“The era of the present State is over,” declared the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, on Monday, for whom the state’s role should be limited to the “defense of life, liberty and property.” One day later, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country to respond with historic demonstrations in defense of the free public university, a pillar of the Argentine State that is today questioned and defunded by the far-right Government.
In the Argentine capital, the columns of students, professors and workers gathered at the Argentine Congress after passing through Barrio Norte, an upper-class area, near where some of the main faculties of the University of Buenos Aires are located: those of Medicine. , Economics, Law and Engineering. Marching on Azcuénaga Street, still far from Congress, the protesters sang the Argentine national anthem to the applause and horns of some curious onlookers waiting on the sidewalks.
By mid-afternoon, with Congress Square packed, the demonstration passed peacefully. The Government had stated days ago that it did not rule out activating its protocol to repress street blocks, but the city police remained on the sidelines, in a discreet background.
Medical students came to Congress in gowns, singing that education must continue to be public and for the children of workers; Teachers arrived brandishing books, from the Constitution to the Complete Stories by Jorge Luis Borges or the Complete works by Sigmund Freud; Economics students gathered at their faculty with several signs in the air. “Study, don’t be Milei”, “Public education is freedom”, “Why are you so afraid of educating the people?”, some of them said. Among hundreds of participants, a girl had written a message on a piece of cardboard: “They made you believe that you live in a shitty country so that you won’t defend it when they destroy it.”
Around five in the afternoon, the columns began to march towards the Casa Rosada, the headquarters of the Government. Many did not manage to enter the Plaza de Mayo. The main avenues were collapsed and it was impossible to move forward. Without moving from the spot, the protesters chanted slogans in defense of education and against Milei. Those who arrived late were unable to communicate with those who were there: the mobile phone networks stopped working due to the crowding and it was necessary to go several blocks away to recover the signal.
The Government tried to discredit the protest in every possible way. Milei first accused teachers and students at the University of Buenos Aires, the most prestigious in the country, of indoctrination and also attacked all public education. considering her responsible for the “brainwashing” of students. Later, she stated that it was a march “incentivized by politics” while her Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, warned of possible acts of provocation and did not rule out applying the repression protocol to street closures.
Argentine society was immune to official messages. This Tuesday’s march was one of the largest in the last 20 years of democracy. Under the slogan “in defense of the public university”, marches were registered in more than twenty cities. Universities took to the streets against the Government’s brutal budget cuts. Their funds are almost the same as in 2023, but in a country with inflation of 288% year-on-year, the real reduction is close to 70%. Some faculties have begun to hold classes in the dark or on public roads and others have warned that the heating will not be turned on except in very low temperatures, but this is insufficient: most lack the resources to face the second semester and the threat of closure is looming. becomes more and more real.
The Executive announced last week that it had reached an agreement with higher education centers to increase their budget for administrative expenses between March and April, but the rectors of many of them have stated that the problem lies in the freezing of teachers’ salaries. , which represent the majority of the budget.
“It is a march to which one attends in a sad and anguished way, we are not happy,” said the rector of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Ricardo Gelpi, hours before it started. Gelpi defended the ideological plurality of a free university attended by more than 300,000 students and which leads the rankings in Latin America in several disciplines. “The indoctrination thing, with all due respect, sounds a little ridiculous to me,” Gelpi responded to Milei on Radio Rivadavia.
The rector of the UBA recalled that the mobilization will be led by the universities, but it is not in their power to prevent “part of the political, or non-political, society from being part.” His words were addressed to those who try to link this demonstration with Peronism due to the anticipated participation of some of its leaders, such as former presidential candidate Sergio Massa. Figures from the Radical Civic Union and even Pro, an ally of the ruling party, have also defended public education this Tuesday.
The budget cut to universities is part of the drastic adjustment carried out by Milei to achieve a fiscal surplus. The numbers have squared away—and Argentine stock shares rise while the country’s risk falls—at the expense of reducing retirements, stopping public works, laying off public employees and leaving the public health and education system on the brink of collapse.
The deterioration extends to all educational levels. The Government eliminated the Teacher Incentive Fund with which the provinces paid part of the salaries of public school teachers. In parallel, it launched a financial aid plan for parents who send their children to private schools.
Repeating the transfer of resources in higher education is more complex. In Argentina, the public university is seen as one of the last opportunities for social mobility for Argentina’s lower and middle class, impoverished after successive economic crises and more than a decade of stagnation. Milei maintains a high popularity, close to 50%, which has suffered little from the adjustment. The attack on the public university has, however, touched a sensitive nerve and has awakened a hitherto unprecedented resistance.