Argentina: Biggest Protest Over Education, Milei Attacks

The new street protest that has shaken Argentina concerns education and, in particular, the cuts in the sector that the libertarian President Javier Milei wants.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets on April 23 in Argentina’s major cities to protest the government’s “chainsaw attacks” on public universities. It is the largest street protest since Milei took office at Casa Rosada, and organizers say 800,000 people gathered in Buenos Aires’s Plaza de Mayo alone; the government figures state 140,000.

“By comparison,” writes Nicolas Cassese in La Nación, “Diego Maradona’s impressive funeral was attended by far fewer than half the people. (…) Because Milei has attacked with apparent success a wide variety of categories, from leaders of opposing factions to artists, journalists, filmmakers, businessmen, legislators, and other representatives of what he considers caste, his conflict with education has sparked the first major street reaction of his reign.”

“The government is going against the main instrument of social mobility we have, we must defend our right to education,” is the statement of a student participating in the march, collected by the Italian news agency ANSA.

It didn’t take long for Milei to react: only the “leftists” are complaining, he wrote on social media, posting a photo of a lion holding a bowl labeled “Lagrimas de zurditos” (“Tears of lefties”). Also, “The Glorious Day of the Principle of Revelation. Whoever wants to hear (see), let them hear (see)…” referring to a large group of politicians who appeared in the square. Then concluding with the classic phrase “Long live freedom, damn it!”