He says that there were six times and that he resisted all of them. He rolled into a ball, threw himself on the floor, screamed, cried, asked her to please stop, slapped her. He happened for a year and a half and always with the same man, Juan ‘N’, a colleague from the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) at the headquarters of El Cóbano, in Michoacán. The scenes of abuse changed: in the locker rooms, in the engine room, in the basement, in deserted offices. Angélica, a fictitious name, says that she has depression, that she tried to commit suicide, that she lost her self-esteem and felt that she was no longer worth anything, that she no longer wants to return to the plant but that it was unfair that she lost her temporary contract, that “it is not worth ” that they said that she was “the problematic one”. This former CFE worker has just filed a criminal complaint with the Michoacán Prosecutor’s Office for the harassment she experienced within the parastatal company. Her accusation adds to the series of complaints of sexual violence within the public company that this newspaper has been able to verify.
He was then 40 years old and had a small dental office in a somewhat remote neighborhood in Uruapan, Michoacán. The mother of a nine-year-old daughter wanted to try something more stable. She 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 enter the CFE, which has most of its staff unionized. Angélica started at the lowest level, a cleaner, in El Cóbano. This plant, located 60 kilometers from Uruapan, is very far from any urban center and its access is complex. It is a small subsidiary, barely 50 workers, of which only four were women. One of them had previously suffered an attempted rape by four colleagues: two were fired and another two relocated.
Angélica arrived on February 25, 2019. “Since I arrived they were seeing me as merchandise,” says the former employee, “it is rare for a man who works at that plant and does not make a lewd comment on you.” The company’s own Gender Unit acknowledged to EL PAÍS that within the CFE there is a systematic problem with sexual harassment. “Sexual harassment is unduly normalized in many workplaces,” its owner, Nimbe Durán, admitted to this newspaper in June. The environment in El Cobano perfectly represents the networks of complicity and cover-up within the parastatal. The workers even threatened the company with going on strike and affecting the entire electricity supply in the region when the CFE began to investigate Juan ‘N’. They finally gave up, and the assailant was fired.
The UNAM researcher, María Xelhuantzi, author of fifteen books on Mexican trade unionism, points in that direction: “In that company, women still live in hell, like the one most of us female workers experienced at some point ago. 40 or 60 years, when there was really nothing to do but suck it up. They suffer harassment, offensive and sexist language on a daily basis.”
“I asked him a thousand times to stop”
The first time was in April 2020 in the basement. Angélica was in a dressing area when Juan ‘N’, with whom she had had a good relationship until now and saw as “a father figure”, enters the room, closes the door and turns off the light. “Immediately he went towards me, he began to touch me in all parts of my body trying to unzip my pants, saying at the same time ‘wait, nothing will happen to you,'” says the employee, “I asked him a thousand times to stop” . “At that moment I hunched over to prevent him from lowering my pants and I was able to twist his finger and tried to throw him away so that he wouldn’t keep touching my parts. Then he separates. She took it as a game, laughed and said ‘oh excuse me, look what you provoke me to do’. He leaves the place combing his hair; she, running, in case he comes back.
Angélica points out that this employee was one of those who had been working the longest at the plant, so he was highly respected due to his seniority. She decided not to tell anyone about that first time: “I began to be very afraid. I believed that if I said something to the one they were going to run to, it was me and that they were not going to believe me.” To the extent that the violence goes through and accumulates, it was not the first time that Angelica suffered sexual abuse: “I was very ashamed of that situation. I wanted to erase it from my mind, because all my childhood I spent it.
From that 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 was taking a bath to grabbing her in the corridors and squeezing her chest, hips, genitals: “I begged her to let go of me because I didn’t want problems with my husband and less so at my job. but he tries pull me towards the showers to which I put up resistance asking for a favor and throwing myself on the floor begging him to leave me alone, so he lets go of me and again begins to ask me for forgiveness, ”reads the internal complaint that Angélica would make a few months later.
After passing a course, Angélica manages to rise to the position of machinist’s assistant, she says proudly that she was the first woman in that position. She left him after another of the abuses, Juan ‘N’ went down to the power generating machine room where she was. An underground place, under a tunnel, without cameras or cell phone signal. “Had a overalls, he touched my vagina, my breasts. She made me cry. I told him to leave me alone, that I didn’t see it that way, that I didn’t want to lose my job. He tried to undress me, we were the only ones down there. Me fighting his hands and him fighting mine.”
As the situation did not stop, Angélica seeks the support of her brothers —who recommend her to keep quiet so as not to have problems— and her mother. “In mid-May I wanted to commit suicide, I had hit rock bottom, I felt like crap, I kept crying. One day I told my mom, and she told me: ‘Let yourself be raped, because if you don’t you’re going to lose your job and we can’t allow that.’ I felt like dying.” Angélica earned an average of 12,000 pesos ($600) a month for her work at the plant during the 18 months she endured sexual abuse.
“They can throw me into a well with water and disappear”
The last time was on November 8, 2021, in the corridors of the office, and Angelica dared, for the first time, to scream. Juan ‘N’ ran away. The worker, who had the only support of her husband, decided that she couldn’t take it anymore. She filed her internal complaint on November 18, 2021. She reported the events to the Gender Unit and an internal investigation was initiated. While this lasted, as a protection measure, they managed to relocate Angélica to another plant. The unit led by Nimbe Durán issued a harsh opinion in which they identified the sexual harassment behaviors that Angélica had suffered and her violations of her human rights. The investigation took them into account and, finally, the CFE decided to fire Juan ‘N’ in December, despite the fact that due to his seniority he only had a few months left to retire.
However, the nightmare did not end there. Union section 45 of SUTERM pressured Angélica to return to work in the place where she had been attacked and refused to allow her to be reinstated in another workplace as recommended by the Gender Unit. Her justification was that her contract had been created in El Cobano and her relocation would harm other colleagues. Both the victim and the specialized department against sexual harassment flatly rejected her return to Cobano due to the danger it could pose to her. “I was scared to death of going back. Where is my security? In those places there are no cameras, there is no telephone signal, they can throw me into a well with water and disappear. I want their justice to be done, because they shut you up, I already had my relocation and they blocked me”, says Angélica.
The union won the game. She managed not to renew her temporary contract due to the alleged problems that she had created after the complaint. These reprisals were reported to the Ministry of Public Administration, which has not yet issued a conclusion. Nimbe Durán recognizes her case as one of the most complicated they have faced: “We are still on the matter, we have not forgotten. We have insisted that she should be given a contract immediately.” Five months have passed since Angélica lost her job and now, with her savings, she is trying to reopen her office: “I am already trying to rebuild my life. But I would like as many people as possible to find out about what is happening, about the lack of support and the union, about the machismo that prevails, about the lack of sensitivity towards women, that they judge you and point you out, and that is not okay”.
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