He says it’s been six times and he defied them all. He curled up, threw himself on the ground, screamed, cried, begged him to please stop, hit him. It happened for a year and a half and always to the same man, Juan ‘N’, a colleague from the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) at El Cóbano headquarters in Michoacán. The scenes of abuse changed: in the changing rooms, in the engine room, in the basement, in abandoned offices. Angélica, a pseudonym, says she suffers from depression, that she has tried to commit suicide, that she has lost her self-esteem and feels like she is worthless, that she doesn’t want to go back to the factory, but that it was unfair that she lost her temporary contract, that it was “not worth it” that she said she was “the troublesome one”. This former CFE employee has just filed a criminal complaint with the Michoacán Attorney’s Office over the harassment she was subjected to at the state-owned company. His indictment joins a series of complaints of sexual violence within the corporation that this newspaper has been able to verify.
He was 40 at the time and had a small dental practice in a remote neighborhood in Uruapan, Michoacán. The mother of a nine-year-old daughter wanted to try something more stable. He joined the Single Union of Electrical Workers of the Mexican Republic (SUTERM), one of the most powerful unions in Mexico and one of the most common ways to join the CFE, where most of its employees are unionized. Angélica started in El Cóbano at the lowest level, a cleaner. This facility, located 60 kilometers from Uruapan, is very far from any urban center and its access is complex. It is a small subsidiary, barely 50 employees, only four of whom are women. One of them had previously suffered an attempted rape at the hands of four colleagues: two were fired and two others were transferred.
Angélica arrived on February 25, 2019. “Ever since I arrived, they’ve treated me as a commodity,” says the former employee, “it’s rare that a man works in this plant and doesn’t make a lewd comment about you.” The company’s gender unit confirmed to EL PAÍS that within the CFE has a systematic problem with sexual harassment. “Sexual harassment is excessively normal in many workplaces,” its owner, Nimbe Durán, admitted to this newspaper in June. The setting in El Cobano perfectly represents the networks of complicity and cover-up within the Parastatal. The workers even threatened the company with a strike and disrupted all electricity supply in the area when the CFE began investigating Juan ‘N’. They finally gave up and the attacker was fired.
UNAM researcher María Xelhuantzi, author of fifteen books on the Mexican trade union movement, points in this direction: “In this company, women still live in hell, like the one that most of us workers experienced sometime 40 or 60 years ago , when there was really nothing else to do but suck it up. They suffer from harassment, abusive and sexist language on a daily basis.”
“I asked him a thousand times to stop”
The first time was in the basement in April 2020. Angélica was in a dressing room when Juan ‘N’, with whom she had previously had a good relationship and whom she considered a “father figure”, entered the room, closed the door and turned off the light. “He immediately walked up to me, he started touching me on all parts of my body, tried to unbutton my pants and at the same time said: ‘Wait, nothing will happen to you,'” says the clerk, “I have him asked a thousand times stop” . “At that moment I bent over to stop him from lowering my pants and I could twist his finger and tried to throw him away so he wouldn’t keep touching my parts. Then he separates. He took it as a game, he laughed and said, “Oh, excuse me, see what you’re provoking me to do.” He leaves the place combing his hair, she walks if he comes back.
Angélica points out that this employee was one of the people who had worked the longest at the plant, which is why he was very respected for his seniority. She decided not to tell anyone about that first time: “I started to get really scared. I believed if I said something to whoever they would run to, it was me and they wouldn’t believe me.” To the extent that the violence is rampant and piling up, it wasn’t the first time Angélica had become sexual Abuse suffered: “I was very ashamed of this situation. I wanted to get it out of my head because I spent my whole childhood on it.
From this trigger, the worker explains that the harassment became daily, verbal and physical. From spying on her and waiting for her outside the bathroom while she took a bath, to reaching out in the corridors and squeezing her chest, hips, genitals, “I begged her to let me go because I didn’t want any problems with my husband and.” less at my work. But he tries to pull me to the showers, which I resisted by asking a favor and throwing me on the floor and begging to leave me alone, so he lets go and starts asking forgiveness again to ask, “says the internal complaint that Angélica would make a few months later.
After completing her training, Angélica manages to become a machinist’s assistant. She proudly says that she was the first woman in this position. She left him after another abuse, Juan ‘N’ went down to the power generation engine room where she was. An underground place, under a tunnel, with no cameras or cell phone reception. “I was wearing a jumpsuit, it was touching my vagina, my breasts. Made me cry I told him to leave me alone, that I don’t see it that way, that I don’t want to lose my job. He tried to undress me, we were the only ones down there. I fight with his hands and he with mine.”
As the situation does not stop, Angélica seeks the support of her brothers – who advise her to keep quiet so as not to have problems – and her mother. “In mid-May I wanted to commit suicide, I was at rock bottom, I felt like shit, I kept crying. One day I said to my mother and she said to me, ‘Get raped because if you don’t you will lose your job and we can’t allow that.’ I felt like I was dying.” Angélica earned an average of 12,000 pesos (US$600) a month for her work at the factory during the 18 months she endured sexual abuse.
“You can throw me in a well of water and go away”
The last time was on November 8, 2021 in the office corridors, and Angelica dared to scream for the first time. Juan ‘N’ ran away. The worker, who had her husband’s only support, decided she could not take it anymore. She submitted her internal complaint on November 18, 2021. She reported the incidents to the Gender Unit and an internal investigation was launched. While this lasted, as a protective measure, they managed to relocate Angélica to another plant. The unit, led by Nimbe Durán, issued a harsh statement highlighting the sexual harassment behavior Angélica had endured and the violations of her human rights. The investigation took them into account and finally the CFE decided to fire Juan ‘N’ in December, even though his seniority left him with just a few months to retire.
Internal letter from SUTERM refusing to relocate a victim of sexual abuse. decency
The nightmare didn’t end there, however. SUTERM union section 45 pressured Angélica to return to the place where she had been attacked and refused her reinstatement to another job, as recommended by the Gender Unit. His rationale was that his contract originated in El Cobano and his move would harm other colleagues. Both the victim and the Sexual Harassment Agency flatly opposed her return to Cobano because of the potential dangers to her. “I was scared to death of going back. Where’s my security? There are no cameras in these places, there is no phone signal, they can throw me in a well of water and disappear. I want justice done to them because they silenced you, I already had my move and they blocked me,” says Angélica.
The union won the game. She managed not to renew her temporary contract due to the alleged problems she created after the complaint. These reprisals were reported to the Ministry of Public Administration, which has not yet come to a conclusion. Nimbe Durán recognizes their case as one of the most complicated they have faced: “We’re still on it, we haven’t forgotten it. We insisted that he get a contract straight away.” It’s been five months since Angélica lost her job and now she’s trying to use her savings to reopen her office: “I’m already trying to rebuild my life. But I want as many people as possible to know what’s happening, about the lack of support and the union, about the machismo that reigns, about the lack of sensitivity towards women, that they judge you and point you out and that’s not okay.” .
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