Mexico was placed on the world table for the 1968 Olympic Games. They were the first to be held in Latin America and to be broadcast via satellite to the entire world. The eternal imprint, however, has to do with social protest. Ten days before the inauguration, the Mexican Army massacred a still incalculable number of students in the plaza of Tlatelolco. It was also the stage for Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos to rise up against racism. Fifty-four years later, the country is seriously considering hosting another Olympic Games in 2036 or 2040 with another script under its belt.
It all starts with María José Alcalá (Mexico City, 51 years old). She broke the wall of Mexican machismo by becoming, after 98 years, the first woman to take the reins of the Mexican Olympic Committee (COM). Before doing so, she was one of the pioneers in diving in the eighties by winning a junior world championship, the National Sports Award. “That served to open the way for great champions like Laura Sánchez, Paola Espinosa, Tatiana Ortiz, Alejandra Orozco to come,” she says in an interview with EL PAÍS. After leaving the sport, she enrolled in Mexican politics. “It is more scary to launch into politics than nails because if you make a mistake you can cause damage to athletes for life and you are marked. As an athlete you can make mistakes and you get second chances,” she adds.
For five years, Alcalá sought a position in the structure of the COM, closed to only men and with little transparency in the processes of selecting the president. “I always had it in mind because being president is a position where women can show that we have the capacity for sports administration, by consensus,” she mentions. In November 2021, Alcalá won the first elections. “The Olympic movement has had its ups and downs when it comes to inequalities adjustments. In 1924, when they didn’t want to let women participate in the Olympic Games, we women had to say: then we will make our own Games. 98 years passed because the foundations had to be built, possibly, so that we women would be in equal competition, ”says the also deputy for the Green Party.
Now, the idea that Mexico would once again aspire to the Olympic Games was born from a meeting between the local Olympic Committee and the Mexican Foreign Ministry last June. “In 1968 there were many ambassadors, Mexican diplomats, who contributed to the Games, which created a state policy in favor of sports, the importance of physical culture began to be understood. It was reinforced in terms of the issue of roads, transportation. The world got to know Mexico thanks to the Games. Sports infrastructure was built”, mentions the former divers. The sports facilities, for the most part, are still standing, such as the University Olympic Stadium or the Olympic Pool.
“Of course, Mexico is capable of organizing other Games. Before the cities had to spend billions of dollars, they had to join the Games. Now these must be adapted to the city that wants to organize it. There must be economic resilience, an alliance of economic participation, where it is not a burden for the Government, where private initiative participates so that it is a virtuous circle in favor of the country that organizes the Games. We must understand that sport continues to transform and Mexico cannot continue to lag behind,” says Alcalá, who has held talks with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
In the last 50 years, Mexico has become the great host of sporting events. In 1968, the World Cups in 1970, 1986 and now in 2026, together with the US and Canada, have been proof that the country knows how to throw a party. It has also hosted elite matches from the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball and, most recently, the WTA tour of women’s tennis.
From the office of the Mexican Olympic Committee they recognize that the road is long. The first thing will be to deliver a letter to the International Olympic Committee explaining that Mexico wants to participate to host it. From there, it is time to build the proposal with sustainable, economic, transparency, and governance issues, to present them during the 2028 Los Angeles Games. “These six years will be of intense work. We want to form a working group, geopolitical and economic groups. It’s a long road,” he mentions.
The fight for equal pay for Mexican athletes
Alcalá also raises another front at the start of his administration: salary equality in Mexican sports. A few days ago, he presented in Congress the initiative to test the terrain in a sphere that maintains millionaire salaries for men in soccer or box and meager salaries for women. “We must lay the foundations for equitable payment. Of course there are many interests in the sport. It can be complicated to pass a law, but we are open to hearing why the same could not be paid, ”he says.
When María José Alcalá gave her all to dive into the pool, something happened to her that she still remembers bitterly. She was training at the facilities of the Mexican Institute of Social Security when a company decided to grant 1,000 dollars to the athletes and there was another economic resource of 17 dollars (350 pesos). Whoever gets the best results at the 1992 Barcelona Games will win the jackpot. “I competed and I was in sixth place, they did not give me the 1,000 dollars, they gave it to a colleague who was in seventeenth place. Discrimination? Yes of course. They kept paying me 350 pesos”, she recalls. “Women are marking a historic time in sport. We have had to open a gap, we want to stay on the podium. Women don’t just want to compete, they want to win,” she says.
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