CNTE Agrees to Mobilize to the Estadio Ciudad de México During World Cup Inauguration

ByAlexia Villaseñor and Jared Laureles

This article by Alexia Villaseñor and Jared Laureles originally appeared in the June 11, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

After the failed attempt to negotiate with government authorities just hours before the 2026 soccer World Cup is set to begin, the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) will mobilize and attempt to reach the Estadio Ciudad de México (Azteca) to reiterate the fulfillment of its demands.

At the end of its National Representative Assembly, which went into recess in the early morning hours, teacher Elvira Veleces, leader of section 14 of Guerrero, reported that they will undertake an action where “in the context of the World Cup we are going to make our struggle visible, our central demand.”

In her brief message, she called on the federal government “to reconsider its position of total stonewalling with respect to giving specific responses to the just demands, above all dignified pensions for all ISSSTE beneficiaries.” This is one of the struggles, she said, that the CNTE must wage by taking to the streets, but it also brings together compañeros who are mobilizing, even for the first time, across the length and breadth of the country.

Veleces stated that “the struggle does not end here, nor is it defined by a soccer calendar, but it is necessary to make the demands visible in the streets.” Yesterday, more than 50 members of the Sole National Negotiating Commission (CNUN) held a meeting for nearly seven hours with the Ministries of the Interior, Public Education, and ISSSTE. Even though there were “offers” from the federal government in response to their demands, the responses were not “clear.”

In recent days, the coordinator attempted to march to the vicinity of the stadium without success, as its passage along Calzada de Tlalpan was blocked at the level of División del Norte by a police barricade with concrete voussoirs, a crane, a horse-trailer truck, and dozens of capital police officers lined up.