columnist with the Guadalajara newspaper El Informador, told America.
In many moments, the World Cup has shown the best of Mexico. The country has welcomed millions of visitors, despite the insecurity and drug cartel conflicts plaguing swaths of the national territory. Many World Cup visitors have raved about Mexico’s warmth and hospitality. The Iranian team found a welcome in Tijuana while playing matches in Los Angeles and Seattle because of U.S. restrictions on its movements across the border.
How long the euphoria will last in Mexico remains to be seen. Mexico next plays England on July 6 in Mexico City.
“El Tri,” as the side is known for its three-color kit, has a history of exiting the World Cup in heartbreaking fashion, losing in the elimination round on penalties, spectacular goals, questionable refereeing and even being beaten by the United States in 2002. Can the World Cup continue to be used to obscure Mexico’s persisting problems?
“People are happy for that moment,” Mr. Petersen Farah said. “Afterward, we’ll all go back to the same reality, to the same complaints.”
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