“It’s so surprising,” said Juan Rodrigo Guadarrama, 32, a taxi driver in Mexico City. “I barely felt like watching the match, because I thought we were going to get badly beaten. I thought we would not have a chance. But the fact that we won renews our hope.”

He continued: “We are so polarized and against each other these days, with the elections and everything else going on, that this brings us back together and makes us feel like things are possible.”

Mexico has hosted the World Cup twice and last week was awarded a third in a joint bid with the United States and Canada. But the national team has never advanced beyond the quarterfinals.

Shortly after the match, President Enrique Peña Nieto took to Twitter to celebrate the victory: “Confirmed: Mexico competes and wins against the best in the world. Many congratulations to @miseleccionmx! Great game!”

While nobody was questioning the degree of happiness experienced by the nation, some experts challenged the claim of seismic activity circulated by the Institute of Geologic and Atmospheric Investigations.

El País, the Spanish newspaper, quoted Arturo Iglesias, an investigator with the Institute of Geophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, saying that an earthquake cannot be induced by “the scattered activity of fans.”

In a blog post on Sunday night, the Institute of Geologic and Atmospheric Investigations appeared to push back at the doubters, clarifying that the event was imperceptible to the general population. This sort of occurrence can be referred to as an “artificial” earthquake, the institute said, “to clearly establish that it is not a geological event.”