Mexico's first blind women's football team prepares for international debut

Mexico will send its first blind women's football team to an international competition next month when Chilangas FC travels to Brazil for the Women's Blind Football American Championship, known as the Copa America. The team, founded in 2020 by coach Wendy del Rio after years of working with the men's national program, currently has six players selected for the tournament roster. Del Rio created the club after repeatedly encountering women who wanted to play but had no dedicated team, as women's blind football remains in its infancy globally and is not yet part of the Paralympic Games.

Blind football uses a ball with internal rattles so players can track its movement by sound. All outfield players wear opaque eye masks to ensure equality regardless of their level of vision, while only the goalkeeper is sighted and provides verbal guidance. Matches require an enclosed pitch with walls that help contain the ball and create auditory cues, and spectators must remain silent during play. Chilangas FC operates without a dedicated field, institutional funding, or paid staff, and del Rio has spent months negotiating with Mexico City's Women's Secretariat for suitable facilities.

Paulina "Pau" Hernandez, a 31-year-old mother and massage therapist who lost her sight to retinitis pigmentosa four years ago, describes the pitch as a place where she feels she can see. She previously played goalball but found blind football closer to the sport she loved as a child. Hernandez says the team has given her a new sense of fulfillment and independence, pushing her to train harder and feel more grown-up. She hopes her six-year-old son will attend the tournament in Brazil and tell her, "Congratulations, Mum."

Alexandra Ramirez, 20, one of the youngest players, studies at a residential school for visually impaired students and travels from the city outskirts for practices. She says being part of Chilangas FC feels like having a family and carries a "beautiful responsibility" to keep improving. Both players view the upcoming championship as a chance for recognition beyond sport.

Efrain Mora Garcia, president of the Mexican Federation of Sports for the Blind and Visually Impaired, notes that cultural barriers often exceed physical ones. Families frequently discourage daughters from contact sports due to safety concerns, and women in Mexico devote an average of 39.7 hours per week to domestic work, more than double the time spent by men. These expectations help explain why women's blind football has developed more slowly than the men's game, which debuted at the Paralympics in 2004.

Hernandez navigates Mexico City's broken pavements and crowded buses with a white cane to reach practices, often encountering strangers who grab her arm without asking. She insists the greatest obstacles are not blindness itself but societal presumptions about what blind women can do. She maintains an independent life, caring for her son and working, and refuses to let fear confine her. "If we don't push ourselves to go out and discover what we're capable of, we'll never do anything with our lives," she said.

Mexico currently has only six blind football teams for women. The sport traces its roots to 1920s Spain and was folded into the International Blind Sports Federation in 1996, but the women's game has lagged behind. Chilangas FC's participation in the Copa America represents a milestone for the sport in Mexico and a platform for players to demonstrate their capabilities on an international stage.