A video circulating on the Brazilian web claims former President Lula being humiliated by students during a visit to Sci-Po Paris. The insult is actually written in the fake sound subtitles that the French students were saying, and in fact a posterior was added to the video.
It is a rumor circulated on Brazilian social networks that supports the current far-right president of the Latin American country, Jair Bolsonaro: his political rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as “Lula”, is the former President and President of Brazil. The left-wing figure of K, was called “Fis de P****” (“Philha da P***”) and on 16 November the Sci-Po Paris campus was blocked by French students during their visit.
In support, a video Originally shared on Lula’s official Twitter account, in which we can see the former president of Sci-Po Paris confronting students who play and sing to the beat. After approaching them to see them, Lula turns and continues her way through the crowd.
But on pro-Bolsonaro social media, an alternate version of the same video, this time with a caption to explain what is happening, has been circulating in recent days.
At the 41st second the students would shout in yellow according to legend: “Filha da Pi…” for Lula, or “Pi’s son…” in Portuguese. Then, according to the legend of the still yellow, Lula would have overturned, blocked by the student orchestra.
This version circulated in several groups and on Facebook pages, Twitter, Bolsonaro, a Telegram or Instagram supporter, sometimes generates thousands of comments ironically on the situation or rejoices: “Lula should be welcome”, may we read exclusively.
“It’s Batuka”
Except that in reality, these subtitles don’t match what the Paris students say who play the percussion on the video. The latter are actually part of the Batuka de Sciences-Po, a Batuka group, a type of percussion orchestra originally from Brazil. The group regularly organizes sporting events and some student parties.
On 16 November, Sci-Po’s Batuka organized this representation for the former President of Brazil’s visit to his founding. And contrary to the subtitles of the video broadcast in Brazil, the students do not say “filha de p***”, but: “C’est la batuca”, in French, a sentence they often repeat during their performances.
This poorly captioned video mocking Lula has gone viral this week and is subject to multiple investigations in Brazil, such as the media “botos” and “eos fatos”. Many posts containing false information have since been removed.
The editorial staff of the Observatores de France 24 was joined by Clara Bruno, a master’s student and a “mestre ceté” from the Batuka de Sciences-Po – the equivalent of a conductor for a Batuka group. She was not expecting this curious misunderstanding. Because, on the contrary, Batuk was eagerly waiting for Lula.
“About ten years ago, Lula came to Sci-Po and was greeted with music by Batuka: it’s always been a legendary episode for our group, and there we were lucky that it happened again. Was happy to play for him.
We were immediately surprised by the success of our performance video shared by Lula. There were lots of reactions, praises and, very quickly, criticisms of Lula fueled by pro-Bolsonaro accounts on our Instagram.
And finally, recently, we received comments saying that our video had been hijacked, used in fake news in Brazil, then we were contacted by Brazilian journalists who asked us to specify That’s exactly what we were saying in French. That’s how we discovered this “troll” version of our video.”