Sheinbaum Blames Vandalism, Not Infrastructure, for Southeast Mexico Blackout

Mexico City — President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday rejected claims that the blackout affecting four southeastern states was caused by a lack of electrical infrastructure or generating capacity, attributing the outage instead to damage to a transmission tower.

Speaking at her morning news conference, Sheinbaum backed the account given by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), which said vandalism had taken two high-voltage transmission lines out of service and interrupted power supply in Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche and Chiapas.

“There was damage to a transmission tower; it has nothing to do with lack of infrastructure or lack of generation,” Sheinbaum said, adding that service was restored in about eight hours thanks to the work of CFE personnel.

The outage, which began Monday, affected 745,533 customers in the four states, according to CFE. Yucatan recorded the most affected users with 430,840, followed by Quintana Roo with 278,969, Chiapas with 18,186 and Campeche with 17,538.

Sheinbaum acknowledged that vulnerabilities can persist even with planned investment in the power grid. “There can always be vulnerabilities. The issue is how long it takes to restore service and how you guarantee mechanisms that allow the system to keep functioning through parallel schemes even if a tower is damaged,” she said.

The president said her administration is planning about 32,000 megawatts of new electricity generation, a significant portion from renewable sources, along with an investment of nearly 200 billion pesos in transmission and distribution infrastructure. She said those projects are roughly 30 percent complete.

CFE reported late Monday that two high-voltage lines had gone out of service because of damage to their structures, and later said power had been fully restored in all four affected states. The utility said it would carry out expert inspections and investigations to determine responsibility for the damage.