Baja man takes his blender to the CFE offices and uses their electricity as a protest

A man who said he’d been without electricity for three weeks despite paying his bill staged a personal protest this week — taking a blender to a Federal Electricity Commission office and preparing salsa right there in the hallway.

The man, identified as a resident of La Paz, the state capital of Baja California Sur, also threatened to bring his washing machine to the office the next day and do his laundry there if the federally owned utility (CFE) did not promptly restore service.

“They’re good at cutting off the power,” he said, “but when it comes to turning it back on …”

The man, whose name was not reported, said he had submitted proof of payment and filed complaints without getting his electricity restored. Media reports did not identify his community or establish why his service had been interrupted.

“I don’t want to bother anyone,” said the man, a taco vendor according to some reports. “Listen, there’s just two things I don’t have: I have no shame and I have no electricity.”

A similar protest occurred recently in the neighboring state of Baja California. On Oct. 6, residents of Tijuana took spoiled food to a CFE office and left it inside the customer service area after reporting three to five days without electricity, El Mexicano reported.

Some said they had repeatedly called CFE, only to be told when they visited the office that there was no record of their complaints, the newspaper added.

The blender incident in La Paz — observed by bemused customers and CFE employees — was circulating Tuesday on social media, but there was no followup on whether he returned with the washing machine.

The one-man protest followed at least two recent outages in the La Paz municipality, which had about 292,200 residents in the 2020 census.

On Oct. 13, a substation-related failure cut electricity to more than 13,120 customers in communities including El Triunfo, San Antonio, Los Planes and El Sargento, the news website Peninsular Digital reported. It followed a previous outage that reportedly lasted five days.

The outages followed Hurricane Polo’s passage through Baja California Sur in late September, but reports did not establish whether storm damage caused the substation failure. Local officials had reported no damage in the municipality.

In any regard, electrical problems in La Paz predate any recent storm. There are multiple reports over the years of documented interruptions lasting from several hours to multiple days.

In August, for example, residents issued a manifesto demanding action from CFE, the federal government and Congress after repeated outages, some exceeding 24 hours, Radio Fórmula reported. They also complained about voltage fluctuations and interruptions during hot weather.

As for the unnamed Man With the Blender, reports did not establish if his loss of power was connected to any particular outage. No official CFE explanation or expected reconnection date was reported, and whether his electricity has been restored remains unclear.

With reports from Milenio, El Debate, El Imparcial, El Sudcaliforniano and Peninsular.Digital