On June 7, Argentine police arrested social leader and opposition figure Juan Grabois in Buenos Aires. On Saturday, Grabois and members of the left organization Patria Grande, had occupied the Juan Domingo Perón National Institute building in protest of the government’s decision to permanently close the building.
The Institute is the former residence of 1940s President Juan Domingo Perón and his wife, the renowned political leader Eva Duarte de Perón (also known as Evita). It is recognized as a “national historical monument” of left and working-class politics in Argentina. Until a few weeks ago, the Juan Domingo Perón National Institute, an institution under the National Secretariat of Culture, operated in the building carrying out research and raising awareness about Perón and Duarte’s life.
Milei attacks cultural institutions
Peronism is likely the most significant and enduring political force of the last 70 years in Argentina. However, the Juan Domingo Perón National Institute, which had become an important emblem of Peronism, has been under constant attack by the Milei government, alongside many other public research or pedagogical institutions that do not align with its neoliberal program.
During a press conference May 7, 2025, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni announced that he would close the institute permanently. On May 25, the secretary of deregulation, Federico Sturzenegger, informed that the dissolution remained despite criticism from the opposition. On the same day, the Justicialist Party (the largest party of Peronism), requested that the government accept an agreement to transfer the assets of the institute to its control. The building and its assets were instead handed over to the Ministry of Human Capital, headed by one of Milei’s appointees, Sandra Pettovello.
Twenty-four workers of the institute were then dismissed. Milei’s government considered them unnecessary because, according to Adorni, enough research on Perón was already being carried out in several Argentine universities “without state funding”.
“Reclaiming Perón’s house”
Faced with this reality, the Frente Patria Grande tried to reclaim the space. On X, they reported: “They want to destroy the history of Peronism: We are going to defend it. Milei’s government dissolved the Juan Domingo Perón Institute and plans to vacate the ‘Un café con Perón’ bar, two buildings that are part of the national historical heritage and part of the residence where Eva Perón died.”
The activists also accused Milei’s minister of taking the national monument for herself. “They’ve already started destroying and stealing material because they want to turn that place into Sandra Pettovello’s residence,” they declared. “Gorila hatred knows no bounds.”
A longstanding Peronist insult for staunch anti-Peronists, “gorila” is a derogatory term in Argentina that references a history of coups, anti-worker politics, and repression of popular movements.
The militants proclaimed that they, alongside workers of the café, would occupy the Institute building to defend their history.
After taking the building, Grabois explained: “Minutes ago, the youth of the national movement reclaimed the former residence of Perón and Evita from the hatred of the gorilas, where the Juan Domingo Perón Institute of Studies, illegally dissolved by the Milei regime, used to operate.”
“This is where the predecessors of this government dropped their deadly bombs 70 years ago,” the opposition leader added, reaffirming the history they were defending. “Let us be faithful to our history, let us defend our heritage. Long live Perón, long live Evita, long live the Homeland!”
The arrest of Grabois
The state’s response soon followed. The Infantry of the Argentine Federal Police entered the building and arrested Grabois while members of the police pushed and shoved Peronist militants, using pepper spray on the protestors. According to the Argentine justice system, Grabois was charged with usurpation, damages, and injuries.
The news quickly spread through the press. The former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, said: “We condemn the illegal and abusive detention of our brother Juan Grabois executed today by the Argentine police and ordered by the government of Javier Milei. Juan is an Argentine and Latin American leader, defender of the noblest causes. We demand his immediate freedom.”
Likewise, Argentine Congressman Leopoldo Moreau demanded his release: “We demand the immediate freedom of Juan Grabois, arrested by order of Patricia Bullrich, mercenary of institutional violence. They want to close the Yrigoyenista, Belgraniano, and Juan D. Peron institutes, among others, because they want to kidnap our history.”
Grabois is a recognized social leader in Argentina who got his start in the piquetero movement during the IMF-induced crisis in the early 2000s. He was part of the movement to organize workers in the informal sector such as street vendors and cartoneros (those who sell recycled items), and helped found the Movement of Excluded Workers (MTE). Grabois has risen to prominence within the Peronist camp in Argentina for insisting that the political movement turn its attention to the millions of Argentines, impoverished and excluded through decades of neoliberal onslaught, who are falling prey to right-wing false messiahs like current President Javier Milei.
“Juan Grabois is one of the most confrontational political leaders against Milei’s government,” said Andrea Manuela Ross Beraldi, member of Frente Patria Grande’s international team and part of the continental secretariat of ALBA Movimientos, speaking with Peoples Dispatch. “As a lawyer, he is leading numerous cases against the government for the destruction of social policies and the subjugation of the rights of poor people.”
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The lawyer and social leader has been at the forefront of popular resistance against Milei’s austerity policies and in defense of the communities on the frontlines of attack.
Ross Beraldi pointed out that, “Grabois won a lawsuit against Milei for having stopped supplying food to community kitchens,” he said, and through another legal challenge, “he managed to stop the elimination of the Socio-Urban Integration policy that brought basic services to poor neighborhoods.”
In this context, his arrest takes on even greater significance.
Juan Grabois’ release
In the early hours of the morning of June 8, Juan Grabois was released. Upon leaving the cell where he was held captive, Grabois gave a brief statement to the press: “In this country, they kidnapped pregnant women, they took away their babies, they tortured, they disappeared people, etc.,” he said, emphasizing the pain that the Argentinian people have endured. “By being in prison 14 hours, does [Security Secretary] Patricia Bullrich think that she is going to break us? She doesn’t understand what we are made of.”
Bullrich said of Grabois, “He who does the crime, pays for it.” To which Grabois replied, “I agree, they are going to pay for it, and they are going to pay dearly.”
He added, “I am with my comrades. When she gets out [of prison], after the long years she will be detained, she will not have people waiting for her outside for 12 hours. We do; we have comrades.”
Milei’s war on the opposition
Ross Beraldi told Peoples Dispatch that Grabois’ arrest takes place in the context of a broader wave of persecution and criminalization of popular militancy and political leaders, especially those that represent “the main opposition to Javier Milei’s government”. She added that on Wednesday, another Peronist leader, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was convicted by the Supreme Court of Justice, “in a case with an endless number of irregularities and with the media pressuring the Court to imprison her.”
Thus, the struggle for historical memory in Argentina, a memory full of pain and laborious resistance, is underway. Milei seems to be keeping his promise of waging a cultural war, not only against the memory of the left and popular sectors – many of which align with Peronism – but against any political current that doesn’t support his radical neoliberal program.
It’s clear that the opposition won’t give up its memory without a fight. And it’s a fight that extends beyond debates in social media, magazine articles, or books. It is a direct, material struggle over freedom and memory itself.
