La Jornada: The book Cancheros stories about soccer is launched at High School 5

The “Goooyaaa, Goooyaaa!” It broke out like a classic afternoon and, in an instant, the Gabino Barreda auditorium of the National Preparatory School campus 5 José Vasconcelos stopped being a classroom and, for a moment, it was a field.

The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) delivered yesterday Free kick: Canchero stories about soccer in its edition of The Summer Book, a volume from the Arachne’s Thread collection that proposes looking at football from literature, memory and everyday life, 43 days before Mexico once again places itself at the center of the football map with the World Cup.

It was not only a ceremony, but also a complete lineup. University authorities, students from the 14 high school campuses and a figure who changed the history of the goal in Mexico, Hugo Sánchez Márquez, shared the stage in a delivery where the book functioned as a meeting point and trigger for conversation.

The coordinator of Cultural Diffusion of the UNAM, Rosa Beltrán Álvarez, reported: “in 2024 we delivered 105 thousand books and today we are distributing 110 thousand.” The move grows with the participation of the Autonomous University of Nuevo León and the University of Guadalajara, the initiative reaches around 240 thousand students throughout the country. “We don’t come to deliver just paper: we come to give you a team and a playing field,” he added.

Beltrán insisted that soccer gets into the lives of even those who don’t follow it. “It is much more than a sporting feat: it appeals to your emotions from the time you are a child.” The book, he added, proposes to dismantle the idea of ​​sport as a mere spectacle: “we want to demystify it to understand it as a language where our defeats and hopes are told.”

The volume brings together 11 voices that discuss football from different angles. Martín Caparrós, Juan Villoro, Antonio Ortuño, Francisco Hinojosa, Juan Carlos Quezadas, Paulina Chavira, Marion Reimers, Brenda Ríos, Jesús Ramírez-Bermúdez and Eréndira Derbez participate, in addition to Beltrán herself, with a prologue by Amandititita.

In that context, Beltrán shared a revealing anecdote: he said that he once asked Caparrós and Villoro why someone can change country, school or partner, but not their shirt. The answer was direct: “your team is you.”

The presence of Hugo Sánchez Márquez, whom attendees chanted as “Hugol”, gave another tone to the event. “I’m not used to these places, I see myself more in television studios,” he joked. But he immediately took the talk to his field: “I had an hour left after training to practice free kicks, penalties and shots.”

His message was clear: “the union between education, culture, reading and sports is what helped me.” And with the World Cup on the horizon, he launched the slogan: “all Mexicans must be united, let’s support the team whether it plays well, badly or averagely.”

Critical thinking

Representing the authors, journalist Paulina Chavira brought the ball to women’s soccer. “This sport was banned for women for a long time,” she recalled.

Faced with that past, he vindicated the present by stating that “they appropriated that space that was always ours.” He also evoked a key moment, the first Pumas women’s game in Ciudad Universitaria in 2020, which he described as a turning point.

Student Ximena Rodríguez Becerril highlighted reading as a tool of freedom. “Reading allows us to understand the world, question it, criticize it and transform it.” said. In an environment saturated with immediate information, he called not to remain on the surface and to build critical thinking.

The rector of the highest house of studies, Leonardo Lomelí Vanegas, stated that “reading should be available to everyone. Each reader stops, interprets and chooses his or her own path.” Furthermore, he defined it as a right and compared the act of reading to a free throw.

The symbolic delivery included students representing each campus of the National Preparatory School and the College of Sciences and Humanities, who received the copy on behalf of their communities.