Raquel Cunha Captures 15 Mexican Football Pitches, From a Volcano Crater to a Rooftop
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jun 11
Raquel Cunha Captures 15 Mexican Football Pitches, From a Volcano Crater to a Rooftop
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jun 11
Summary
Three months of reporting led photographer Raquel Cunha to document 15 community football pitches across Mexico, spotlighting improvised spaces in Monterrey, Mexico City and surrounding areas ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
One standout site is the 60-year-old 'Field of the Gods,' an amateur pitch inside the extinct Teoca volcano crater nearly 700 metres above Mexico City, where families gather every Sunday.
In Monterrey, 14-year-old Humberto Guadalupe—nicknamed 'Messi'—plays on his neighbourhood's only field amid abandoned cars and dirt roads, reflecting how football spaces emerge from hardship as much as geography.
Xochimilco's natural-grass pitches, reached by trajinera boats through a UNESCO-listed canal zone, remain a social hub even as scientists warn they can harm fragile ecology and the endangered axolotl.
Cunha's wider survey also found pitches beside pyramids, inside housing complexes, at a 1986 World Cup stadium and on a Costco rooftop, showing how Mexican communities keep carving out room for the game.