University students and professors in Argentina are taking over dozens of university buildings and administrative offices in protest of right-wing President Javier Milei’s veto of the University Financing Law (which was intended to adjust the amount of money received by universities given the rampant inflation). His veto was ratified by the Chamber of Deputies last week.
As part of their mass protest action, thousands of students and professors in Argentina have decided to “take” the courses out of the faculties to the streets and public squares in several cities of the country. Now, walking around Buenos Aires and other cities in the country, one might run into a master class on the limbic system or Hegel’s philosophy in the middle of the street.
Some of the universities that have been taken over by the students are the National University of Buenos Aires (UBA); the National University of La Plata (UNLP); of Córdoba (UNC), San Luis (UNSL), Tucumán (UNT), Mar del Plata (UNMdP), Comahue (UNComa), Salta (UNS), San Juan (UNSJ), and those of the Buenos Aires suburbs such as Luján (UNLu), General Sarmiento (UNGS), Avellaneda (Undav), José C. Paz (Unpaz) and others are expected to join in.
Milei’s attitude has caused great uneasiness among broad sectors of Argentine students and teachers. In response to their university takeover as well as the massive mobilizations at the end of September and on October 2, he has resorted to attacking these sectors, calling them “dirty” and “delinquents”. In addition, he argued that public university education really only educates the rich, although in Argentina public universities are free. “In a country where the vast majority of children are poor and do not know how to read or write or perform a basic mathematical operation, the myth of free university becomes a subsidy from the poor to the rich,” said the head of state.
In addition to a protest Milei’s veto, the students warn that, as if that were not enough, the Executive plans a cut in the budget for public universities for the year 2025. Students and professors have declared that the struggle for quality university education and access will be long. In public assemblies called by the students and professors of the different universities, some faculties decided to resume normal activities, while others announced that they would continue with the takeovers of the faculties while a new strategy was planned given the long-term defunding of public education.
In this regard, Lula Schiffmacher, a psychology student at the University of Buenos Aires, declared to the newspaper Pagina 12, “[Milei’s government] wants to silence us and privatize the public university; it wants [the universities] to function with teachers earning below the poverty line. That is why we took the historic steps that have been executed over the years by the student movement. Far from what Milei says today, that [the university] is for the rich, 45% of the students are below the poverty line.”
The National Universities Union Front, which groups many university teachers’ unions, announced a 24-hour strike for Thursday, October 17, and declared that it will join next week the national mobilizations called by the student associations in Argentina’s main cities.
Student mobilizations, faculty occupations, and teachers’ strikes foreshadow a possible change in political relations in Argentina. Milei’s government is facing an adversary that does not seem to give in to the onslaught of neoliberal measures. For its part, the student movement will have to demonstrate that it can rally broad sectors of the population behind its demand and thus undermine the apparent security of the Executive to defund the Argentine State.
