The character Chequera, from the popular Cuban comedy series Vivir del Cuento, turned electrical despair into a song with a 42-second clip that has garnered over 20,000 views on Facebook, summarizing in a danceable rhythm what millions of Cubans endure daily: four hours of intermittent power cuts for every ten minutes of electricity.
The video, titled "THE CHECK STICKS WITH THE QUITI-PON THEME," features the character portrayed by the actor Mario Sardiñas singing about the phenomenon of "quita y pon" regarding the current, which he coins with the neologism "kitipón."
The lyrics leave no room for ambiguity: “With the kitipón, with the kitipón / When the current is on, I worry about the kitipón / Don’t give me more current, I prefer the blackout.”
The final refrain directly points to the National Electro-Energetic System: "Four hours of outage, ten minutes of power / It's the plan that the SEN has, for my people's enjoyment, outage."
Chequera also describes the physical harm caused by this intermittent service: "don't put the current on me because it raises my blood pressure," a complaint that resonates among Cubans because the cycles of turning on and off damage appliances and create a constant anxiety that, paradoxically, a total blackout does not.
The video arrived at a time when the Cuban electrical system crisis has reached historic levels. This Saturday, the SEN records a predicted maximum shortfall of 2,240 MW, with only 1,090 MW available against a demand of 3,300 MW.
In 2026 so far, the electrical grid has experienced at least seven total collapses. Two occurred in August: the first in the early hours of August 2 to 3, and the second hours later, when the grid disconnected again while attempting to restore service.
The maximum deficit of the year was recorded on August 4, when it reached 2,411 MW, with a generation availability of only 895 MW the day before.
It’s not the first time that Chequera has turned the energy crisis into humorous material. Since April, the character has published viral sketches about 16-hour blackouts, collapses of the SEN, and the daily despair of Cubans. In July, he humorously updated the "blocks" of the electrical system, and in June, he starred in a sketch about the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power plant.
This new song represents an evolution of the format: it is no longer a spoken sketch, but a catchy musical parody that distills, in under a minute, the accumulated frustration over a crisis with structural causes —the obsolescence of thermal power plants, fuel shortages, and lack of maintenance— that the regime has failed to reverse.
Filed under: