MEXICO CITY — Teachers, families of Mexico’s 130,000 missing people, animal rights groups and a range of other social movements in Mexico are capitalizing on impending FIFA World Cup celebrations next week to put pressure on authorities and make demands.Protesters from the country’s teachers’ union, CNTE, blocked main throughways in Mexico City, bringing central parts of the city to a standstill this week to demand better working conditions. Demonstrators knocked down figures of World Cup soccer players, broke into a government building and on Friday played a soccer match on a blockaded street. At the same time visitors from across the world began flooding in to the Mexican capital ahead of the competition that starts June 11.“The proximity of the World Cup places a lot more pressure on the government,” said Abel Escalante, a 52-year-old special education psychologist who traveled from the southern state of Chiapas to protest, who was blocking the street around the city’s iconic Angel de la Independencia monument on Friday.The protests come just days before Mexico City hosts the tournament’s opening ceremony, co-hosted by Mexico, the United States and Canada. In addition to kicking off the competition, the Mexican capital, Guadalajara and Monterrey will also host a number of matches.They are joined by a range of other social movements that have jumped on the World Cup to increasingly place pressure on the government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum at a time when authorities seek to …
