A video showing a huge crowd gathered on the streets is being shared on social media claiming to show the ongoing anti- government protests in Cuba.
However, we found that the video is not from Cuba, but from Buenos Aires, Argentina. It shows Argentinians celebrating their country's Copa America victory against Brazil on 11 July.
CLAIM
The Spanish claim reads 'Cuba en estos momentos. Los Cubanos quieren Libertad'.
[Translation: Cuba at this moment. Cubans want freedom.]
An archived version of this tweet can be seen here.
(Photo: Twitter/Screenshot)
The video shared by Twitter user 'LES' had been viewed over 4.6 lakh times at the time of writing the article. On Facebook, a post by user 'Antonio Fernandes' carrying the viral video was shared by more than 15,000 users.
WHAT WE FOUND
Using Google Chrome's video verification extension InVID, we broke the video into multiple keyframes and performed reverse image searches on them.
The search led us to a Twitter thread by Julián Macías Tovar, an activist against digital disinformation. In his thread, he stated that the visuals showed the celebration of Argentina's Copa America win at the Obelisco de Buenos Aires, an iconic monument.
The activist pointed out that the video used in the claim was being shared with false context.
(Photo:Twitter/Screenshot)
We searched on Google using keywords 'Argentina Copa America Obelisco' and found a video uploaded on YouTube by Argentinian news website Infobae, that streamed the LIVE footage from the capital city on the day of the match, i.e. 11 July.
We also came across video reports by media outlets Al Jazeera and AFP, showing a massive crowd celebrating Argentina's first title win after 28 years as they defeated Brazil.
Further, we compared the viral video with the LIVE footage aired by Infobae and found several similar elements in the two. For instance, the structure of the building, Obelisco, among others.
We also compared the street view of Obelisco available on Google earth and could establish that viral video is from the same location.
Cuba is witnessing its largest anti-government protests against the Communist government led by President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Chanting slogans of freedom, the agitation demands a change in administration amid increasing inflation, food shortages, restraints on civil liberties, and a spiralling COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
Evidently, video of crowd celebrating Argentina's Copa America win was shared to falsely claim that it showed people protesting in Cuba.
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