SME Asks Supreme Court to Review Decree Disbanding Luz y Fuerza Electrical Utility

ByCésar Arellano García

This article by César Arellano García originally appeared in the October 13, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico City. Members of the Mexican Union of Electricians (SME) marched to the capital’s Zócalo (main square) to demand that the federal government reinstate workers.

Sixteen years after the presidential decree that extinguished Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC), protesters set out from the SME facilities in the Tabacalera neighborhood and continued along Insurgentes Avenue, Paseo de la Reforma, Juárez, and then along Venustiano Carranza Street to the capital’s Zócalo.

At the Anti-Monument to the 43, they held a roll call of the missing students from the Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, and demanded the young men be brought back alive.

During the trip, they asked the justices of the new Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) to review the decree issued by Felipe Calderón in October 2009, which “ordered the unjustified dismissal of the LyFC workers, as well as their extinction.”

They even submitted a document with their demands to the highest court and later held a rally.

Martín Esparza, secretary general of the SME, stated that a few weeks ago he met with the chief justice of the Court, Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, who “was interested in reviewing our case.”

“He received us for at least 45 minutes. We explained all the resolutions that were contrary to the Constitution’s interest in our rights in law and international treaties on human rights.”

“He made us a proposal. He told us to prepare the document that will allow for a review of the ruling and to assemble a working team with the judges and ministers of the Supreme Court, along with the legal counsel of the Mexican Union of Electricians.”

He added that the working groups should include the Ministries of Energy, Finance and Public Credit, and Labour, as well as the National Institute for the Return of Stolen Goods to the People.