Preparations for the 2026 World Cup in Mexico City are cutting into the
livelihoods of sex workers and street vendors near Azteca Stadium. Workers
along Calzada de Tlalpan say city projects aimed at sprucing up ahead of the
soccer tournament have slashed their incomes. Sex workers say a new bike lane
blocks cars from pulling over and nighttime metro closures leave them
stranded. Advocacy groups say promised aid has not appeared. Vendors in
pedestrian tunnels say officials have ordered them out for renovation
projects. Many fear “social cleansing,” in which cities push informal
workers aside to impress visitors.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Montserrat Fuentes stands on the same street corner where
she has worked for 20 years. But the sex worker’s normal rush of clients
every Friday night is nowhere to be seen.

Instead, the busy Mexico City throughway where some 2,500 sex workers make
their living is lined with construction, part of larger preparations in the
Mexican capital leading up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup over the summer.

Fuentes, 42, and others say they have seen their earnings slashed by
government projects meant to clean up swathes of the city before opening its
arms to sports fans from across the world. Street vendors also say they are
being pushed out and don’t know what will be left for them after the
competition.

“What we’re seeing in Mexico is something that so much of the world has
faced when there’s an event of this scale. They always want to fix up their
city, make it look nice,” she said. “But the ones that are hurt are always
us at the bottom of the ladder.”

The soccer World Cup, which will be hosted simultaneously by Mexico, the
United States and Canada, is expected to be a $3 billion economic engine in
Mexico as visitors flood airports, hotels, restaurants and sports venues,
according to the Mexican Soccer Federation.

But in a country where more than half the workforce is informal, many
Mexicans working under precarious conditions worry they will be left behind.

Mexico City's government said it was taking actions to offset impacts to sex
workers and vendors, and has been in ongoing talks with workers.

Sex workers' earnings hit by World Cup prep

Tension started building in recent months in Mexico City, where the opening
ceremony will be hosted, as the local government rapidly renovated its iconic
Azteca Stadium, enhanced public transportation and built up public works in
historically working class neighborhoods.

Fuentes and many of the sex workers along the Calzada de Tlalpan avenue that
passes the stadium said construction of a bike lane beginning in late 2025
has cut their earnings by more than half. Large dividers block cars from
pulling to the curb to negotiate. The city later announced nighttime closures
of the metro stations running along the road for Cup construction, leaving
many women stranded.

“The only thing the government sees is how much money (the World Cup) is
going to make them,” said Elvira Madrid Romero, president of the sex worker
advocacy organization Street Brigade. “Tourists are coming to celebrate at
the expense of the poor.”

Sex work is not criminalized in Mexico, and in the capital it remains an
economic lifeline for around 15,000 people, including transgender women who
struggle to find fair pay in other sectors.

Many single mothers in Madrid's coalition worry about how they are going to
put food on the table or pay rent. Her organization has negotiated with local
authorities, which promised small monthly payments and food deliveries that
are a fraction of what the women need to get by, she said.

In September, Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada also announced 58 points along
the roadway where sex workers would be able to meet with clients.

“We want a World Cup ... with fair play and a just society," Brugada said in
September.

But women haven’t seen any such points or aid from local authorities and
refuse to be moved from the areas where they work, Madrid said.

Global sporting events carry a toll

Fuentes had to get a second job selling food in the mornings after working
all night to pay rent, leaving her exhausted. She began sex work 20 years ago
when she was displaced from selling food downtown during another government
cleanup effort.

Despite the coalition's insistence that they won't budge, Fuentes worries the
same could happen to her again, especially as she sees local authorities move
street vendors from the main thoroughfare to sleepy side streets.

“Even if we raise our voices, we can’t really do anything,” she said.
“All we can do is hope that when the World Cup ends, things go back to
normal … We don’t want to be forced to move.”

Such pushes by local governments are common ahead of global sporting events,
which often sit at the intersection of wider social and political strains and
are widely criticized by activist groups as “social cleansing.”

During the 2024 Paris Olympics, the city government rounded up African
migrants and homeless people and bused them out of the city. When Brazil
hosted the World Cup in 2014, advocacy organizations reported tens of
thousands of people were evicted from their homes.

Mexico City already is experiencing simmering tension as an influx of
foreigners, mainly from the U.S., has increasingly priced people out of some
neighborhoods. Critics say authorities have done little to offset the housing
shortage and mounting prices that come with a tourism boom once promoted by
the government.

Vendors displaced from workplaces

For others working along the avenue, like 68-year-old smoothie vendor
Esperanza Toribio Rojas, the prospect of displacement is no longer a
hypothetical. She said it's an impending inevitability hanging over her head.

Toribio is among hundreds of vendors selling food, clothes, tools and other
wares in the tunnels crossing beneath the avenue that provide access to metro
stations serving the World Cup stadium.

For decades, merchants worked in stalls offered by the local government when
the passages were rife with crime and filled with trash. Now shoppers stroll
by families sharing meals and asking the prices of hanging clothes.

“We’re the ones that gave life to this passage,” Toribio said. “Back when
there was a ton of crime, they never cared to do anything here.”

Vendors said they were surprised early last year when local officials
descended on the area and said they needed to make way for a city project
announced by the mayor in November.

The “Steps to Utopia” initiative, according to Brugada's office, will
“prepare the area” for the competition, turning the underpasses into “safe
spaces with more than 300 cultural, sports, educational, health and wellness
activities.”

Local merchants’ leader Jair Torruco said between 100 to 200 merchants were
pushed out, while around 250 others like Toribio have refused the
government's offer, which they said was not enough to support themselves.

They are still negotiating with authorities in an effort to stay in their
stalls, Torruco said.

Mexico City’s government said it has provided support to those it has
displaced, and said vendors would be able to return to their stalls later.
Toribio and others say the don't believe officials, and said they were
offered three months in a temporary space, which had to be rented, and that
those who moved to a downtown plaza have struggled to make ends meet.

Surrounded by her children and grandchildren, Toribio said she doesn't know
how she would afford to move the business that has become her life's work.

“Today the government sees this place, they see that there is life, and they
want to take it for themselves,” Toribio said. “This is our heritage.”

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Martin Silva Rey in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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