Pride Collides With Football
Mexico’s three World Cup host cities are also venues for marches and other events in honour of Pride month. This has caused not only logistical snags but presented activists with the double-edged sword of an opportunity to gain visibility on the global stage, while being eclipsed by the sheer massive force of FIFA and football fever.
Mexico City
The 48th Marcha del Orgullo LGBT+ on 27 June will still follow its usual route towards the Zócalo, even though the FIFA Fan Fest is operating there. Following negotiations between authorities and collectives, the municipal government confirmed that march participants will be able to enter the square on foot and access the Fan Fest area. The sole change from previous years is that the main closing stage will be relocated to Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas, in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where the day’s artistic and musical programme will take place.
Mexico’s Pride march has its roots in the student and socialist movements of the late 1970s. In June 1979, a contingent of around a thousand people held the first Marcha del Orgullo Homosexual in the capital, carrying slogans including “¡No hay libertad política si no hay libertad sexual!” What began as a defiant procession through hostile streets has grown into one of the largest Pride gatherings in Latin America, drawing more than 800,000 participants last year.
In related cultural news, the first complete Mexican staging of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes — widely regarded as one of the defining works of contemporary theatre and described as a “turning point in the history of gay drama” on its premiere — opened at Teatro Helénico on 19 June and will run through 12 July.
Written in 1991 and set in New York in 1985 at the height of the AIDS crisis, the play follows Prior Walter, whose HIV diagnosis triggers a cascade of personal and social rupture. The two parts — Millennium Approaches and Perestroika — trace the fracturing of relationships, crises of faith and identity, and one man’s insistence on his right to go on living. Each won a Tony Award for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize on their respective Broadway premieres in 1993 and 1994; a 2003 HBO adaptation starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep swept the Emmy and Golden Globe awards that year.
Although Teatro UNAM staged Millennium Approaches in 2018, this is the first time Perestroika has been performed in Mexico and the first time both parts have been presented together in the country. Directed by Cristian Magaloni and produced by Kupfer Producciones and IM Producciones in collaboration with the Culture Ministry and the Centro Cultural Helénico, the cast includes Enrique Arreola, Carolina Politi, Vicky Araico, Pablo Marín, Assira Abatte, Aldo Guerra, Jesús Delgado, and Lucio Giménez Cacho.
Monterrey
The 25th Marcha de la Diversidad in Monterrey, organised by Movimiento por la Igualdad de Nuevo León, will be held today, on 20 June. Three parallel stages — at the General Anaya metro station, the Alameda Central, and Plaza Zaragoza — will precede the main departure at 19:00, and the march closes at the Explanada de los Héroes with a formal protest statement. Singer and actress Ximena Sariñana serves as official ambassador of the anniversary edition of what is now considered the second most important Pride march in Mexico, drawing over 100,000 participants last year.
Guadalajara
Guadalajara staged two Pride marches in June. The first, the Marcha del Orgullo on 6 June, was attended by 7,000 people and focused on the challenges faced by LGBT+ migrants, as well as demands for nationwide marriage equality and an end to hate crimes. The second, Guadalajara Pride on 13 June — held under the motto “Visibles, Diversxs y Orgullosxs” — was more of a festival and reportedly drew 80,000 participants. Both marches were framed as an opportunity, with the World Cup bringing international visitors to the city, to project the community’s demands to a global audience.
Teotihuacán Gets a Museum Makeover
Three newly renovated museums reopened on 9 June in Teotihuacán, Mexico’s second most-visited archaeological site. The Culture Ministry invested 37 million pesos in the museums as part of a national programme to upgrade 46 archaeological sites in advance of the World Cup tourism surge.
The Museo de la Grandeza Teotihuacana displays 174 pieces, the majority of which have never been exhibited publicly. The Museo de los Murales Teotihuacanos Beatriz de la Fuente and the Museo de Sitio, which houses ceremonial incense burners, funerary deposits, and a ground-level map of the 22-square-kilometre archaeological zone, were also remodelled. Broader site improvements include new ticketing facilities, expanded signage, metal detectors at all five entrances, and a digital visitor guide.
The star artefact at the new museum isn’t from Teotihuacán, though it does resonate with the spirit of the World Cup — a 3,600-year-old Olmec rubber ball discovered in El Manatí in Veracruz (one of 14 found there) is on loan to the museum for three months. INAH’s coordinator of museums, Juan Manuel Garibay López, said the ball symbolises “Mesoamerican cosmological integration.”
The renovation has drawn some criticism for the removal of dates from numerous artefact labels throughout the museums, though the information is accessible via QR codes. INAH officials argue that the goal is to provide a “chromatic and plastic comprehension” that emphasises an immersive aesthetic experience — apparently having to look up a QR code on your phone isn’t considered an interruption of this museum flow state.
