Argentina: Massive March Held in Defence of Public Education

On October 2, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Argentina to demand that Javier Milei’s neoliberal government cease its attempts to defund public university education.

Several political parties, social movements, unions, and human rights organizations joined students, professors, graduates, and university workers in the streets demanding that Milei not veto the University Financing Law which seeks to increase the university budget given the needs faced by Argentine universities. This law has already been approved in the legislature, but the Argentine president said he would veto the law completely because he considered it derisory and impracticable. However, according to several experts on the subject, applying the law would imply a minimal increase in public spending on GDP (0.14%).

Segunda marcha federal en defensa de la universidad pública y en contra del veto de Javier Milei a la Ley de Financiamiento Universitario.

 Agencia Shok pic.twitter.com/qgsdmT4Dwx

— Shok Argentina (@shokargentina) October 3, 2024

The main concern of the protesters is that there has been no significant increase in the budget both for salaries and for operations despite the rampant inflation that has plagued the South American country for several years. In addition to undermining the institutions’ ability to function, it also causes a decrease in the purchasing power of university workers, which forces them to get other jobs and, therefore, reduce the time for class preparation, research, etc., which implies a decrease in academic quality. At the same time, the students demand an increase in the budget so that research improves and there is more investment in academic infrastructure. “This government is unsustainable, it does not look at us, at the university, at education, at the progress of our country,” said one of the demonstrators on October 2.

The largest mobilization took place in Buenos Aires, where, according to the organizers, hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets. The gigantic Avenida de Mayo was packed; the crowd stretched from the Casa Rosada (seat of the Executive) to the National Congress. Undoubtedly, it was one of the most important mobilizations to date against Milei’s budget-cutting policies. The Secretary General of the National Federation of University Teachers, Carlos de Feo, told the protesters “We are telling the police that they have to take care of us and the deputies and senators that they have to ratify the laws because otherwise the government is going to carry out a self-coup. This is not an act of coup d’etat, it is the purest expression of democracy. A coup d’état is to govern by decree.”

However, there were not only mobilizations in Buenos Aires. In cities such as Rosario, Córdoba, and San Miguel de Tucumán, among others, tens of thousands of people alerted the government that they would not passively accept the veto of the financing law. “We will not allow them to take away our dreams. Our future does not belong to them” organizers read from a communiqué in the Plaza Vélez Sarsfield in Córdoba. In Tucumán, the march, led by the rector and several deans, advanced from the National University to the Plaza Independencia. Ángel Morales, Secretary of the Non-Teaching Union, told the crowd “The president intends to privatize the university system [to make] the people ignorant…we will never agree.”

The protesters produced an official document entitled “The public university, the basis of democracy and social development, fights for its survival,” which warns that there is an educational funding crisis in Argentine universities, which is why salaries must be increased or else the rate of university workers in poverty will increase. In addition, science requires investment, and the Argentine State, according to the document, is constitutionally obliged to support scientific development in universities.

“The loss of those who work in public universities is unusually serious; with a huge percentage of teachers and non-teaching staff receiving a salary below the poverty line, if not indigence. This compromises one of the cores of the public university since it puts at risk the continuity of the academic, administrative, and service cadres essential for its operation. The government seeks to dismantle the national teachers and non-teaching staff criteria, the main tool for resolving wage disputes and working conditions, in three ways,” they wrote in the document.

A few hours after the marches, in a very direct political gesture, Milei vetoed the University Financing Law. According to the Executive, the law does not “contemplate the fiscal impact of the measure nor does it determine the source of its financing”. Thus, Milei not only disregards the hundreds of thousands of Argentines who were peacefully asking for a change of attitude but also sends a clear message to his adversaries: when it comes to increasing public spending, even if it is minimal, there is no negotiation possible.