Workers against worker: SME thugs attack CFE workers

I was about to write a post criticizing the SME when I saw that Ciro Gómez Leyva beat me to it, though using considerably harsher language than I would have utilized: The Milenio commentator refers to the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME) and its leader Martín Esparza as "Blackshirts" and "Mussolini" respectively.

Gómez Leyva's point, for all its crude language and false comparisons, was nonetheless this: The SME are increasingly acting as pure thugs, utilizing violence against their detractors.

And the point I want to make: Their detractors are none else than... their fellow workers! Specifically, SME members, in a demonstration in the Reforma avenue in Mexico City,  spotted a group of workers from the CFE, a company that has taken over some of the duties from the now-extinct Luz y Fuerza company, whose workers SME had unionized. Several CFE workers had the living daylights beaten out of them, and some had to go to the hospital. The CFE, to recall, is a state company that was founded by President Lázaro Cárdenas back in the 1930s. CFE workers are affiliated with the Sindicato Único de Trabajadores Electricistas de la República Mexicana (SUTERM).

If Esparza has condemned the violence committed by his men, it certainly has passed below my radar screen. The actions of the SME and their proclivity for violence has long been condemned by a range of actors; their utter hypocrisy in claiming to fight for workers rights while violently beating up other workingmen whose only crime is to have sought a job with the CFE, should equally be denounced.