Yucatán Residents Tie Up CFE Worker in Protest

Dzemul, Yucatán — Exhausted by persistent blackouts, residents of the municipality of Dzemul, Yucatán, took their frustration to the extreme by tying a CFE worker to a light pole in a act of protest. The incident occurred following a nearly 12-hour power outage that affected several areas of the community, during which inhabitants unsuccessfully attempted to contact the state-owned utility company for a swift response. The image of the bound employee quickly spread across social media, reflecting the local level of exasperation.

“It is not our fault the blackouts occur… we are just workers,” the detained technician was heard pleading, making it clear he was merely doing his job while the townspeople demanded the immediate restoration of service.

This episode is not an isolated case in Yucatán. Just last year, in August 2023, residents of the Santa Lucía neighborhood in Valladolid also detained and tied up a CFE technician after remaining without electricity for three days. On that occasion, ironically, the worker himself, who lacked the equipment and parts to fix the failure, agreed to simulate his own “kidnapping” to pressure the company into resolving the problem. The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) responded not with empathy but with sanctions; after investigating the facts, it suspended the employee indefinitely without pay for having agreed to the protest. Instead of acknowledging the lack of tools and investment plaguing its crews, the state-owned company punished the technician, deepening the feeling of abandonment among both workers and users.

Yucatecans clearly define the context of their indignation. “In Dzemul, we always suffer from electrical failures and the CFE only applies cheap fixes; the service they provide is very expensive and they never properly resolve the issues,” complained one affected resident. Phrases like this evidence a chronic frustration, with entire communities accumulating years of complaints about a deficient service with no fundamental solution.

A National Problem: Similar Cases Across Mexico and the CFE’s Response (or Lack Thereof)

The repetition of these episodes in different municipalities of Yucatán—Dzemul, Valladolid, and others—raises the question of whether “taking the law into one’s own hands” against CFE is becoming normalized. Of course, tying up employees should not be a normal response in a state governed by the rule of law; these are illegal acts that border on the illegal deprivation of liberty, as some critics of these actions have pointed out. However, for many residents, it is the last resort after exhausting formal channels. In Valladolid, for example, neighbors had even gone so far as to block entire streets in protest of the constant blackouts without obtaining effective attention. In this context of neglect, detaining the technician who shows up is seen as the only way to be heard.

It is an alarming symptom of citizen desperation. With the frequent interruption of a basic service, exacerbated by the region’s stifling heat and damage to electrical appliances, community patience is at its limit.

The Dzemul case also had a political nuance that reveals institutional tensions. According to witnesses, a municipal official (the oficial mayor of the town council) directly incited a group of some 15 residents to subdue the employee when he arrived to repair the wiring. The official reportedly stated that the town council “was above the state police,” emboldening the neighbors to take justice into their own hands.

Ultimately, agents from the Yucatán Secretariat of Public Security intervened and freed the worker after approximately one hour of being tied up. That a local public servant would encourage violence against a federal employee reveals a serious institutional rupture. Faced with the state-owned company’s void of solutions, municipal authorities and citizens feel entitled to act outside the law. The “blackout war” ended up pitting local government against federal government, with the field worker caught in the middle.

The reaction of the CFE and the federal government to these events has been delayed and limited. In Dzemul, the company announced it will pursue legal action against the municipal official who incited the aggression, but that announcement came after its own employee was publicly humiliated and exposed to danger. It begs the question: What is CFE doing to protect its workers from these situations?

So far, little or nothing. There are no visible security protocols for personnel dispatched to attend to outages in conflict zones, beyond calling the police after the problem has already erupted. “Protection” is conspicuously absent, just as a proactive response to the causes of the discontent is also missing. While overloaded transformers continue to fail and repairs are delayed, CFE technicians will continue to be sent out virtually alone to put out fires, both literally and metaphorically, at risk of becoming scapegoats for popular anger.

It is worth delving into why people end up blaming the field operative present and not the high-ranking CFE officials. Largely, it is because they are the visible and proximate face of the company. When a community goes hours or days without light, the only tangible representative of CFE is the technician who appears to “resolve” the issue—often without adequate tools or parts—so all the accumulated frustration is projected onto him. There is also a perception (sometimes fueled by years of deficient service) that local workers do not do their jobs well or dismiss citizen reports.

The Valladolid case laid bare a different reality: the employee openly acknowledged that the Commission does not provide them with equipment or materials to address failures. That is, field personnel are also victims of poor management. However, in the heat of a blackout, it is easier for an enraged user to tie the technician to the pole than to blame high-level executives in distant offices.

CFE, for its part, has contributed to this mistaken narrative by not publicly defending its workers—even, as seen, punishing them instead of admitting the operational shortcomings that cause the problem.

Widespread Discontent Across Multiple States

What happened in Yucatán is not unique; it has in fact been replicated in other regions of Mexico in recent years. In Holbox, Quintana Roo, discontent has also grown over continuous blackouts, and episodes of confrontation with CFE workers have been recorded. Most seriously, although located in Quintana Roo territory, the island depends administratively on the CFE delegation in Tizimín, Yucatán—the same one where similar cases have occurred in municipalities like Tizimín itself and El Cuyo. This connection evidences that the problem is not isolated but part of a network of structural deficiencies repeating in different communities under the same CFE control zone.

