Time zone change in Acre and part of Amazonas is sanctioned

Published in the Official Gazette, the law that establishes a new time zone only for the state of Acre and part of Amazonas (around the municipality of Tabatinga) was sanctioned by President Dilma Rousseff and becomes effective from the second Sunday of November, day 10. According to the text, the area now has two hours less than Brasilia.

The move undoes a change made by a 2008 law that had left the state of Acre with only an hour less than the national capital. If we consider the differences due to daylight savings time, in which Acre and Amazonas do not participate, the affected regions will be three hours behind Brasília until February 16, 2014.

But wasn't it like that?

In 2008, a bill from the then-Acre Senator Tião Viana was passed so that the state would be left with just one hour less than the capital of Brazil. He advocated change because he believed that the two-hour time delay hurt Acre in both its economy and culture.

However, the change displeased much of the population and caused controversy. In 2010, a referendum was held in the state to verify public opinion. At the polls, 56.8% of voters declared a preference for the old time. Brazil had a single time zone until 1913, when President Hermes da Fonseca passed Law 2, 784. The decision then created the four divisions following the Greenwich Meridian as a reference.