This is why Argentina’s public universities are paralyzed by protests

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – After 11 months in power, Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei has fulfilled his flagship promise to eliminate the country’s monumental deficits by cutting government wages, cutting subsidies and to suppress already low wages of state workers.

The cuts have created misery. But with the country’s left-wing opposition in disarray following the economic disaster Milei inherited, Argentina has not seen the kind of widespread social unrest that has characterized past economic crises.

That could change. The nation’s teachers are fed up.

Milei’s recent veto of a bill to increase spending on university budgets struck a collective nerve in a country that has long seen free education as a critical engine of social progress, sparking the widest demonstrations since the libertarian leader came to power.

Last week’s outdoor classes in Plaza de Mayo, the central square where the government’s headquarters are located, marked the latest in a new wave of protests in support of public universities that have gripped Argentina over the past month. Students will take over university campuses in the coming days ahead of another mass protest.

Here’s a look at what students are protesting and what it means for Milei’s efforts to transform crisis-prone Argentina into an economic success story.

What do the protesters want?

Professors and non-teaching staff at public universities across Argentina are demanding a pay increase to compensate for skyrocketing inflation, which they say has shrunk their purchasing power by 60% this year.

After a student-led march mobilized half a million demonstrators in April, Milei’s government compensated universities for operating costs, but not for teachers’ salaries.

The average salary of an associate professor is now $320 per month. For teaching assistants it is only $120 per month.

The university finance bill that Milei vetoed would have increased staff salaries to offset annual inflation in 2024 – which is now above 200% – and adjusted them to future inflation.

Even though Milei’s drastic measures recently brought month-on-month inflation below 5%, the number of Argentines living in poverty has risen to more than 50%.

The public university system has not seen such a budget deficit since 2004, according to the Civil Association for Equality and Justice, an Argentine nonprofit.

“Our living conditions have visibly deteriorated,” said Nicolas Jose Lavagnino, a researcher in the philosophy of biology at Conicet, Argentina’s top research body, which reported losing 250 scientists this year due to budget cuts.

The unions reject the government’s offer to increase the 6.8% wage increase as inadequate. The University of Buenos Aires – one of Latin America’s largest and most prestigious – has warned of mass layoffs due to falling salaries. At least thirty teachers have quit at the UBA’s agricultural faculty alone.

Milei has promised to block any measure that endangers the budget balance. In September, he vetoed a bill to increase pensions for the same reason – which would have cost his government more than 1% of Argentina’s gross domestic product.

But the education law would have cost only 0.14% of GDP, casting doubt on the economic significance of Milei’s fight.

“We see this as a direct attack on the philosophy of public education in our country,” said Matias Busi, a 25-year-old student at Argentina’s University of La Plata.

What does Milei say?

The irascible president has labeled universities as left-wing indoctrination camps.

‘What productivity do scientists have?’ he said in 2023 during the campaign, in which he advocated ending funding for the Conicet research institute. While Milei promises not to abolish free public education, he demands that universities undergo a government audit and do more to clean up. trigger corruption.

“If they don’t want to be checked, it must be because they are dirty,” he said.

Milei’s party has also revived in recent weeks an unpopular effort to charge tuition fees to foreign non-residents, who make up almost 4% of total enrollment.

The public education system in Argentina is rare in that there are no barriers to entry; Foreigners who cannot afford a bachelor’s degree in their home country can enroll for free at top-tier public universities such as UBA, where all five of the country’s universities have studied Nobel laureates. In fact, half of Milei’s cabinet graduated from public universities.

Some say Milei is right to call for greater financial transparency, highlighting the alleged misuse of funds and the creeping politicization of what was once a universally respected institution.

“There were contracts with public sector figures that financed absurd things,” says Argentine political consultant Sergio Berensztein, referring to scandals that broke out during the term of former left-wing President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner over big-budget research projects that were subject to audits later revealed they never happened. existed ‘they were simply mechanisms to divert money for political interests’.

What is the political context?

After Milei’s government gathered just enough votes on October 10 to prevent the opposition from overriding its veto of the university funding law, more than 250,000 Argentinians – from the far left to the center right – poured into the streets.

The student-led movement attracted a string of Argentine protesters stung by the austerity that has deepened the recession and pushed poverty to its highest level in two decades – retirees desperate for better pensions, doctors furious about the meager wages, artists who are against the closure of the national film institute. , scientists angry over stripped funds, pilots worried about Milei’s plans to privatize Argentina’s flagship airline.

Santiago Gándara, a professor of social sciences at both UBA and the University of La Pampa, said he believed Milei miscalculated by going after Argentina’s proud symbol: publicly funded education for the masses.

“It’s like someone comes and says, ‘We’re going to abolish the Plaza de Mayo,’” he said, referring to the historic square in Buenos Aires that was packed with protesters last week. ‘Milei understood this too late. … You cannot determine the fate of Plaza de Mayo. It belongs to all of us.”

The question of whether the demonstrations will develop into a real threat to Milei remains open.

“I don’t think these protests are life-threatening for Milei, but they are clearly harmful,” said Ana Iparraguirre, an Argentine analyst and partner at Washington-based strategy firm GBAO. “When students mobilize, you never know where that movement will end.”