In 2023, residents of Holbox filed a formal complaint with Profeco and collected signatures against CFE after months of prolonged interruptions that damaged appliances and severely affected local businesses. The situation, shared with Tizimín, El Cuyo, and other localities in Yucatán, reflects a pattern of frustration that transcends state boundaries and exposes how the lack of investment and timely response from the state-owned company impacts both families and the tourism sector that depends on reliable service.

In Huejutla, Hidalgo, in 2023, residents of the Huasteca region detained two CFE workers for more than seven hours following a widespread blackout, refusing to release them until power was restored. In the community of San José Tenango, Oaxaca, in 2022, inhabitants tired of going nearly two days without electrical service detained CFE technicians to demand a definitive repair of the power lines. Even years earlier, in 2019, Tzotzil residents in a locality in Chiapas did the same, detaining Commission employees after recurrent blackouts and a lack of grid maintenance. More recently, in August 2024, a case was reported in Nuevo Progreso, Veracruz, where inhabitants of that rural area, after multiple unaddressed failures, tied a worker to a pole and demanded the presence of high-ranking CFE personnel to hear their complaints.

The scene repeats with different accents and geographies, but with a common factor: communities tired of paying for an expensive and deficient service, and of having their complaints ignored.

Fortunately, no deaths have been recorded in these types of acts; the workers have been released unharmed once the demands are at least provisionally addressed. However, the risk of a tragedy is latent. In some cases, tension has escalated to the point of nearly becoming uncontrollable.

For example, in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, in mid-2025, residents of the Libertad neighborhood literally “kidnapped” two CFE employees for over 12 hours by blocking a Commission vehicle with their cars in protest of 15 consecutive nights without light. They demanded not a temporary repair, but the complete replacement of the faulty transformer. The pressure worked; after hours of negotiations, CFE finally agreed to install new equipment and the detained individuals were then released.

This episode, like others in Hidalgo, Veracruz, Yucatán, or even Quintana Roo, shows how delicate the situation is. The border between a peaceful protest and a violent act of vigilante justice can quickly vanish when institutions do not respond to basic needs. A little more chaos or a misunderstanding, and we could be lamenting serious aggression or worse in these confrontations.

These cases reflect growing social discontent with constant failures in the electricity supply, as well as the widespread perception that CFE offers a costly and inefficient service in many regions of the country. It is no coincidence that even productive sectors are raising their voices. In Valladolid itself, the Business Coordinating Council sent a letter to the CFE director demanding an end to the blackouts and a reduction of excessive electricity rates in Yucatán.

The situation has gone from being a mere technical problem to becoming a political and social phenomenon. Every transformer that explodes or every delay in repairing a power line leaves not only a town in the dark, but also that population’s trust in its authorities. As long as the Federal Electricity Commission does not address the root deficiencies of its infrastructure and improve its customer service, we are likely to see scenes like those in Dzemul repeated. And while that happens, the first in the line of fire will continue to be its field workers, who ironically share with the community a feeling of powerlessness.

Resolving this problem requires more than criminal complaints against those who protest. It demands political will, investment in the electrical grid, and a real commitment from the authorities to guarantee dignified service. Only then can the fuse of anger that leads people to take desperate measures be extinguished, and both users and the employees who daily represent a company that, in many corners of Mexico, is failing them, be protected.

States Where People Have Reached Their Limit with CFE

• Yucatán
  • Dzemul: worker tied to a pole after 12 hours without light.
  • Valladolid: technician detained in 2023 during a three-day blackout.
  • Motul, Tizimín, and El Cuyo with similar protests.
  • The peninsula as the epicenter of frustration.
• Quintana Roo (Holbox)
  • Although it belongs to Quintana Roo, it depends on the CFE delegation in Tizimín.
  • 2023: formal complaint with Profeco and signatures against CFE.
  • Businesses and tourism severely affected.
• Campeche
  • Escárcega, community of Laguna Grande: residents detained personnel and trucks from CFE (August 2025).
• Hidalgo
  • Huasteca: detention of employees for more than 7 hours in 2024 and 2025.
  • San Felipe Orizatlán and Atlapexco with repeated protests.
• Veracruz
  • Jesús Carranza and Nuevo Progreso: workers tied to poles in 2024.
  • They demanded the presence of high-ranking officials.
• Tamaulipas
  • Ciudad Victoria, Libertad neighborhood: detention of employees for more than 12 hours in May 2025.
  • Pressure forced the replacement of a transformer.
• Guerrero
  • Acapulco after Hurricane Otis: protests and detention of personnel over excessive charges and lack of service restoration.
• Chiapas
  • Tzotzil communities (2019 onward): employees detained due to recurrent blackouts.
• Oaxaca
  • San José Tenango (2022): technicians detained by residents after two days without service.
• Puebla
  • Huauchinango and Chichiquila: detentions and blockades of CFE vehicles since 2016.
• Sinaloa
  • Ahome: municipal police detained CFE workers in 2023 due to a blackout in public facilities.