A Russian resident in Cuba who identifies herself as Poli on her Instagram account posted a video yesterday revealing that she named her newborn daughter "Apagonia", in direct reference to the chronic blackouts the island suffers from.
In the clip of just 26 seconds, Poli humorously explains the logic behind the name: "When the girl was born, my Russian mom was here. And she didn't understand why I gave the girl that name. But I don't see anything wrong with naming her Apagonia. Because when she was born, the breast fell. And when she was born, the breast fell."
The mother also points out that her daughter already has dual citizenship, though with an ironic nuance: "She is already one and a half Russian, because she has a blue passport and a red one. She doesn't have the blue one yet because there is no ink,” a direct reference to the widespread shortages experienced in Cuba.
At the end of the video, Poli posed a question to her followers: "What if I were a boy? Blackout or Bright Light?" which further fueled interaction in the comments.
The name "Apagonia" does not arise from nowhere, but rather from a phenomenon of popular humor that has spread in Cuba due to the severity of the electrical crisis, where jokes circulate about naming babies things like "Power Outage", "Generator", or "Fuse". Poli turned that joke into a real act.
The energy crisis that Cuba is experiencing is one of the worst in its history. The National Electrical System completely collapsed on March 16, 2026 for 29 hours and 29 minutes, and the generation deficit exceeded 2,000 MW at the beginning of that same month. Power outages have lasted up to 24 continuous hours in Havana and other provinces.
The causes are structural: obsolete thermoelectric plants, lack of investment, fuel shortages, and recurring breakdowns that the regime has neither been able to nor willing to resolve for decades.
The case of Poli illustrates how foreigners living in Cuba have also absorbed the Cuban humor of resistance in the face of daily hardships. The Russian community on the island exceeds 3,500 individuals, including approximately 2,500 Russian citizens, with a historical presence dating back to the Soviet era.
The video amassed over 241,000 views and nearly 29,000 reactions in less than 24 hours, turning the little Apagonia into an unwitting symbol of the crisis that defines daily life in Cuba.
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