The Christmas season is in full flower in this monster megalopolis.  “The World’s Tallest Christmas Tree” (dixit Mayor Marcelo Ebrard) which looks suspiciously like a huge bottle of Pepsi Cola (the sponsor of this Xmas kitsch) towers over the elegant Paseo de la Reforma.  Ice skaters pirouette on the great rink that floors the Tiennemen-sized Zocalo plaza – at the heart of the Mexican body politic, Zamboni machines now rule.  There is even a dollop of snow on the surrounding volcanoes.

As is traditional, the government has shut down until after January 6th, the Day of the Kings, and hordes of glassy-eyed shoppers stampede through the downtown streets. Ersatz Santa Clauses cadge coins on the corners of the Centro Historico and each evening neighborhood Marias and Joses knock on doors pleading for “posada”, a safe place for Mary to birth the Christ child.  The pilgrims are treated to “ponche” (high-octane alcohol splashed with fruit punch) and piñatas stuffed with candy to the delight of sugar-crazed moppets.

Navidad should be a moment of respite in the hardscrabble lives of the vast majority of Mexicans (80%) who live in and around the poverty line but in a year where the underclass, trapped in a seemingly bottomless downturn has suffered grievously, the holiday season has become a cruel hoax.

The hoax is even crueler for 42,000 members of the Mexican Electricity Workers Union (SME) who two months ago were pushed out of their workplaces at the Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LFC), the state-subsidized enterprise that supplied electricity to Mexico City and five surrounding states.  Under orders from President Felipe Calderon, the company was dissolved.  Military police continues to occupy the installations.

For the union and the combative social movement that accompanies it, the coup d’grace may have come December 11th, two months to the day of the take-over, when the Conciliation & Labor Arbitration Court denied the SME’s request for an injunction to reverse the shutdown.  Judge Guillermina Coutino, a young and malleable jurist in her first year on the bench, ruled that the executive branch was in its rights to close down a government enterprise if it imperiled the national economy.