The World Cup means slashed wages and displacement for some of the Mexico City's poor

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.

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.

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.

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 Jaír 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.”

Martín Silva Rey in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Montserrat Fuentes, a sex worker, arrives to Calzada de Tlalpan, the street in Mexico City where she has worked for the last 20 years and the city is building a bike lane in preparation for the World Cup that blocks cars from pulling over and cuts into the livelihoods of sex workers and street vendors, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Montserrat Fuentes, a sex worker, rides the metro to Calzada de Tlalpan, the street in Mexico City where the city is building a bike lane in preparation for the World Cup that blocks cars from pulling over, cutting into the livelihoods of sex workers and street vendors, and closes the metro early, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Montserrat Fuentes stands on Calzada de Tlalpan where she has worked as a sex worker for 20 years and the city is building a new bike lane ahead of the World Cup soccer tournament, blocking cars from pulling over and closing the metro at night, in Mexico City, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Montserrat Fuentes, left, speaks with a fellow sex worker on Calzada de Tlalpan where she has worked for 20 years and the city is building a bike lane that blocks cars from pulling over and closes the metro at night, in Mexico City, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

ROME (AP) — The Vatican warned a breakaway traditionalist Catholic group on Thursday that it risked going into schism if it goes ahead with plans to consecrate new bishops without papal consent, setting a hard line against a big doctrinal challenge facing Pope Leo XIV.

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, issued the warning during a meeting Thursday with the superior general of the Society of St. Pius X, the Rev. Davide Pagliarani, the Vatican said. The meeting was scheduled after the Swiss-based society, which celebrates the traditional Latin Mass but isn't in communion with Rome, announced plans to consecrate new bishops July 1 without papal consent.

Fernández offered a new round of theological talks to regularize the SSPX's status, but only if it calls off the planned ceremony.

Pagliarani, for his part, defended the new consecrations but said he would take the Vatican proposal to his counselors for a final decision, which is expected in a few days, the SSPX said in a statement.

The SSPX has been a thorn in the side of the Holy See for four decades, founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council, which among other things allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular.

The SSPX first broke with Rome in 1988, after its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without papal consent, arguing that it was necessary for the survival of the church’s tradition. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the Catholic Church.

But in the decades since that original break with Rome, the group has continued to grow, with schools, seminaries and parishes around the world and branches of priests, nuns and lay Catholics who are attached to the pre-Vatican II traditional Latin Mass.

According to SSPX statistics, it counts two bishops, 733 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, a Catholic reality that poses a real threat to Rome because of the specter of the growth of a parallel church.

For the Vatican, papal consent for the consecration of bishops is a fundamental doctrine, guaranteeing the lineage of apostolic succession from the time of Christ’s original apostles. As a result, the consecration of bishops without papal consent is considered a grave threat to church unity and a cause of schism, since bishops can ordain new priests. Under church law, a consecration without papal consent incurs an automatic excommunication for the person who celebrates it and the purported new bishop.

Pagliarani has said in comments on the SSPX website, and in the SSPX statement, that the consecrations of new bishops are necessary for the society’s survival, because the remaining two are getting old and are increasingly unable to tend to the needs of SSPX members around the world.

During the talks Thursday at the Vatican, Fernández offered to open a theological dialogue with the SSPX to address concerns that they have outlined to the Vatican starting in 2017, especially concerning Catholic relations with other religions.

The aim, according to the Vatican statement, would be to identify the minimum points of agreement necessary to bring the SSPX back into communion with the Holy See and outline a legal status so it could exist within the church.

But it warned that such a dialogue would require the suspension of the planned bishop consecrations. Going ahead with them, the Vatican warned, “would imply a decisive break in the ecclesial communion (schism) with grave consequences for the Fraternity.”

Pagliarani justified the ordination of new bishops as both “realistic and reasonable,” given the number of people who attend SSPX Masses.

The Vatican has tried for years to reconcile with the SSPX. Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 lifted the excommunications of the surviving bishops and relaxed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass.

While offering some gestures to the SSPX, Francis reversed Benedict’s reform that allowed greater celebration of the old Latin Mass, arguing it had become a source of division in the church.

Catholic traditionalists say Francis’ crackdown had the result of pushing more faithful who were in communion with Rome into the arms of the breakaway SSPX, since they couldn’t find Latin Masses that were permitted by Rome.

Leo has acknowledged the tensions and sought to pacify the debate, expressing an openness to dialogue and allowing exceptions to Francis’ crackdown.

The Vatican, for example, said that Leo had explicitly approved Thursday’s encounter, which it described as “cordial and sincere.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope Leo XIV appears at his studio window to deliver the traditional Sunday blessing to faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican for the noon Angelus prayer, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Leo XIV reads his message during a weekly general audience at the Vatican, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)