The World Cup of Piracy
The World Cup is generating a parallel economy in unofficial merchandise in Mexico, prompting government agencies to mount a sweeping crackdown — online and on the streets — even as replica shirts prove stubbornly popular with fans priced out of the official market (MXP1,999) or as often is the case, affluent people happy to pay less for counterfeit goods. But beyond straightforward counterfeiting, a more politically charged alternative has also been circulating: activist-designed jerseys that treat the tournament’s iconography as a target rather than a brand to copy.
In the days before the tournament opened, Tepito markets saw queues of shoppers seeking the green national team jersey at a fraction of its official price. While Adidas stores sell the official jersey for around 115 dollars, street stalls in Tepito offer versions for as little as 10 — enough for a family of five to kit out for the cost of a single official shirt. Vendors offer two main versions: a high-quality “clone” reportedly made in Mexico and closely mimicking the Adidas original, down to a fictitious “Made in Thailand” label, and a cheaper Chinese-manufactured version with thinner fabric and simpler printing.
The government has spent months fighting a losing battle against the trade. An April raid in Tepito netted 20,000 items — mostly shirts — with an estimated value of USD 350,000. “Operación Limpieza” has since focused on warehouses in central Mexico City, though the shirts continue to circulate through the city’s countless tianguis. In the commercial zones of the Historic Centre alone authorities seized 105,000 unofficial items in recent months.
The Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial (IMPI) also deployed 15 inspection brigades around the Estadio Ciudad de México during the opening game, reporting no counterfeit sales in the immediate stadium perimeter; unofficial jerseys account for roughly 80 per cent of goods detected in IMPI operations. Meanwhile, on the digital streets the agency blocked 57 websites to prevent unauthorised streaming, working in real time with FIFA and broadcast rights-holders. IMPI director Vidal Llerenas clarified that the 20-million-peso maximum fine widely shared on social media applies to a different category of commercial activity, not to small bars or taquerías screening matches, and denied that FIFA had taken legal action against Tepito as a neighbourhood.
But not all unlicensed jerseys are fakes. Some artists and activist collectives are making what one designer calls “ideological devices” — garments that appropriate the national team’s colours to deliver explicitly political messages, such as an anarchist Care Bear urinating on a FIFA ball while the flags of Israel and the United States burn behind it. Priced between 420 and 800 pesos, the shirts sold out quickly after images circulated on social media — including being flagged in an Israeli intelligence report tracking protest activity.
The Asamblea Antimundialista de la Ciudad de México — the Anti-World Cup Assembly — coordinates artists and community organisers who use self-produced clothing to fund activism, purchasing paint, materials and food from sales proceeds. The most visually striking pieces come from the brand Vlocke’s “Brandalism” collection, whose “FIFA Go Home” series prints the Aztec goddess Coatlicue alongside “AntiFa” lettering on black jerseys, and overlays the second national team shirt with a masked Zapatista figure executing a volley, the EZLN initials prominent on the chest.
The commercial stakes behind all of this are considerable. The global football jersey market was worth more than seven billion dollars annually as of 2021. As of mid‑2026, face‑value prices for standard tickets to the 2026 World Cup final run from around USD 5,800 for the cheapest standard seats to about USD 11,000 for top Category 1 seats, while resale and premium hospitality offers can go much higher. Both the Tepito vendors and the activist designers are responding to a tournament marketed to the masses but catering to the few.
Annie Leibovitz Returns to Mexico
Renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz inaugurated Futbol 2026: Annie Leibovitz at Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología (MNA) on 8 June, forty years on from her celebrated work for the 1986 World Cup. (Ten years ago, Annie Leibovitz brought her UBS-sponsored exhibition “Women: New Portraits” to Mexico City, at Proyecto Público Prim). The new exhibition runs until 30 August and is divided into three sections: thirteen photographs made during Mexico’s 1986 tournament; a retrospective drawing on more than fifty years of Leibovitz’s career; and a new series produced for the 2026 World Cup.
The 2026 works represent a shift in her artistic approach. In 1986, the settings dominated — the pyramid at Chichén Itzá more protagonist than the athlete soaring above it. For the new commission, architecture has given way to movement: Leibovitz is interested in the physical reality of the game, the musculature required to play it. “40 years later, it’s not models I’m interested in — it’s people,” she said at the opening. “Sometimes I simply want to see which muscles are working.”
A vitrine at the centre of the room holds a selection of pre-Hispanic pieces from the museum’s own collections relating to the Mesoamerican ball game, creating a conversation between the ancient sport and its modern form. The exhibition is completed by a large collage wall of more than a hundred portraits pinned with simple tacks — evoking the atmosphere of a studio — featuring figures including Joan Didion, Elon Musk, Mick Jagger, Meryl Streep and Susan Sontag, Leibovitz’s partner for fifteen years until Sontag died in 2004. The show is curated by Mexican photographer Pablo Ortiz Monasterio.
