Querétaro fans will meet Atlas fans at La Corregidora Stadium on March 5th. Sergio Gonzalez (AP)
Querétaro’s scar can still be felt in Mexican football. The March 5 episode of violence at La Corregidora Stadium, which left 26 injured, dozens of acts of brutality and more than 30 detained, has targeted Mexico’s Barra Bravas. In an initial balance, those responsible had identified 27,977 radical fans. After the tragedy, in which men were seen unconscious and covered in blood, Liga MX authorities requested a register for all suspected animation groups. Only half of them, 14,370, agreed to regularization.
72 days after that disastrous football afternoon, Mikel Arriola, president of the Mexican league, presented an initial assessment of the measures taken to prevent outbreaks of violence in the stadiums. Security in stadiums depended on private security hired by each club and requested by local authorities. Now clubs must have members of public power as an obligation, including the National Guard, which was questioned for maintaining barracks less than a kilometer from Querétaro field and failing to intervene. Public security personnel increased by 41.1% over the past month. One of the reasons for the fierce fight last March was the low capacity of the private security personnel, who felt overwhelmed and had to open the doors that separated local fans and those of Atlas.
One of the first measures taken by Mexican football was to ban radical fans from visiting stadiums. Querétaro fans have been refused at all costs to support their players, an unnecessary measure as La Corregidora Stadium received a year-long ban. The club board was expelled and the team put up for sale. So far there are no proposals. Arriola has promoted the use of Fan ID, an online register that asks fans for a photo and their name to identify them at stadiums. The measure already imposed by Atlas and Santos Laguna will be implemented throughout Mexican football from the new tournament that starts next July. Those responsible have assured that the personal data “are not kept by the League” and maintain a close relationship with the authorities of the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI).
It is striking that despite the events in Querétaro, the number of normal fans in the stands has increased. From the first date to the ninth where violence erupted, an average of 132,510 fans were registered. From the 10th to the 18th, it rose to 147,697, an increase of 11.5%. What is certain is that there were no large-scale fights. Since then, authorities have expelled 654 people from stadiums for misconduct.
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