7-Year-Old Photo Of A Mexican Politician Viral With Misleading Context

A nearly seven-year-old photo showing Mexican politician Antonio Garcia Conejo stripped to his underwear in parliament, has been revived with a misleading claim that he did so to shame the country's lawmakers for stealing from the poor.

BOOM found that the photo actually shows Conejo staging a protest against the passage of a historic energy bill in Mexico's Congress that would allow foreign investment and private companies to operate in the country's oil and gas sector. The opposition politician stripped to his undergarments to show how Mexico was being 'stripped' of its resources.

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The images are being shared with a caption which claims: "In Mexico, a member of Parliament removes all his clothes in Parliament during debate... "You are ashamed to see me naked, but you are not ashamed to see your people in the streets naked, barefooted, desperate, jobless and hungry after you have stolen all their money and wealth".........he told the Parliament‼️ What a courageous man, this is how it should be."

The photographs are viral with a claim in Hindi as well. It reads: "मेक्सिको 🇲🇽 में , संसद का एक सदस्य ने संसद में बहस के दौरान अपने सारे कपड़े उतार देता है और बोलता है की " तुम्हे मुझे नग्न देखने मे शर्म आती है लेकिन आपको अपने देश को नग्न, नंगे, हताश, बेरोजगार और निजी कंपनियों जब इस देश का सारा धन लूट रहे है और आम आदमी को गुलाम बना रहे तब तुम्हे ये देख कर शर्म नही आती " क्या हिम्मतवर व्यक्ति है, ऐसा ही होना चाहिए |"

BOOM received the photograph with the misleading caption on its tipline (+91 77009 06111).

The Facebook posts can be seen below and its archived versions are available here and here.

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Fact Check

BOOM ran a reverse image search using one of the two viral photos. It showed us that the photo has been present on the internet since 2013 and that the incident took place in Mexico's Congress. We found news articles dating back to December 2013 by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the BBC.

According to a report published by WSJ on December 12, 2013, the dramatic scenes had occurred when Mexico's Congress voted for an energy bill that would end a 75-year-old monopoly of the state-owned oil firm Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos). For the first time since 1938, private firms would be allowed to explore and extract oil and gas with Pemex and have a share of the profits.

While a few politician protested the bill, proponents argued that it would bring tens of billions of dollars of foreign investment to Mexico.

The reports stated that a leftist lawmaker, man in the viral photograph, who was protesting the bill stripped to his underwear and said, "this is the way you're stripping the country to the bone."

"This is how you're stripping the nation. Where is the benefit? I'm not ashamed, what you're doing is a shame!" BBC quoted him as saying.

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