Leibovitz found footballers to be elusive subjects: many took time to commit to being photographed. Among those who did are Mexican goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa (shot in Texopantitla, Xochimilco) as well as Edson Álvarez and Julián Quiñones, alongside international figures including Zinedine Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappé. Of the recent portraits, it is that of Mbappé — in a hotel room, a ball resting on his head — that Leibovitz singles out as capturing something about the ambitions of today’s young players.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has agreed to be photographed in 2027 by Leibovitz, who is also preparing a project at the Museo Frida Kahlo. The concept for the presidential portrait has not yet been finalised, but Leibovitz indicated it would follow the line of her well-known portraits of world leaders and women in positions of power.
Leibovitz photographed Donald Trump years ago, when he was still a businessman and Melania was pregnant, in an image that has since become iconic. She says she has not photographed him since and is trying to arrange something. “It doesn’t always have to be someone you like. But if I want to complete my work on our era, and there is someone who is important to it, I want to photograph them.”
Museo Tamayo at 45
The Museo Tamayo is marking its 45th anniversary with a new season of three exhibitions, bringing together more than 200 works spanning painting, photography, sculpture, installation, and video, and includes several pieces never previously shown in public.
The first exhibition pays homage to the museum’s founder, Rufino Tamayo, drawing on works from the museum’s permanent collection as well as private holdings. Curated by Juan Carlos Pereda, it examines Tamayo’s engagement with five pictorial genres — portraiture, still life, landscape, genre scenes, and the female nude — arguing that he fundamentally renewed each rather than merely working within established conventions. The show includes 21 paintings, six of which are on public display for the first time, among them Hombre en rojo, Paisaje con luna, and Cabeza. A particular focus is how Tamayo drew on pre-Hispanic art to transform representations of the female body, alongside a portrait of his wife Olga regarded as one of the collection’s landmarks.
The second exhibition, co-curated by Torreblanca and Maco Sánchez Blanco, gathers more than 100 works by Mexican and international artists who were active in Mexico City between 1981 and 1991 — a decade, as the curators frame it, of profound social, political, and cultural upheaval. The title’s use of “archaeology” reflects the methodology: an excavation of archives, collections, and institutional histories to recover and reassess what was happening in Mexican art during those years. The show establishes connections between the country’s deeper cultural roots and the contemporary artistic expressions that emerged from them.
Peruvian artist Fátima Rodrigo has created a site-specific installation for the museum’s central courtyard — a space the museum has been developing as a venue for free public programming conceived at the boundary between the institution and the street. The work recreates the aesthetic of mid-twentieth-century Latin American television programmes and popular game shows, transforming the courtyard into a participatory environment of forms, textures, and sounds.
A Poet’s House Divided
The inauguration on 4 June of the Casa de las Palabras Ramón López Velarde — a rebrand of the Casa del Poeta, the Mexico City literary centre that has borne the Zacatecan poet’s name since 1991 — generated a tempest of controversy in the city’s cultural community.
The reconfiguration, overseen by Ana Francis López Bayghen Patiño (aka Ana Francis Mor), head of the city’s Culture Ministry, included plans to introduce a cabaret format alongside the venue’s existing literary programming, and a new name that omitted the poet’s name from the signboard. Poet Eduardo Mosches condemned what he called the “disdain for poetry and the memory of the poet,” characterising the move as a personal project of the secretary rather than a considered cultural policy. The director of the Zacatecas cultural institute wrote a public letter expressing dismay that the venue would cease to be dedicated to poetry, and a petition on Change.org gathered more than 2,500 signatures demanding the original name and mission be preserved.
Mayor Clara Brugada intervened and clarified that the venue would retain its name, its cultural vocation, and the descriptor “café concierto” rather than “cabaret.”
Ana Francis López defended the project in a Proceso interview, arguing that “cabaret” in this context carried a poetic rather than a nocturnal meaning, and was essentially synonymous with the “café concert” tradition. She noted that the venue had housed the Café Bar Las Hormigas for many years, a space for literary gatherings combining music and poetry. She also clarified that the building — city government property — had been administered by a private foundation whose permit had expired in 2023, having already run thirty-three years, and that the transition was a legal and administrative necessity rather than an ideological one. Plans include free public access to the site’s museum — a recreation of López Velarde’s bedroom and study — and its libraries, which hold around eleven thousand volumes specialising in poetry.
López Velarde (1888–1921) died in Mexico City at the age of thirty-two and is best known for La suave patria, widely regarded as one of the defining poems of Mexican national identity.
