MEXICO CITY  The lights have been going out all over this city. Food rots in tepid refrigerators. Computer screens pop and fizzle out. At a taco stand in Iztapalapa, José Martínez sticks a candle in a Coke bottle and serves hungry customers by its glow.

When President Felipe Calderón dissolved the capital’s money-losing electric company and fired 44,000 workers two weeks ago, he promised efficient, modern service. But across the city and its vast suburbs, the power has gone out for a day or more in neighborhood after neighborhood.

In some cases, switches appear to have been deliberately turned off  evidence, officials say, that a few of the fired workers have taken matters into their own hands.

“This is a deliberate action to bother and affect consumers,” said Estefano Conde, a spokesman for the Federal Electricity Commission, the state-owned company that has taken over the service. “They want to generate pressure, to give the idea that we can’t handle it.”