Bacalar Residents Blast CFE Over Six-Hour Blackout and Soaring Bills

Bacalar, Quintana Roo — A failure in the CFE’s distribution network left more than half of Bacalar’s municipal seat and several rural communities without electricity for over six hours, reigniting anger in the Pueblo Mágico of southern Quintana Roo.

The prolonged outage disrupted daily life for thousands of families, tourism service providers and shopkeepers, who saw their businesses grind to a halt and worried about spoiled food and damaged electronic equipment. Residents said the CFE (Federal Electricity Commission) offered no response as the hours dragged on.

The latest collapse again exposes the utility’s operating crisis in the region’s south, where blackouts have become routine. Residents point to a stark contradiction: service quality keeps deteriorating while this month’s electricity bills arrived with steep increases.

Bills rise as service fails

Those affected said it is unacceptable that the state-owned company demands on-time payment of ever-higher rates and cuts off service immediately at any delay, yet cannot guarantee stable, reliable power for the homes and businesses that sustain the local economy.

The situation facing thousands of Bacalar residents shows that official statements fall short of a deteriorating, overloaded grid that lacks real investment, residents said. Repair crews, they added, apply only superficial fixes that fail at the slightest stress.

Fed up with the repeated failures, residents of Bacalar and its rural communities called on CFE management to abandon temporary fixes, disclose the causes of the recurring outages and immediately carry out the major maintenance the regional grid requires.