HUNDREDS of thousands of people have hit the streets across Argentina to protest against deep cuts to education funding imposed by neoliberal extremist President Javier Milei.
Tuesday’s demonstration in Buenos Aires appeared even bigger than previous protests against Mr Milei’s war on public spending. Even conservative politicians, private university administrators and right-wing TV personalities joined the march to defend state education.
“It is historic,” said protester Ariana Thiele Lara, a 25-year-old recent graduate. “It feels like we were all united.”
Students and academics worked with the trade unions and left-wing political parties in organising opposition to the axing of most public spending on education, a policy that has forced Argentina’s most venerable university to declare a financial emergency and warn of imminent closure.
Claiming that universities are bastions of socialism where professors indoctrinate their students, Mr Milei has tried to dismiss the higher education budget crisis as politics as usual.
“The cognitive dissonance that brainwashing generates in public education is tremendous,” he said.
At the public-sector University of Buenos Aires (UBA), the lights went out, lifts stopped working and air conditioning ceased to function in some buildings last week. Tutors gave 200-person lectures without microphones or projectors because the institution couldn’t pay its electricity bill.
In his drive to reach zero deficit, Mr Milei is slashing spending across Argentina — axing ministries, defunding cultural centres, laying off public-sector workers and cutting subsidies.
On Monday, he announced Argentina’s first quarterly fiscal surplus since 2008 and claimed that the pain would eventually pay off.
But the following day, protesters poured into the centre of Buenos Aires. “Why are you so scared of public education?” banners asked. “The university will defend itself,” students shouted.
Since last July, when Argentina’s fiscal year began, the state has provided UBA with just 8.9 per cent of its total budget at a time when the annual inflation rate hovers near 290 per cent. The university says that’s barely enough to keep the lights on and provide basic services in teaching hospitals that have already cut capacity.
The university warned last week that without a rescue plan, it would shut down in the coming months, stranding 380,000 students in the middle of their degree studies.
President Milei, who came to power last December after brandishing a chainsaw during his campaign to symbolise what he would do to public spending, continues to trot out the same mantra: “There is no money.”
