Not sure if you heard, but last weekend the Mexican government seized Luz y Fuerza del Centro, Mexico City’s power utility. The government’s reasoning: The company was inefficient and corrupt. (To quote Joan Cusack in High Fidelity: “That is shocking.”)
I’m all for Mexico ramping up its efficiency. And Luz y Fuerza workers were notoriously bad — they’d siphoned so many dollars off the public that they built themselves a $10 million basketball gym. Meanwhile, customers in their offices often had to wait hours, just to speak to a human.
Good on Calderón, for taking a stand. I just wish we knew more about what’s supposed to happen next. According to El Universal, the government has mentioned hiring some of the workers back. But what is the public supposed to do in the meantime? We no longer have an electricity company. (Does anyone else think that’s weird?) It’s gone. Dissolved.
People can still pay their light bills at the bank, but no one has explained where that money is going, or whether we’ll all be in arrears once the new agency opens. And what if you have a power outage? To whom do you complain?
Sporadic outages have popped up around the city, although no one has come out and said, “It’s because they closed Luz y Fuerza!” Yesterday, Alice’s power was shut off, and she came over to store some things in our refrigerator. She mentioned that Contramar had no power, and neither did several comida corrida places in her neighborhood. People were eating in the dark.
“The issue is that no one knows who’s turning the lights on, and who’s turning them off,” she said.
Later, I asked our neighbor Carlos: What happens if we lose power? Whom do we call? I thought that he, being Mexican, would know how to handle all this.
He smiled at me and said, “Don’t suffer if you are not suffering.”
Huh.
Never thought of it that way.
But he’s pretty much right. It seems like in Mexico, all you can do is educate yourself about what’s going on, and then hope and pray that the worst stuff doesn’t happen to you. We have no control over any of it. I have candles, windows, a man I love, friends, a gym to take showers at. I made a particularly awesome apple-granola crisp this morning. I guess those are the things that matter, and not the possibility that we could lose power.
Going to go eat my apple crisp now. And by the way, props to Gancho Blog for helping me understand this whole Luz y Fuerza mess.
I might blow a mental gasket if my power goes out.
Yup! Carlos is right! That’s why you hear many Mexican people tack on the phrase “Si Dios quiere” or “Primero Dios” whenever someone says with conviction that they are going to do something or that something is supposed to happen. One of the most frequent things that I hear is “No te preocupes..disfruta la vida” or in other words, “Don’t worry, enjoy life”.
Bueno, de hecho hay dos compañías de luz, la que liquidaron, Luz y Fuerza del Centro, prestaba servicios al DF y los estados aledaños; ahora los servicios los presta la otra compañía, la Comisión Federal de Electricidad, que ya operaba en el resto del país. No te preocupes, no habrán apagones generalizados ni nada por el estilo. Saludos
071 is the number that you are looking for.
http://www.cfe.gob.mx/es/Contactanos/marca071/
Valdez got it right, they have been saying that in TV, radio, and newspapers. Call 071 if you want to report an outage. The webpage of the now extint company is also full of information: http://www.lfc.gob.mx/. They even post updates on tweeter.