El Semanario de Guadalajara / Archdiocese of Guadalajara.- The 2026 FIFA World Cup in Mexico confirms an old thesis: governments use sport as modern bread and circuses. The Romans and Greeks found in this formula a way to relieve pressure on society, especially when it was in crisis, when there was public discontent, fed up with living daily in discomfort due to inequalities and the injustices of those in power, complaints about abuses that reflected contrasting strata among the inhabitants, etc., which today manifest in concrete, different situations, but which also cause great unease among the population, such as insecurity, crime, disappearances, dirty, contaminated and scarce water, etc., realities that also need to be vented, and the best way is “bread and circuses”.
The authorities turned the tournament into a choreography of frivolity where public management was subordinated to spectacle. With the show present, everything else fades away (at least that’s what they think; as if reality were an act of magic). The sedative, evasive football effect has ended. What comes next? Neither authorities nor citizens can live off the national football team anymore. Now what will happen? The criminals have somewhat calmed down, but what comes next with them? Have the municipal leaders of Mexico reached an agreement?, because a new electoral process is coming, with everything that entails.
While neighborhoods suffer water cuts and hospitals are overcrowded (that is, everything belonging to IMSS), 2.5 billion pesos were allocated just to remodel the Azteca Stadium and Fan Fests were set up with screens and free concerts. It is the “society of the spectacle.” The World Cup is no longer organized, it is staged. That staging is populist by design. Social programs rebranded as “Goals for Welfare.” The reality of poverty is replaced by the map of official revelry. What the Italian semiologist Umberto Eco said about world cups, they “suspend collective intelligence” for 30 days.
Mass manipulation operated here by the book, and many media outlets contributed to it: “The purpose of the mass media was not to inform, but to manufacture consent” (Noam Chomsky). Football truly functions as the updated “opium of the people.” Eduardo Galeano wrote in “Football in Sun and Shadow”: “In his life, a man can change women, political party or religion, but he cannot change his football team.” Power knows this and exploits it: it tribalizes identity to deactivate criticism.
The most serious frivolity is budgetary and symbolic. Influencers were hired for “activations” for 80 million pesos, government palaces were lit up with the colors of the national team and a “holiday” was declared for Mexico’s matches. Events were organized that do not solve problems, but produce loyalty. The World Cup becomes an alibi. The result is an entertainer State, not an administrator. When the last tourist leaves, the debt will remain (as in Argentina 78, or the debt with sponsors), the barriers and the hangover. The goal has already fulfilled its function. “Sport has the power to change the world,” said Mandela. Mexican power added: and to distract it.