GUADALAJARA, México (AP) — Guadalajara is the capital of a Mexican state that is home to tequila and Mariachi music. It is also considered the birthplace of a less flattering tradition – a homophobic soccer chant that has cost Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines over the past two decades.
It’s no wild guess that the chant, a one-word slur which literally means male prostitute in Spanish, will be heard from the crowd in Guadalajara’s Akron stadium when Mexico hosts the United States in a friendly on Tuesday.
Multiple sanctions from FIFA and campaigns by Mexican soccer officials to educate fans have not been able to stamp it out. The chant persists in both club and national team soccer in Mexico, not least in games between the two North American rivals who will co-host the 2026 World Cup together with Canada.
The last time the U.S. men’s team played Mexico, in the CONCACAF Nations League final in Texas in March, the referee stopped the game twice due to homophobic chanting by Mexico fans. Last year, a game in Las Vegas between the two sides was cut short for the same reason.
In Guadalajara, a city with a strong soccer tradition which has two teams in Mexico’s top soccer league and another two in the second division, many local fans told The Associated Press that they considered the chant to be harmless and only meant to poke fun at opposing teams.
“Soccer is still a party, and the chant is just for fun. People who yell it mean no offense to the rival,” said Luis Gallardo, a 38-year-old who was wearing the Mexico national team’s black away shirt. “It’s been going on for years and I don’t think it’s going to change.”
The slur, typically used when the opposing goalkeeper takes a goal kick, is hardly the only offensive chant heard in soccer stadiums worldwide, but its persistent use at international tournaments has become a costly embarrassment for the Mexican soccer federation.
The federation has been fined countless times by FIFA for “discriminatory behavior” by supporters, including 100,000 Swiss francs ($114,000) for two incidents during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Mexico has appealed those penalties.
The Mexican soccer federation long argued that the chant wasn’t aimed at gays and that the word had different connotations in contemporary Mexican culture. However, in recent years the federation launched campaigns to make it go away, with stadium announcers urging the crowd to refrain from discriminatory chants and eliciting the help of soccer stars and other celebrities to get the message across.
The federation in 2022 threatened fans shouting the slur at games with five-year stadium bans. At the time, then-federation president Yon de Luisa said regardless of the intention of those using the slur, what matters is how it’s received by others.
“If it is discriminatory, we should avoid it,” said De Luisa, who later resigned after Mexico’s poor performance in Qatar where the team was eliminated in the group stage.
The origin of the chant is somewhat unclear, but it’s been traced back to a 2004 Olympic qualifier between Mexico and the U.S. in Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco. It then spread to stadiums across Mexico with fans of Guadalajara soccer club Atlas.
Francisco Acuña, a 55-year-old Atlas fan, said the chant was a way for fans to express emotion during the game and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
“The people who know soccer they know that the game is intense and even players get hot-headed on the field and then they hug each other at the end of the match,” he said.
Alejandro Oliva, a 40-year-old soccer fan in downtown Guadalajara, said he didn't understand why some people find the chant offensive.
“It amazes me that outside of Mexico people believe that it’s a homophobic chant. In Mexico it’s normal and it does not offend anyone,” he said. “I think that even people from the gay community use the word, and they don’t get aggravated.”
Not everyone sees it that way.
“It’s clearly homophobic because you are degrading a person with an insult of sexual and negative connotation,” said Andoni Bello, an LGBTQ+ activist and outspoken critic of the chant who played for Mexico in amateur soccer tournaments organized by the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association.
He said Mexico must get rid of the chant by the 2026 World Cup when the world’s eyes will be on the country. Mexico is set to host 13 World Cup games, including four in Guadalajara.
Bello urged tournament organizers to reach out to the LGBTQ+ community for help in dealing with the issue.
“It’s not just taking their pictures and saying that they are against the homophobia in the stadiums,” he said. “There is a real opportunity to educate the Mexican fan. In the World Cup in ’86 we were world famous because of the ‘Mexican wave.’ We exported a good celebration, let’s hope to eradicate the chant because being known for homophobia is very sad.”
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - A message on the video board warns fans to not chant a homophobic slur during an international friendly soccer match between Mexico and Iceland, May 29, 2021, in Arlington, Texas. Mexico won 2-1. (AP Photo/Brandon Wade, File)
The funeral of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general killed alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah drew the largest crowd of top leaders in the paramilitary organization together Tuesday for the first time since Tehran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel.
