It was a sun-baked Guadalajara morning and on the concourse of Estadio Akron, the home of local club Chivas, a cultural exchange was taking place.Twenty or so DR Congo fans, draped in light-blue flags, were posing for photos ahead of their country’s intercontinental World Cup play-off against Jamaica in March. They danced and sang songs to a rapt audience of Mexicans, a few of whom then took the opportunity to teach their visitors a chant of their own.“Eeeeh…” it began, the noise growing in volume over the course of a couple of seconds. Then came the word that has both shamed and divided Mexican football over the last decade — a word whose repeated use in stadiums has cost the country’s federation well over a million US dollars in fines levied by FIFA.“Puto!” they shouted, collapsing into fits of giggles.It was no laughing matter. This routine gets a regular airing at matches — a recent thinkpiece described it as “part of the soundscape of Mexican football” — but it is steeped in controversy. The nation’s most famous players have begged fans not to do it. Prominent journalists tear their hair out when they hear it. Countless charities and watchdogs want it gone. And yet it persists, a stone in the shoe, nagging and impossible to ignore.‘Puto’ is the word for a male prostitute. It is a homophobic slur.The origins of the chant — known in Mexico simply as el grito (the shout) — are understandably blurry but the common consensus is that it first appeared around 25 years ago.Oswaldo Sanchez, a former Mexico international, claims fans of Guadalajara club Atlas — where he had turned professional — used it to intimidate him when he returned to face them with rivals Chivas. Sanchez was a goalkeeper; the chant is used at goal kicks, the ‘Eeeeh’ building during the run-up and the ‘puto’ erupting when the ball is punted downfield.Oswaldo Sanchez dives during a legends exhibition match in Monterrey in 2024 (Photo: Jam Media/Getty Images)The chant reached the international game at the 2004 Concacaf Men’s Pre-Olympic Tournament — also held in Guadalajara — but only really came to wider prominence a decade later. It was a major news story at the 2014 World Cup, its use prompting international outcry and a FIFA investigation.The first fine arrived in 2015. FIFA has sanctioned the Mexican federation (FMF) repeatedly since then. There were 10 separate fines relating to the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign alone (Mexico played 16 matches). The chant has been heard at Gold Cups, Concacaf Nations League finals and countless friendlies, as well as at the last two World Cups. There have been ebbs and flows, periods when the appetite for it has seemed to wane, but it has always reappeared.For all the efforts to eradicate it — about which more presently — many fear the chant will ring out again this summer.“It’s going to be heard at some point,” says Gustavo Arellano, a Los Angeles Times columnist who has written about the cultural context behind the grito. “I seriously doubt the chant is going to take a vacation.”Why has the chant been so scratch-resistant?In the first instance, there is the debate about the word itself. Many people in Mexico — as many as 30 per cent, according to a 2021 survey cited by newspaper Milenio — do not consider it derogatory. They claim that it refers to some perceived cowardice rather than any sexual identity.You do not have to leave the world of Mexican football to find examples of these viewpoints.“We are Mexicans and we understand that it’s a word used in jest,” Sanchez, the former Mexico goalkeeper, has said. “It’s not discriminatory,” Guillermo Cantu, then FMF general secretary, said in 2016. “FIFA has to understand the cultural nature of certain words.”Marco Fabian, who played 43 times for Mexico between 2012 and 2019, was even more explicit in 2018. “We know that it’s not a homophobic or offensive chant,” he posted on Twitter (now X). “It’s part of Mexican banter and folklore.”Marco Fabian says the chant is ‘banter’ (Omar Vega/LatinContent via Getty Images)There are two strands here. One is the denial that the word has any homophobic connotations, a notion that does not stand up to scrutiny. ‘Puto’ is listed as homophobic by CONAPRED, the Mexican government’s anti-discrimination commission. If it is used as a synonym for ‘coward’, it is only because there was a pre-existing homophobic association. Its use as an insult is underpinned by the belief that having sexual intercourse with men is something to be ashamed of, a sign of weakness.“Some people may argue that the word has evolved, but it is impossible to separate it from its history as a homophobic slur,” explains Edu Balmori, executive director of Trevor Project Mexico, a charity that supports LGBTQ youth.“In Mexico and across much of Latin America, ‘puto’ is a word that has been used as a derogatory term for gay men and people perceived as not conforming to traditional masculine norms. For many LGBTQ people, hearing it in a stadium recalls decades of discrimination, bullying and exclusion.”