2023 Apagón En Argentina / 2023 Blackout In Argentina

Submission 2,090

Overview

The 2023 Apagón En Argentina or 2023 Blackout In Argentina refers to a series of massive energy blackouts throughout numerous regions in Argentina, that occurred in the middle of a major heat wave on March 1st, 2023. The event became a trending topic on social media with numerous Argentinians using ironic memes to express how the blackouts affected their lives.

Background

On March 1st, 2023, a massive electricity cut occurred in a large part of Argentina, as reported by the Ámbito website.^[1] People online commented on the events in the midst of high temperatures after "several failures in the interconnected system" that affected "different generation plants," the Agrofy article^[2] explained. The website Infobae^[3] shared a picture that same day showing several Argentinians in the dark while they were without electricity (seen below).

Online Reactions

President Alberto Fernández's Speech

In the following hours and days, the lack of electricity in the homes of thousands of Argentinians was then referenced in many memes on social media as the country's President Alberto Fernández was giving a speech^[4] at Congress saying "we are the energy that the world needs" on March 1st, 2023.

A few hours after the speech, the power outage affected 20 million^[5] people across the country, as Twitter user @guadastrokera^[6] explained on March 1st, "Alberto finished declaring that we are the energy for the world and minutes later Atucha (Power Plant) fell, leaving half the country without electricity." The post (shown below) received over 5,400 likes and 420 retweets in a day.

Speculation About Blackout

As people tried to understand the reason behind the power outage on March 1st, 2023, some hypotheses that circulated online affirmed that the nuclear power plant Atucha "had fallen."^[7] Twitter user @DamiBlancoo^[8] posted a video on March 1st quoting the rumor and saying "the 2 Atucha employees in charge of preventing the plant from overheating and exploding:" The post garnered over 51,100 views and 5,700 likes in a day (seen below).