Making time. (Breves).

Mexicans sprang forward to Daylight Savings Time on April 7, for the first time making the adjustment without accompanying political and legal battles. Mexican politicians have long resisted Daylight Savings Time on the grounds that the policy panders to U.S. business interests, and that it is unnatural, or even unhealthy for humans to change their waking and sleeping schedules. "You ought to get up when the rooster sings, and go to bed when the cricket sings," said Mexico City's Mayor Andrds Lopez Obrador, Daylight Savings Time's fiercest opponent.

In 2001, Obrador launched a legal appeal against the federal government's right to adjust the clock, which ended with the Supreme Court ruling that only Congress could do so, which it did, granting the go-ahead to increase Mexico's summer period to seven months.

The biggest proponents of the summer time change are the Secretary of Energy (Sener) and state-owned power utility the Comision de Electricidad Federal (CFE), who are well aware of the country's looming electricity supply problems.

As a result of this year's time change, "some 910 megawatts of demand are expected to be avoided, which represents an investment deferral of $6.9 billion pesos," reported Sener.

Obrador wasn't willing to take the earlier waking hour lying down, and blamed it on wanting to have the Mexican Stock Exchange match Wall Street's working hours.

"It's done for the convenience of yuppies in the financial industry who don't want to get up an hour earlier," he said at a news conference.