It has been more than five years since Daniel Flores Fernández disappeared, but his father Héctor still wells up telling the story. Daniel was just 19, living with his pregnant girlfriend in Guadalajara, when one Saturday in May 2021 men linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) stormed his apartment and snatched him. Half a decade on, he is still missing. Héctor has since learned his son is being held prisoner at a CJNG safe house where unwilling recruits are forced to work for Mexico’s most violent drug gang. “All I can do is hope that he comes back to me one day,” Héctor says. “The pain is tremendous.”
His is one of more than 130,000 disappearances nationwide. Around a third of Mexico is ruled by cartels like the CJNG, which emerged in 2010 after the Milenio gang broke up and now operates in some 40 countries, trafficking fentanyl, meth and cocaine to the United States. But what makes Guadalajara, capital of Jalisco state, different is that it is now welcoming thousands of football fans. The 2026 Fifa World Cup has begun, and the city’s gleaming Akron Stadium is hosting matches — even as the city remains the epicentre of a missing persons crisis, with victims killed by the CJNG and buried in unmarked graves. Their families now fear World Cup fever will overshadow their crucial search.
“Guadalajara hosts World Cup matches amid a cartel-driven missing persons crisis, with families fearing their search will be forgotten.”
The cartel’s leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes — known as “El Mencho” — had remained at large, a deep embarrassment for President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government ahead of the tournament. Further pressure came from Donald Trump, who pushed Sheinbaum to “go after” the cartels, ominously warning he would put US boots on the ground if she did not. Things came to a head in February, when Mexican special forces fatally wounded El Mencho following a shootout at a remote mountain property near the town of Tapalpa, about 100 miles southwest of Guadalajara. The CJNG is infamous for staging brazen attacks against government officials, but that violence has not stopped the World Cup.
For families like the Flores, the games are a bitter reminder that their loved ones remain missing while the world’s attention turns elsewhere. As the first matches kick off, Héctor Flores still waits for his son — and wonders whether the cartel’s scourge will linger long after the final whistle blows.