Ranero football devours Xochimilco’s porcelain (Video)

They ripped off Luis Enrique Romero’s china without mercy. His face flushed with sadness and anger as he remembered the 150 merciless troops who came to kill his onions and beets. They took his land. They put a piece of paper in his hand and forced him to sign it. It was a notice that his chinampa was being expropriated because of the alleged impact his activities as a farmer had on the environment.

He didn’t even know how, but within minutes, the seedbeds, the small containers where plants begin to sprout before being transplanted to their final locations, were rolling all over the place, with the sunflowers and rosemary he was going to sell during Holy Week.

The subjects placed a cyclone net, demarcating the space that suddenly no longer belonged to them.

The 51-year-old Chinapero could not understand that just four months ago on March 4, his great-great-grandparents inherited the land from their great-great-grandparents, who inherited the land from their grandparents, who in turn inherited the land from their parents, which in turn were given to him and his brothers. His explanation is that just behind his chinampa is the former mayor

What hurts Romero the most is that for about eight years, this is no longer porcelain, but football fields, where at least 20 every weekend are savagely exploited, despite the fact that since 1987 Xochimilco has been declared a World Heritage Site of Cultural and Natural Protection by UNESCO, precisely because of its unique agricultural system known in the world as “chinampas”, which represents a commitment to the preservation of this place.

“It’s more profitable to build a football stadium, bring in tourists, sell beer, soft drinks and food. For many people, growing vegetables is not very profitable, but anything that can make quick money is profitable. The new generations are no longer interested in the countryside, we have been marginalized: “The farmers are gone, the dirty farmers are gone. ” The only thing I have is the ability to sow and continue to protect it, because sowing should be the cultural heritage of humanity, and tourism or football are not,” said Luis Enrique Romero.

He was right. In less than a decade, the number of pitches has exploded, as have the owners of the leagues that rent them. The most famous in the region is Mr. Juan Ávila Velasco, who with his family manages at least 15 pitches used for different types of soccer and flag toquito. Their league is called the RX League. There is also Fut7 Tepochcalli, which has an average of 30 teams participating.

There are at least 25 leagues in the Xochimilco area, for all ages and categories. Every weekend, about 2,800 people arrive by boat, some of them motorized, to those green fields that were once covered with abejote trees, those slender trunks up to 15 meters high that are characteristic of this part of Mexico City. Hundreds of football fields were demolished to build them. The ditches, channels around the porcelain used to retain humidity, were covered to level the terrain and prevent it from filling with water.

“The owners of the land are the ones who started covering the canals and cutting down the trees, the deforestation has such a huge impact. We are talking about a minimum of six or seven porcelanas for one tribunal. Everywhere you look, it is an invasion of agricultural production areas. It is a serious acoustic and visual pollution, a lot of garbage, people come to drink the water, it affects the lake area”, denounces Noé Coquis Saldívar, a fourth generation farmer who still maintains ancestral farming techniques in Xochimilco which are cultural heritage.

“Unfortunately, people are no longer interested in agriculture because it is very hard work and the pay is very low. It is easier to bring in people to make money. You can make money from football leagues and all the harvest that is generated, and the alcohol that is sold. That is what leads the owners to engage in such activities. The different administrative departments in charge (the mayor’s office) facilitate this. With it comes abuses and these anomalies. Imagine how many trees they had to cut down, how many canals they had to cover to lay the pitch,” he added.

A very important godfather

According to calculations by those who provide such services, the average cost per person of the 2,800 people who gather at the former chinampas football stadium on weekends is between 200 and 400 pesos. This means that the economic benefits of two days of competition amount to at least 560,000 pesos, but may exceed 1 million pesos. The monthly figure may range from 2.2 million pesos to nearly 4.5 million pesos.

Xochimilco, a space with 183 kilometers of navigable canals, is a giant lung for Mexico City that regulates the temperature, especially during May and June this year, when records were recorded of over 30 degrees Celsius.

The prosperity of the courts soared when Avelino Méndez was the deputy of Xochimilco (2015-2018) and grew exponentially when José Carlos Acosta became the first mayor. It is a place where everyone knows each other, they know who owns the porcelain or the land. It is forbidden to cut down trees, nor to close the canals, but this happens in front of those who manage this demarcation.

An excerpt from the report published in Proceso magazine, issue 0013, corresponding to July 2024, a digital copy of which can be purchased at the following URL: This link.

*They are a group of students who have just graduated from the Master’s degree in Journalism and Sports Communication at the American University CDMX. This work was carried out for the theme of the Sports Research and Entrepreneurship Seminar taught by teacher Beatriz Pereyra.