Chatter Box
Last of A Generation: Juan Manuel “El Pato” Guillén, painter, muralist, and sculptor widely regarded as the last living link to Mexico’s great muralist generation, died on 14 June in Mexico City at the age of 100. Trained at La Esmeralda from the age of fifteen, he was a direct disciple of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and a close collaborator of Jorge González Camarena, placing him at the heart of one of the most significant movements in twentieth-century art.
His output spanned more than eight decades and ranged from Hollywood and Golden Age cinema posters — among them portraits of Cantinflas, Pedro Infante, María Félix, and Silvia Pinal — to major public murals at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Chapultepec Castle, the Teatro de la Ciudad de México, and the Universidad de Concepción in Chile. He continued painting until the end of his life; as recently as February he appeared at the BADA art fair to celebrate his centenary.
The Guillén Foundation, which has worked to catalogue, restore, and preserve thousands of works, lamented that he never received the official recognition his stature warranted, including the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes or a major retrospective at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.
Signed, Stolen and Returned: Just a few weeks ago, some called for Hernán Cortés’s remains to be exhumed and dispatched back to Spain; meanwhile, the Mexican government finally repatriated a 16th-century document signed by the conquistador, which was stolen from Mexico’s Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) more than thirty years ago. It was formally received by the AGN on 18 May of this year.
The document is a payment order dated 20 February 1527, belonging to a group of folios bearing Cortés’s signature that were removed from volume 362, file 203 of the Hospital de Jesús archive. Recovery efforts began in May 2022 when Mexican authorities detected the document being listed for sale by the US auction house Paul Fraser Collectibles. The following month, Mexico submitted evidence of ownership and filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General’s office (FGR). Beyond the physical evidence, the AGN’s own specialist descriptions of the document played a key role in establishing provenance. The formal repatriation process began in 2024, and by August 2025 the document was already being held at the Mexican embassy in Washington. The document was formally unsealed in the presence of legal representatives from the SRE and the US embassy.
1 World Cup Ticket = 200,000 Nopales: While Bloomberg columnist JP Spinetto (reluctantly) defended high World Cup ticket prices in a column, Fifa was right about ticket pricing, Eduardo Horcasitas, a nopal farmer from the highlands of Morelos, has gone viral with a simple calculation: at 1.20 pesos per cactus paddle, he would have had to peel and sell at least 200,000 nopales to afford a ticket to Mexico’s opening match. The video, posted to his Instagram account A lo Bello, struck a nerve with many Mexicans for whom the tournament — despite being hosted on home soil — feels financially far out of reach. Horcasitas, who studied environmental engineering in Mexico City before returning to farm a family plot, was less interested in football than in drawing attention to the precarious economics of smallholder agriculture; his wider message urges consumers to support Mexican farmers directly. Beyond the viral moment, Horcasitas sees the nopal itself as a symbol of Mexican resilience — a plant that survives exposed and neglected, yet still bears fruit. A musician as well as a farmer, he also shares field recordings of original cumbias with his growing audience of nearly 28,000 Instagram followers.
Culture Overload: Mexico’s World Cup cultural programme — 281 events across eleven states, backed by nearly 400 million pesos in infrastructure spending — has generated anxiety among staff expected to deliver it.
The INBAL union, Sinit-INBAL, which represents 532 workers including restorers, technicians, and teaching staff, said earlier this month that key questions were unanswered: whether extended opening hours will be compensated as overtime, and whether basic operational needs will be met. The INAH union, SNTAMP-INAH, echoed these concerns, noting that renovation spending has focused on facades rather than interior infrastructure, and that the institute has been unable to fulfil a 2021 labour tribunal ruling on staff training and promotions. Both unions warn that without additional hiring and a clear budget for overtime, the cultural ambitions of the World Cup risk being borne disproportionately by already overstretched and underpaid workers.
Culture Outing
Tours: Routes through Mexican Muralism
The Culture Ministry and INBAL are offering three expert-guided muralism routes during June and July in Mexico City — Genealogía del muralismo, Epopeya del muralismo, and Siqueiros total — taking in sites from the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso to the Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, with stops at the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Mercado Abelardo Rodríguez. The itineraries trace the movement from its origins in Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros through to its epic and experimental dimensions, with highlights including Rivera’s Man, Controller of the Universe and Siqueiros’s monumental La marcha de la humanidad. Capped at 20 participants, tours run in Spanish and English.
Culture Conversation
Annie Leibovitz regresa a México con una exposición para el Mundial 2026 (NMás)
Journalist Enrique Acevedo talks to Annie Leibovitz about her new exhibit in Mexico and her experiences photographing famous footballers. “You can see how much this country loves football” says Leibovitz when talking about her travels across Mexico: “There wasn’t a village or a town where I didn’t see a football field.”