From LA TACO

Luchador Moto Protestor ~ Mexico City: "

In the above photograph, a member or sympathizer of SME (Mexico’s banned electrical union) confronts riot police at a protest in Mexico City. The workers have been protesting since 2009 after their jobs and union were taken away by Presidential decree. Some background from Wikipedia:

On 12 October 2009, President Felipe Calderón issued a decree dissolving the state-owned company Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LFC, also rendered on logo as “LyF”), which served customers in Mexico City, as well as most of the State of Mexico and some communities in the states of Morelos, Hidalgo and Puebla. LFC was, perhaps, an anachronism within in the Mexican energy sector because it was meant to be dissolved when President Adolfo López Mateos nationalized the private electric companies in September 1960, but the process was never carried out. Pressure from LFC workers, whose value as political force for the PRI regime was considerable, may have played a role in the company’s continued existence. From then on, CFE went on to control the national electric system and expand its operations nationwide, while the smaller LFC kept a low profile, maintaining its operations in the central region of Mexico.



LFC provided electricity to several states where, by virtue of a federal law, CFE had no operations (a 1985 agreement between CFE and LFC increased the areas served by the former). The company was often regarded as an inefficient, corrupt company which could not be reformed, and its image was always negative. Some people even coined the term “Luz y A Fuerzas” (roughly translated as “Barely Light and Power”), because the obsolete equipment and networks LFC used, as well as the rampant corruption within the company.

The presidential decree became the center of legal controversies because it was believed that the President was not legally entitled to dissolve a state company. The Mexican constitution, however, grants presidents the power to dissolve such companies, as pointed out by renowned legal experts, without needing to inform or even request permission from the Congress. As of March 2010, LFC’s operations have been fully absorbed by CFE, and plans to modernize and expand the old LFC network have been drafted, waiting for approval. CFE employees replaced LFC’s staff, which sparked protests from SME members (SME was the labor union grouping LFC employees), who demand to be hired by CFE (CFE workers are members of SUTERM, SME’s rival).

Another source of tensions is the frequent protests and aggressions against CFE employees by SME members. Acts of sabotage have ocurred since LFC’s incorporation into CFE, but SME has denied any involvement. SME claims that CFE staff is unexperienced and poorly organized, and that damages in LFC systems cannot be repaired by CFE. However, these allegations are baseless, since CFE has the control of high-scale projects across the country (operating high voltage lines, power plants, substations, etc), whereas LFC does not.

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