If you walk around Guadalajara you’ll see lots of posters of missing persons.
Face. Name. When disappeared.
I was trying to work out how many there were when another poster came to my rescue: currently there are over 15,000 registered missing persons in the state of Jalisco, which has a population of around nine million.
15,000…in Tasmania that would be equivalent to Huonville, Queenstown, Campbell Town, Deloraine and St Helens all wiped off the map. That’s a lot of people. Disappeared.
I asked one local about it and he just shrugged. Our tour guide looked like he would prefer to talk about other things, but he did say that crime syndicates and drug trafficking were involved in most of the country’s social woes.
That computes. Crime and especially narcotrafficking are big businesses. Anyone who gets in the way is expendable. The human cost is just, well, the cost of doing business.
Disappearances are so common that there’s even a special investigation unit of the Prosecutor’s office (site in Spanish) that investigates nothing else.
Some of the posters of the disappeared have the faces spliced onto Mexican national team uniforms, as if to say: “well, this is just as important as football.”
I agree.
Presumably the use of the FIFA logo is a copyright infringement but I guess the FIFA media team must have plenty of decisions to make about fights that it might not want to have, at least in public.
Restraint was another thing that disappeared as hosts Mexico took to the field for their third and final group game, against Czechia.
The sound of horns built all day. This was the mood even before the game started, in light drizzle.
Surprisingly as the game was on about half the town was not glued to screens in bars, restaurants and in the plaza. There were a lot of people were just walking around enjoying the atmosphere and getting ready for a big party in the event of a Mexican win.
This was the last round of games for the day, with the results shaping the final standings in the group. Despite already having secured top position, the Mexican coach didn’t run his second string players but went all out for another win to keep the momentum going.
After some resistance from Czechia who themselves needed a victory to pass to the next round, the Mexicans produced a thrilling second half to clinch the game 3-0. Highlights here.
Yeah the Mexicans took it pretty well:
For some reason, the two emblematic celebrations of this World Cup have been skipping (!) and throwing people in the air (!!), for example:
For the Mexicans it was indeed a perfect start to the tournament: three wins, top of the group, no goals conceded. Why not blow your horn?
And the Colombian strugglers still hanging around after yesterday’s game were happy to join in, with gusto:
For his part my brother-in-law Diego was interviewed by some kind of reptile. I, for one, welcome our lizard overlord broadcasting team:
It wasn’t snowing, exactly, but the spray foam did get around.
The party continued long into the night, and sadly the double-glazed windows of our hotel weren’t really built to cope with that amount of noise.
By morning the streets had miraculously been cleared of busted vuvuzelas, empty bottles, plastic bags, streamers, spray cans of instant foam and all manner of debris. Everything was back to normal. And Mexico was still heading to the round of 32, with the opponent yet to be confirmed.
South Africa however booked an elimination match against Canada with a surprise 1-0 victory over Korea. Highlights here. The Koreans now have to wait to see if they can pass muster as one of the best third-placed teams.
Other qualifiers were Brazil who defeated Scotland 3-0 (highlights here) and Morocco who triumphed 4-2 against Haiti (highlights here). The Haitians can take a holiday while Scotland seem unlikely to get a guernsey in the next round.
In Group B Switzerland topped the standings after defeating Canada 2-1, highlights here. Bosnia clinched a critical win 3-1 over Qatar (highlights here) to all but book a place in the elimination round while Qatar can rest their legs.
Thursday games in the Americas included the final matches of another three groups.
Curacao v Ivory Coast and Ecuador v Germany, then Japan v Sweden and Tunisia v Netherlands, and finally Turkiye v USA and Australia v Paraguay.
We’ll be watching on a big screen at suburban hub Zapopan…maybe that’s good luck for the Socceroos? Curacao fans tried storming the Rocky steps in Philadelphia and that seemed like as good a strategy as any.
Enjoy the football and have fun!
Alan Whykes is a Tasmania-based writer and an ex- too many things to list.
This blog is the start of a new section called Tas At Large which showcases stories of Tasmanian diaspora let loose upon the world.
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