Guadalajara is the capital of a Mexican state that is home to tequila and Mariachi music. It is also considered the birthplace of a less flattering tradition — a homophobic football chant that has cost Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines over the past two decades.

It’s no wild guess that the chant will be heard from the crowd in Guadalajara’s Akron stadium when Mexico hosts the United States in a friendly on Wednesday.

Multiple sanctions from Fifa and campaigns by Mexican officials to educate fans have not been able to stamp it out. The chant persists in both club and national team in Mexico, not least in games between the two North American rivals who will co-host the 2026 World Cup together with Canada.

The last time the US men’s team played Mexico, in the CONCACAF Nations League final in Texas in March, the referee stopped the game twice due to homophobic chanting by Mexico fans.

Last year, a game in Las Vegas between the two sides was cut short for the same reason.

In Guadalajara, a city with a strong football tradition which has two teams in Mexico’s top soccer league and another two in the second division, many local fans said that they considered the chant to be harmless and only meant to poke fun at opposing teams.

“Soccer is still a party, and the chant is just for fun. People who yell it mean no offence to the rival,” said Luis Gallardo, a 38-year-old who was wearing the Mexico national team’s black away shirt.

“It’s been going on for years and I don’t think it’s going to change.”

The slur, typically used when the opposing goalkeeper takes a goal kick, is hardly the only offensive chant heard in stadiums worldwide, but its persistent use at international tournaments has become a costly embarrassment for the Mexican federation.

The federation has been fined countless times by Fifa for “discriminatory behaviour” by supporters, including 100,000 Swiss francs ($114,000) for two incidents during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Mexico has appealed those penalties.

The Mexican soccer federation long argued that the chant wasn’t aimed at gays and that the word had different connotations in contemporary Mexican culture. However, in recent years the federation launched campaigns to make it go away, with stadium announcers urging the crowd to refrain from discriminatory chants and eliciting the help of soccer stars and other celebrities to get the message across.

The federation in 2022 threatened fans shouting the slur at games with five-year stadium bans. At the time, then-federation president Yon de Luisa said regardless of the intention of those using the slur, what matters is how it’s received by others.

“If it is discriminatory, we should avoid it,” said De Luisa.

The origin of the chant is somewhat unclear, but it’s been traced back to a 2004 Olympic qualifier between Mexico and the US in Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco. It then spread to stadiums across Mexico with fans of Guadalajara soccer club Atlas.