What happened at the Corregidora stadium in Querétaro in the game between the Gallos and the Atlas is not one more fact of our daily violence, it is a serious symptom of the deep penetration that organized crime groups have achieved in almost all areas of the country. .
Those who are naively called “animation groups” in local soccer are actually, like in Argentina or Brazil, “barras bravas” (as we will call them) formed not only by enthusiastic fans but also by groups controlled by criminal organizations.
From there, wills are managed, members are co-opted for criminal groups, drug dealing is controlled, robbery and extortion are carried out, and violence is also exercised. Many years ago, if I’m not mistaken after the 1986 World Cup, in order to make the games more emotional, different teams hired members of the Argentine “barras bravas” to train their entertainment groups. They learned quickly, little by little these groups have gained space and power in the sports institutions themselves and in almost all cases they have ended up linked to some criminal group, when those same groups are not the ones that control and even own those teams.
It had already happened to Querétaro at the beginning of the century when it was disaffiliated because its owner Tirso Martínez was linked to drug trafficking, as happened with other teams, such as Irapuato, also owned by Tirso, or those from Ciudad Juárez. A few days ago, in an event evidently related to the participation of criminal groups with the brave bars, “fans” of Monterrey in the Club World Cup, in Abu Dhabi, they literally placed narcomantas in front of the hotel where he was concentrated in that city of Middle Orient the team, which had lost the first game of that tournament against an Egyptian team, along with a cooler with blood stains and photos of coach Javier Aguirre and team officials, in a simile of the coolers with heads or other body parts that drug traffickers use. They did the same simultaneously in the city of Monterrey in front of the offices of FEMSA, the company that owns the equipment. The coercion and blackmail that society lives elevated to the sporting level.
The Atlas brava bar has already had accusations of relationship with criminal groups, especially with the CJNG, in the past. Currently one of the heads of that brave bar is a subject nicknamed Heron, while Betito, one of the heads of the Gallos del Querétaro bar that carried out the aggression in Corregidora, is part of groups of huachicoleros related to him. Santa Rosa de Lima cartel.
It is not news that the confrontation between these two criminal groups has left thousands dead in Guanajuato and other areas of the Bajío in recent years. What we saw on Saturday in that stadium, with extreme brutality, are the actions of those same criminal groups (not only beating but denigrating, stripping, abusing their victims) that are not too different from what happens every day in the streets. of many cities in the country when two criminal groups clash.
Nor is the disregard of the authorities any different. In the case of the stadium, not only did the police and security not intervene, but they were also accomplices, they were part of the mechanism of aggression because they even opened doors for the Atlas groups to be attacked by those from Querétaro.
Football in our countries is usually an extension of our societies. What we saw in Corregidora is an extension of what happens in our streets every day. It is a miracle that after the actions of absolute savagery that we saw on Saturday no life has been lost, but the truth is that in the country, due to these types of actions, 80 people a day die.
It is also one more confirmation that the security strategy does not make sense, it does not work and the only thing it is achieving is the empowerment of criminal groups, which every day have greater penetration in more social and political spheres, now also sports. The strategy of hugs and not bullets may serve as a slogan, but not only does it not reduce crime or violence, it encourages and strengthens them. The State, and this applies both to those shot in San José de Gracia last week and to the clashes in Corregidora, only reacts to violence but does not act to prevent it, and this disregard, this logic of simply containing criminality and violence is what is generating an almost geometric multiplication of it.
Crime is becoming more powerful every day and controls a greater number of social and economic activities, from avocados to mining, passing through local control of social programs and security, especially at the local level. Now they have started to take over the most popular of our sports. One more activity that is taken from society while governments look the other way.
The recording. But how can we expect anything else when, at the same time that brutal violence is being recorded with total impunity in a stadium, we are witnessing a shameful conversation in which the two main officials of the FGR talk about how they obtained an advance of a sentence that they did not they can have in their power, how they use the apparatus of justice for a case in which they are directly and personally involved, how they talk about the Supreme Court and its ministers as if they were puppets that they can use at will. Like justice, in other words, it denigrates itself.
#crime #penetrated #football