UQRoo Cancún Union Workers Allege Rigged Election, Demand Full Rerun

Chetumal, Quintana Roo — Unionized workers at the Cancún campus of the Universidad Autónoma de Quintana Roo (UQRoo) have publicly accused the current leadership of their union of rigging the election to renew its executive committee and of trying to silence critics, and they are demanding that the entire vote be rerun.

In a written statement, Carlos Alberto Jiménez Bandala, a full-time research professor, detailed what he described as a series of irregularities and announced he was resigning his post as an election scrutineer.

“We will not be accomplices to a done deal,” he wrote. “We demand that the union authorities and the Federal Center for Conciliation and Labor Registration (CFCRL) immediately and fully rerun the electoral process, remove the members of the Electoral Commission who were in a conflict of interest, and issue a new call for elections that guarantees the genuine autonomy of the commissions and equal participation by all campuses.”

Jiménez Bandala said there is consensus among workers that continuing to serve as a scrutineer under these conditions would only validate and legitimize “an electoral farce run from the center” that benefits no one but the current leadership.

He said that from the moment the Electoral Commission began its work, members raised critical but constructive objections to the draft election call, including a request to extend the registration period because the geographic distances between campuses make it difficult for the rank and file to organize.

They also warned, he said, that forcing the executive committee, the autonomous commissions for oversight and for honor and justice, and the campus representatives into a single packaged slate stripped the oversight bodies of their autonomy — a violation of the union’s statutes and the Federal Labor Law — and signaled a stacked election that would only benefit whoever controls the current union structure.

In response, he said, the union’s legal adviser arbitrarily notified members that the commission “should be made up of only three people” and that the other representatives would be excluded from its sessions.

Jiménez Bandala said the official publication of the so-called “Golden Slate,” approved at a Sept. 19, 2026 session, exposes the most serious procedural trap of the contest. Raúl Humberto Enríquez Jiménez signed both the Sept. 11 election call and the Sept. 17 correction notice in his capacity as secretary of the Electoral Commission, yet the same official appears simultaneously registered on the Golden Slate as a candidate for campus representative for Chetumal Salud.

The commission approved the registration of its own slate while denying registration to the opposition slate from Chetumal, using rules tailored to that end, he said.

“This absolute conflict of interest shatters the constitutional principles of impartiality, fairness and neutrality required by the Federal Labor Law and lays bare a legal simulation designed to consummate a reelection disguised as the current leadership,” he said.

He also accused the union’s law firm of sending a Sept. 23 letter that sought to pressure workers by threatening the loss of non-negotiable labor gains, such as the December year-end bonus and the 2027 salary increase — an act he described as illegal psychological coercion.

“We reject the lawyer’s scornful remarks that dismiss the free expression of digital dissent as nothing more than ‘moving your fingers on a cellphone,'” he said. “Union dignity is defended by demanding clean democracy at the ballot box, not by covering up frauds.”

Jiménez Bandala said union members at the Cancún campus have urged colleagues not to be intimidated and to insist on a rerun. He also called on scrutineers at other campuses not to endorse the process, saying: “Let us defend labor rights with ethics and dignity.”

He held the current union leadership and its legal advisers responsible for any physical, workplace, psychological or union reprisals that might follow from the complaint.