Mexico’s preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup have brought a less familiar soccer neighbor back into the spotlight: ulama, an ancient Mesoamerican ballgame that has survived nearly eradicated. On Mexico’s Pacific coast, the Osuna family’s version of hip ulama is still practiced on a dirt field, with children as young as 8 kicking a heavy rubber ball that only the hips may touch.
Officials and researchers say the sport’s visibility is rising alongside international soccer, and they trace that momentum to both scholarship and tourism. They also describe a tension that runs through the revival: players and cultural experts want ulama to be seen as part of living identity, not as a novelty designed for spectators.
UNAM researcher Emilie Carreón, who directs a project aimed at studying and practicing ulama, said the sport faces a branding problem. “We must rid the game of the notion that it is a living fossil,” she said, according to the report. Carreón and others say the goal is to keep the game grounded in practice, instruction, and community meaning rather than turning it into a museum piece.
In Los Llanitos, adults fasten pre-Hispanic-style “fajado” loincloths and leather belts around children’s hips before play begins. The Osuna children use a rubber ball weighing 3.2 kilograms—about seven pounds—then start games that require players to leap or dive so their hips can control the ball. After the death of ulama player Aurelio Osuna, his widow, María Herrera, continued teaching the game to the couple’s grandchildren in Sinaloa, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northwest of Mexico City.
Herrera’s approach reflects both tradition and pragmatism. The report says that although tourism helped revive the sport, some in the community worry that portraying ulama as “exotic” undermines what they see as a central part of identity. Herrera, 53, also looked at the revival’s long arc; “This seed will bear fruit someday,” she said.
The origins of ulama reach deep into Mesoamerican history, according to archaeologists and cultural references cited in the report. The Popol Vuh, a sacred Mayan text, describes the world as created from a ballgame. Before the Maya, the Olmecs practiced the sport, and evidence ranges from millennial rubber balls unearthed in Mexico to nearly 2,000 ball courts found from Nicaragua to Arizona, the report said.
While accounts differ by time and region, the sport’s depictions show it had varied meanings across cultures, from fertility and war ceremonies to political acts and even sacrifices. Archaeologist and anthropologist Carlos Navarrete said some players were beheaded—“possibly the losers”—but that this occurred only during specific periods and in certain regions. The physically demanding games could also serve as big social events, drawing crowds for fun and betting.
The report describes how Spanish conquest altered ulama’s fate. It says Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés was impressed by a spectacle seen under Aztec emperor Moctezuma, but Spanish authorities later banned ulama and ordered the destruction of its courts, likely viewing the tradition as resistance to Christianity. For the Catholic Church, Carreón said, “the ball was the living devil.”
Ulama survived most notably in the northern Pacific regions, where the colonial process led by Jesuit priests was less aggressive and the sport was accepted in some Catholic festivities, said Manuel Aguilar Moreno, a professor of art history at California State University. The report also points to a modern study impulse after the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, when spectators watched exhibitions on the opening day, which helped spark research and preservation efforts.
In the Osuna family, Luis Aurelio Osuna, Herrera’s eldest son, began playing hip ulama after school and now teaches the game to three children. He and his mother teach children how to hit the ball and follow the rules, including scoring that players win and lose. Osuna said the motivation includes passion but also a practical need to keep children engaged in an environment where organized crime is pervasive. “We need to find a way to keep them entertained with good things,” he said.
Ulama’s revival outside the communities where it survived is also tied to spectacle. In the 1990s, staff from a resort in the Mexican Caribbean traveled across the country seeking Sinaloan families to represent ulama as a tourist attraction in the Riviera Maya, where the sport was said to have faded. Herrera described that approach as theatrical—“It’s pure spectacle: they paint their faces and put on feathered costumes”—but she also acknowledged, “That’s where the revival began.”
As attention spread, the sport reached international stages and commercial settings. Osuna said he and a family team played hip ulama in a Roman amphitheater in Italy and, after drawing attention, were hired for a deodorant commercial. In the World Cup lead-up, authorities and corporations are staging exhibitions in Mexico City and Guadalajara and featuring ulama players in ads highlighting Mexican heritage, a move that the report says has prompted mixed feelings.
Angé l Ortega, a 21-year-old ulama player from Mexico City who participated in a TV commercial alongside football players, pushed back against how the sport is sometimes presented. “We’re not circus monkeys,” Ortega said. Ilse Sil, a player and member of the UNAM project led by Carreón, said institutional support could help preserve ulama but urged officials to promote the game in communities and schools so more young players join; the report said ulama remains marginal, with approximately 1,000 players mainly in Mexico and Guatemala.
In Los Llanitos, Herrera’s grandchildren described the game as something they want to keep playing regardless of where it happens. They do not care whether it is on the dirt field, in a court, or even in a house corridor, the report said, and they value a handmade decades-old rubber ball made in the mountains of Sinaloa. Eight-year-old Kiki said he is determined to keep practicing until he fulfills the dream of leading a team of his own.