Rumors circulated for weeks over the status of the head of the Guard's expeditionary arm, Gen. Esmail Qaani, but the Quds Force leader was seen in a black bomber jacket wiping away tears early Tuesday morning at the body repatriation at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes in the southern Gaza Strip killed at least 15 people overnight, including six children and two women, Palestinian medical officials said Tuesday. In northern Gaza, where Israel has been waging an air and ground campaign in Jabaliya for more than a week, residents said families were still trapped in their homes and shelters.
It’s been more than a year since Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed in, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people.
In solidarity with Hamas, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has exchanged cross-border fire with Israel almost daily for the past year. Israel escalated its campaign against the group in recent weeks.
Here's the latest:
JERUSALEM — Israeli police say one officer was killed and four civilians were wounded in a shooting Tuesday on a highway in central Israel.
Police did not immediately provide the identity of the shooter, but police spokeswoman, Mirit Ben Mayor, said that it was a militant attack.
Police said the attacker approached the highway and shot the officer before firing on civilians, wounding four. The attacker was then shot by a paramedic arriving on the scene, Israel’s rescue services said, without saying whether the attacker was killed.
The shooting occurred on a two-lane highway near the city of Yavne, just south of Tel Aviv.
Ohad Yehezkeli, a spokesperson for nearby Assuta Hospital, said the officer died on the way there and another civilian was being treated for moderate injuries. He said two more wounded people were being transported to the hospital.
Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza.
Israel has ramped up military operations in the occupied West Bank, killing more than 750 Palestinians. Most have been killed during gunbattles with the army or violent protests, but the dead also include civilian bystanders.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A general in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard directly threatened the lives of Israelis during a funeral service in Tehran for a general slain alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The comment from Gen. Ali Fadavi, a deputy commander in chief of the Guard, comes as Iran awaits a threatened retaliation by Israel over its Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack.
“That land is a small land. It’s not even as big as one of Iran’s small provinces,” Fadavi said. “If we will, we can obliterate all the Zionists.”
Iranian officials routinely refer to Israelis as “Zionists.”
The Guard’s leadership attended a funeral service for Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, who was killed alongside Nasrallah in an airstrike in Beirut. Guard leaders and others in Iran’s theocracy have threatened to destroy Israel in the past during the more than four decades since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
JERUSALEM — Israeli police accused Hamas operatives in Turkey of directing a militant attack in August in Tel Aviv in which an explosive went off on a busy street, killing the attacker and wounding a bystander.
There was no immediate comment from Turkey. Relations between the two countries have plunged since the start of the war in Gaza.
Turkey has long provided political support for Hamas, including welcoming its top leaders on visits, but denies involvement in its military activities.
The bomb appeared to have gone off before it was planned to, and it was unclear if the attacker had planned to carry out a suicide bombing or plant the explosives. Both Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group claimed the attack.
Police said Tuesday that they filed indictments against eight suspects. They said the attacker was a militant from Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, who had been directed by an operative in Turkey. They said one of the attack planners had traveled to Turkey several times for explosives training, and that a raid in Nablus uncovered more bombs and funds transferred from Turkey. The police did not provide evidence.
“The findings of this investigation clearly indicate the establishment of Hamas headquarters in Turkey and their extensive efforts abroad to incite violence and carry out bombings in Israel,” the police statement said.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian first responders say they recovered 11 bodies, nearly all women and children, from a home destroyed in an airstrike in northern Gaza, where Israel has been waging an air and ground operation for over a week.
The Gaza Health Ministry’s ambulance service said the dead recovered Tuesday were all from the same family and included seven women and three children.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of the emergency service, said ambulances were only able to reach the area in the Jabaliya refugee camp around 12 hours after the airstrike late Monday. He said funeral prayers for the dead, which included a medic killed in Jabaliya, were held Tuesday in the courtyard of the Kamal Adwan Hospital.
First responders from the Civil Defense said its teams evacuated three families Tuesday who were stuck inside their homes in Jabaliya for several days because of heavy fighting.
Since the start of the war, the Israeli military has carried out several large operations in Jabaliya — a densely populated urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation — only to return months later after saying militants had regrouped there. Israel launched a large operation there on Oct. 6.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The funeral of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general killed alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah drew the largest crowd of top leaders in the paramilitary organization together Tuesday for the first time since Tehran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel.
