MI’s Mexico Foreign Press Chatter – Jun. 12, 2025

junio 19, 2026
12h00

Top stories on Mexico

Dedicated to Alan Riding, perhaps Mexico’s greatest foreign correspondent, and certainly one of its most generous.

The wait is finally over: the 2026 World Cup began on Thursday with a 2-0 victory for Mexico over South Africa at Estadio Azteca (”the closest thing North America has to a football cathedral”, as The Guardian described it) and then with a win for South Korea over Czech Republic in a Guadalajara stadium with “swathes of empty seats”, as reported by Reuters. The media latched onto the comeback story of 35-year-old striker Raúl Jiménez, who scored Mexico’s second goal and his first in a World Cup; Jiménez suffered a life-threatening skull fracture in 2020 during a Premier League game and had a setback before the 2022 World Cup.

Jack Lang in The Athletic / NYT wrote a poem of sorts to the Estadio Azteca that might be the read of the week. “Inside the stadium, as the players warmed up, it was impossible not to feel the history that permeates this place. The Azteca is not the stadium it was in 1970 nor even 1986. It has been given countless facelifts, dragged into modernity, for good and ill. Yet the bones of it remain: those imposing external struts, the swaggering sweep of the stands. The sheer scale of it still quickens the pulse when you walk in. Those bones hold stories: tales of Pele, Maradona, the Game of the Century, the Hand of God. Mexico’s own boys of summer — Manuel Negrete, Hugo Sanchez — have been a huge part of the build-up this year…. Maybe it’s the quality of the Mexico City light — hazy, coy. Maybe it’s the altitude, some unexplained particle interplay. No matter; let’s just call it magic.”

Foreign press coverage earlier in the week focused on the wider context leading up to the inauguration of the tournament. Reuters published a mesmerising photo essay depicting football pitches and stadiums across the country. The NYT unconventionally decided to actually talk to the Nahua women in Naupan who embroider Adidas special-edition jerseys and who certain influencers claimed were being exploited. They mostly expressed frustration not with the activewear mega-brand, but with the influencers who seemed to be doing most of the exploiting. Naturally the most prominent influencer accused the NYT of taking money to write its story.

President Sheinbaum was profiled for The Guardian Long Read by journalist Rachel Nolan this week as “the world’s most popular leftwing leader”. The piece delves into Sheinbaum’s political and personal history, but ends with Nolan asking the president questions at the mañanera about disappearances and militarisation — which she said left Sheinbaum looking “mildly displeased” — before Sheinbaum responded with an explanation that the current crisis of disappearances is not the same as those of the 1970s and 80s, and with a defense of the military as “of the people”.

In other news, yet another Trump dismissal of the USMCA (”I don’t know if I’m going to renew it”) made (some) headlines, while Bloomberg reported on Mexico’s beef with how the current rules-of-origin calculations put the country’s automakers at a disadvantage compared to competitors from South Korea and Japan.

In cultural news, the NYT covered the re-opening of Museo Dolores Olmedo, which one museum director described as a “kind of posthumous reconciliation between Olmedo [a collector and friend of Diego Rivera] and Kahlo”. Finally, the NYT published a warm tribute to Alan Riding, the British journalist and former NYT Mexico Bureau Chief, whose 1984 book Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans about Mexico and its relations with the US, remains forty years later Miranda Intelligence’s favorite book on Mexico by a foreign correspondent. We also recommend the essay by Alan Riding’s great friends, Jorge Castañeda’ and Andrés Rozental: Tribute to Alan Riding in El Universal.

Blogs destacados en inglés sobre México

Ioan Grillo on CrashOut did on-the-ground reporting in the streets of Mexico City ahead of the World Cup opener, talking to some of the CNTE teachers participating in the sit-in protests — who are disheartened with Sheinbaum and Morena — as well as business owners affected by the disruptions. On Mexico Decoded, Viri Ríos analysed Sheinbaum and Morena moving into a phase of “open resistance” against Trump in the face of broadening electoral meddling by the US in Latin America. The Mexico Political Economist focused on the upward climb in Mexico’s electronics exports versus automotive parts, arguing that there is a risk of it becoming just another part of the country’s “well-established and world famous maquila system”. Materia Gris reported on the stories of families hoping to draw more attention to their search for missing loved ones during the largest sporting event in history.

CrashOut Media – Protests Clog Mexico City On Eve of World Cup

MXPE – Electronics: Mexico’s new export darling is an old nemesis in disguise

Mexico Decoded – Mexico’s Defiant Bet Against Trump

Materia Gris – Families of Mexico’s Disappeared Hope World Cup Draws Attention to Their Plight

Miranda Inteligencia daily reports on Substack

Photo of the week

Mexico’s Raul Jimenez celebrates after scoring his side’s second goal during the World Cup Group A soccer match between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City, Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)