Around 2,000 demonstrators converged on the Estadio Azteca perimeter minutes before Thursday 11 June's kickoff, throwing flares and stones at riot police, who answered with tear gas 1. Many in the crowd were relatives of the more than 130,000 people recorded as missing in Mexico, alongside anti-government groups, and they reached the gates as the opening ceremony played out inside. The protest had begun that morning when the teachers' union occupied the Zócalo fan zone in the city centre .
This was the day the friction moved from the square to the gates. Eight separate protests were planned across the capital, spanning education, transport, health and farming, while inside the stadium Shakira and Burna Boy performed the official anthem 'Dai Dai' 2. The split screen, families of the disappeared outside the perimeter and a global pop ceremony within it, framed the contradiction the host nation has carried towards this tournament.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said everything was under control and pointed to 18 alternative fan venues, a containment posture rather than a clearance order. No arrest figures were released, and the match itself proceeded without disruption inside the ground, the protest and the football running in parallel a few hundred metres apart. The grievance, the toll of the missing, does not resolve with a fan zone; it has simply found a louder stage.
