Video attributed to a pro-Petro march in Colombia was actually a protest against him

Thousands of people marched on May 1, 2024 in Bogotá to commemorate International Workers’ Day and in support of the government of President Gustavo Petro, who invited people to participate in the mobilization. However, a video recorded from a drone, which shows the city center full of people, does not correspond to that demonstration, as indicated by users on social networks. The sequence, shared more than 1,000 times, was recorded days before during a march against the president.

“That Petro lost the streets, said the recalcitrant extreme right. The new report speaks of about 500 thousand people in the center of Bogotá today, May 1 #YoMarchoConPetro” reads a post shared on X. Similar entries also circulate on Facebook (1, 2).

Screenshot of a post on X, made on May 2, 2024

The publications share a video that shows aerial shots of the surroundings of Plaza de Bolívar, in Bogotá, where thousands of people gathered on May 1 with white t-shirts, banners, balloons and Colombian flags.

That day, Petro called on his followers to support in the streets his reforms to the health, pension and labor systems, which as of May 3 had not been approved in Congress.

Video from April 21

A reverse search for one of the video’s keyframes on Google led to a https://twitter.com/JoseMAcevedo/status/1782119520171164154 in X of April 21, 2024, made by the director of the Colombian news program Noticias RCN, José Manuel Acevedo. The same recording is found in the X profile of that media outlet.

The sequence that is shared on networks was extracted from this video, specifically between the second 0:20 to 1:09, and then from the second 0:00 to 0:55.

On April 21, at least 500,000 people protested in the main cities of Colombia against the management of Gustavo Petro. It is considered the largest demonstration since he took power in August 2022.

In the viral sequence, several banners are observed that say “Petro out” and others against the constitutional reform proposed in March by the president.

The May 1 march

Unlike the mobilization of April 21, in the Workers’ Day march of May 1, a platform was installed in front of the Congress building (https://twitter.com/laurisarabia/status/1785740180617416843, 2) in the Plaza de Bolívar, and a barrier around the statue of Simón Bolívar. This montage is not seen in the recording shared on networks.

Comparison between a capture of a publication in X (I) and a capture of an entry by Petro’s former chief of staff, made on May 2, 2024

Petro closed the May 1 rally with a speech that was broadcast in the media (1, 2), in which he announced, among other things, the rupture of relations between Colombia and Israel. According to the Bogotá Mayor’s Unified Command Post (1, 2), 55,000 people attended the demonstrations in the city.

References

• Publication in X by José Manuel Acevedo
• Videos (1, 2) of Bolívar Square on May 1, 2024