The Guard’s leadership hasn’t been as visible in the two weeks since Iran’s Oct. 1 attack on Israel. The Guard is the main power behind Iran’s theocracy and oversees its arsenal of ballistic missiles — which would be crucial in any future attack on Israel.
At the funeral in Tehran for Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, the Guard’s chief commander, Gen. Hossein Salami, attended alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and the head of the country’s judiciary. Other Guard generals also attended, including Gen. Esmail Qaani of the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, about whom rumors had circulated for days regarding his status after the strike that killed Nasrallah.
At least two prominent Guard generals were not on hand: Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of Guard’s aerospace division that oversees its missile program, and Gen. Ali Reza Tangsiri, commander of the Guard’s navy, did not attend.
Iran offered no explanation for their absence, though Israel has threatened to carry out a serious retaliatory strike against Iran.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli strikes in the southern Gaza Strip killed at least 15 people overnight, including six children and two women, Palestinian medical officials said Tuesday.
A strike early Tuesday hit a house in the southern town of Beni Suhaila, killing at least 10 people from one extended family, according to Nasser Hospital in nearby Khan Younis. The dead include three children and one woman, according to hospital records. An Associated Press camera operator at the hospital counted the bodies.
In the nearby town of Fakhari, a strike hit a house early Tuesday, killing five people, including three children and a woman, according to the European Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
The Israeli military rarely comments on individual strikes. It says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas, accusing the militants of sheltering in civilian areas.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — In northern Gaza, where Israel has been waging an air and ground campaign in Jabaliya for more than a week, residents said families were still trapped in their homes and shelters Tuesday.
Adel al-Deqes said his relatives tried to move to another place in Jabaliya in the morning, but the military shelled them.
“We don’t know who died and who is still alive,” he said.
Ahmed Awda, another Jabaliya resident, said they heard “constant bombing and gunfire” overnight and Tuesday morning. He said the military destroyed many buildings in the eastern and northern parts of the camp, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.
“They bombed many buildings; some of them empty buildings,” he said.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The head of the expeditionary arm of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has appeared in television footage aired Tuesday by Iranian state television.
Rumors circulated for weeks over Gen. Esmail Qaani’s status in the time since an Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut in late September. But Qaani, the head of the Quds Force, was seen in a black bomber jacket, wiping away tears at an event early Tuesday morning at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport.
While Iranian state television did not acknowledge the rumors, it made a point to film Qaani for over a minute and later share the footage from the airport ceremony online.
Qaani was on hand for the repatriation to Iran of the body of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, 58, who was killed in the airstrike.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Australia’s government has imposed targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on five Iranians contributing to the country’s missile defense program, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Tuesday.
Iran’s launch of at least 180 ballistic missiles against Israel on Oct. 1 was “a dangerous escalation that increased the risk of a wider regional war,” Wong said in a statement.
The fresh sanctions target two directors and a senior official in Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization, the director of the Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group, and the commercial director of the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group.
The decision brings to 200 the number of Iran-linked individuals and entities now sanctioned by Australia.
“Australia will continue to hold Iran to account for its reckless and destabilizing actions,” Wong said.
Commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, Gen. Esmail Qaani, chants a slogan "Death to Israel" during the funeral ceremony of the late Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut in late September, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People attend the funeral ceremony of the late Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut in late September, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People chant slogans during the funeral ceremony of the late Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut in late September, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People and officials attend the funeral ceremony of the late Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut in late September, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, Gen. Esmail Qaani, mourns during the funeral ceremony of the late Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut in late September, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Mourners carry the coffin of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' deputy commander Brigadier Gen. Abbas Nilforushan who died alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut last month during his funeral in Karbala, Iraq, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Anmar Khalil)
Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Pro-Israel protesters holds Israeli flags as demonstrators protest Israel's war against Hamas outside the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
A displaced family fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in the south, sits next to their tent on Beirut's corniche, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Families fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in the south, sit in front of the Mohammad al-Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Mourners carry a picture of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah during the funeral procession of their relatives, in Maisara near the northern coastal town of Byblos, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Middle East latest: Israeli strikes on southern Gaza kill at least 15 people overnight
Middle East latest: Israeli strikes on southern Gaza kill at least 15 people overnight
