At the Akron Stadium in Guadalajara, one of the official venues of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, thousands of people have gathered to celebrate the world’s most important football event.
What most do not know is that at least 456 bags containing fragmented human remains have been found in the same area since last year. Just beyond the stadium, families of the disappeared continue searching for their loved ones. Their struggle is not only neglected by the state, but also increasingly normalised by the society that surrounds them.
Yet, families of the disappeared have taken on a central role through their search, mobilisation, and protest. And over the past days, they have organised a series of actions in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, not against the sport itself, but to make visible at an international level what is happening in the country. Through flyers, banners, and the faces of their relatives printed on Mexico’s national team jerseys, they seek to inscribe the presence of the disappeared into the space of the event, resinifying its meaning. Their actions are not only a call against forgetting, but also a way of exerting pressure on authorities to respond.
“The paradigm of the perfect crime”
The discoveries in the area surrounding the stadium are not an isolated case. They are part of a widespread practice of enforced disappearance across Mexico, that the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances has described in the 2022 report on its visit to Mexico as “the paradigm of the perfect crime.” In this context, the State has been accused of being deeply implicated in the commission of these crimes, operating through collusive and blurred relationships with organised crime, in a landscape where no one can be considered fully exempt from the risk of being disappeared.
Despite official statements that disappearances in Mexico no longer occur, cases continue to rise, including under the current administration of Claudia Sheinbaum, and more than 51,000 disappearances were registered between 2018 and 2024 during the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Currently there are more than 135,000 people who have been officially reported as disappeared, over 72,000 bodies remain unidentified in mass graves and forensic facilities, and between 2023 and 2024 alone, state-level authorities registered the discovery of 1,451 clandestine graves.
Enjoyment and mourning
The discoveries of burial sites in areas surrounding the stadium are deeply symbolic. They expose the unsettling proximity between spaces of global celebration and the persistence of disappearances and clandestine graves. Within just a few kilometres, two radically different realities coexist: life and death, enjoyment and mourning. And yet, for those searching, there is no pause. The need to find their loved ones does not stop, nor can it be suspended for the sake of a global spectacle.
Beneath the surface, the structural conditions that sustain disappearances remain intact. Mexican authorities have done little, beyond performing securitization and staging an image of a country designed for global tourism and entertainment, largely disconnected from its structural realities. Despite significant investments in security measures and efforts to sanitise and control public spaces in host cities, the reality of disappearances cannot simply be hidden.
Mexican authorities for years have avoided fully acknowledging the magnitude of the disappearances. Instead, there have been sustained practices of minimising and manipulating official figures, and evading responsibility. These practices, combined with a persistent double discourse and the lack of effective policy responses, have contributed to the aggravation of disappearances, at the cost of ignoring the ongoing suffering of thousands of families who continue searching for their loved ones.
A long-standing pattern of denial
One example is the recent determination by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances that disappearances in Mexico may constitute crimes against humanity, given their widespread nature, systematic patterns, and indications of state participation. For the first time in its history, the Committee decided to refer the situation in Mexico to the UN General Assembly under the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
This procedure, reserved for situations of extreme gravity, does not aim to sanction the State or establish criminal responsibility. Instead, it seeks to prompt the creation of international mechanisms to support Mexico in preventing, investigating, punishing, and eradicating disappearances. Yet, the Mexican government publicly rejected these findings, reinforcing a long-standing pattern of denial.
Spectacle will pass, crisis can remain
The World Cup projects an image of control and normality, yet this mirage is only temporary. It does not reflect a country where the crisis of disappearances has been addressed, but one where it is managed and kept out of sight. This is particularly concerning: if authorities can exert such control in moments of international visibility, why is this not sustained to address disappearances themselves? Sporting events often work to clean up the image of the state and push criticism to the margins as part of a broader process of “sportswashing”, even as they can open spaces for contestation. It is precisely within this tension that families intervene.
The World Cup creates a window of opportunity. The spectacle will pass. The question is whether this moment of visibility can translate into sustained political will from the Mexican authorities, but also into support from the international community, particularly in light of the ongoing referral before the UN General Assembly. What is at stake is whether tens of thousands of families will finally receive answers, or whether this moment of global attention will become another event that passes while disappearances continue.
Anna Karolina Chimiak is a human rights lawyer and doctoral researcher at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, in Belgium. Her research examines how families of the disappeared in Mexico use documentation as a justice-making practice. She has more than thirteen years of professional experience in the field of human rights, with expertise in enforced disappearances, torture, and the protection of human rights defenders. From 2016 to 2025, she worked with the Centro de Justicia para la Paz y el Desarrollo (CEPAD) in Guadalajara, Mexico.
