After fifteen years of deficit budget policy and three state bankruptcies in twenty-five years, Argentines last fall elected a man to the head of the country who promised to cut the Argentine state to the bone. After all, the chainsaw became the symbol of the eccentric economist’s campaign – according to him, a tool to make the state more efficient and slimmer.
It was a clear signal that Milei is going in a completely opposite direction to the Peronists, the current hegemon of Argentine politics. The political movement, now encompassing both the right and the left, and referring to former president Juan Perón, was famous for high state spending, government intervention, powerful unions and a closed economy. In contrast, Milei, describing himself as an “anarcho-capitalist”, brought opposite extremes to the debate. He promised to slash taxes, impose severe cuts and close the departments of education, health and environmental protection. He also publicly spoke out against sex education in schools or liberal abortion laws.
He doesn’t care about education
There have been demonstrations against the polarizing head of state in Argentina since last December, when Mileio’s inauguration took place. “There have been large demonstrations before, but they all came from a specific part of the political spectrum,” Argentine political scientist Facundo Cruz told Deutsche Welle.
The education system in Argentina is considered one of the best in Latin America. Around 2.2 million people study in public universities, which are free, including students from other countries in the region.
This was also the case in January, when the largest trade union in the country, the CGT (closely linked to the Peronists), called a general strike. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country, but the overall social effect was lacking. But to call the strike a “failure”, as Security Minister Patricia Bullrich did, would be a mistake, as the following months have shown.
The change came at the end of April this year, when it became clear that the government would keep the budget of public universities at last year’s level. With Argentina’s inflation at 280 percent, this means that the education budget will drop by at least 65 percent in real terms. At the end of April, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets again, but this time among them were the voters of the current president.
“Argentina has always differed from the rest of Latin America in that free public education has been a guarantee of social mobility,” Deutsche Welle quotes Argentinian political scientist Mariana Llanos from the GIGA Institute for Latin American Studies in Hamburg as saying. “Argentinians can put up with a lot of cuts, but education is a very sensitive issue,” added Llanos.
The education system in Argentina is considered one of the best in Latin America. Around 2.2 million people study in public universities, which are free, including students from other countries in the region. It was demonstrated not only in the capital city of Buenos Aires, where according to the local university up to five hundred thousand people took to the streets (according to the police it was a fifth, according to journalists a half), but also in other university cities such as Tucumán, Córdoba, Corrientes or Ushuaia and also in front of the Argentine Consulate in Barcelona.
“We are making the impossible possible even with the majority of politicians, trade unions, media and economic actors against us,” Milei himself defended the cuts in April. He pitted students and teachers against each other by claiming that universities are “bastions of socialism” where students are “indoctrinated” by it.
“At the rate they’re cutting our finances, we can only operate for about two or three more months,” Al Jazeera quoted Ricardo Gelpi, rector of the University of Buenos Aires, an institution that has produced Nobel Prize winners and many Argentine presidents, as saying.
Insecurity and hunger
However, the budget cuts in Argentina did not only affect the field of education. When Milei took office in December, Latin America’s second-largest economy employed 341,000 people. Two months later, this number dropped by nine thousand, and in April by another fifteen thousand. People are losing their jobs in all sorts of areas, from social services to transport. Another fifty thousand employees are currently facing layoffs.
“We are experiencing psychological terror. Milei said that the layoffs would affect 76 thousand people, then fifteen to twenty. This has an impact on our mental health and everyday life,” El País newspaper quotes an employee of the National Office for Children, Youth and Family. “No one knows what will happen, no one knows who will be next,” the woman said on condition of anonymity.
Within a few months, Mileio’s government devalued the Argentine peso by 54 percent, froze all public projects, cut the number of federal ministries in half, removed regulations on food or housing prices, and also reduced transport or fuel subsidies. The week before last, Milei was able to declare that the country was experiencing a “new era of prosperity” when Argentina posted its first quarterly fiscal surplus since 2008.
However, the improvement was not felt by the Argentines themselves, of whom over 55 percent still live below the poverty line. However, while interest in the services of charitable organizations (mainly community canteens) is growing, their support and food supplies from the state have, on the contrary, significantly decreased. According to the government, the reason is high costs and zero control of where the food goes.
Lack of political support
However, Mileia’s further political progress is hampered by low support in the bicameral Argentine parliament. Although the libertarian politician dominated the presidential elections, his group La Libertad Avanza won only seven seats in the seventy-two-member senate, and only 38 representatives (out of 257 in total) sat in the lower chamber. Moreover, Milei does not have any of the governors on her side.
From the beginning, he ruled mainly thanks to the presidential decrees, which although the senate annulled them on the grounds of unconstitutionality, they are nevertheless kept in play by the lower house, which is more favorable to the president. Meanwhile, Mileia’s labor reform was rejected by the Court of Appeal after a challenge from the unions. The reform included an extension of the probationary period from three to eight months, a reduction in severance pay or the possibility of firing workers who participate in protest blockades.
Milei didn’t have much success with the package of laws known as the “Omnibus” either. Although the President managed to convince the parties of the right and the center to vote for the proposal, only 232 of the original 664 articles passed the lower chamber. The most controversial parts such as large-scale privatization (including Argentina’s national bank and the largest oil company) or the abolition of some state agencies did not pass.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund expects Argentina’s economy, plagued by low productivity and a large gray area, to contract by 2.8 percent this year. Argentinian companies are laying off workers and Argentines, fearing a recession, are significantly cutting back on consumption.
Insults and division of society
Meanwhile, the favorite not only of the Latin American extreme right claims that the state and politicians pay the most for his radical measures, not ordinary Argentines. “You can’t make a macroeconomic assessment based on the situation of an individual,” he responded in an interview with the BBC to the stories of the destitute population and accused the media of falsely portraying the dissatisfaction of Argentines.
“Milei is a populist, which means she will use the public debate to create an internal enemy, keeping the public away from the economic situation,” Julio Montero, professor of political theory at the University of San Andrés, told The Guardian. This is repeatedly shown on topics such as the right to abortion or the history of Argentina’s military dictatorship, with which Milei likes to polarize Argentine society. In addition, the head of state maintains the image of a brash and controversial politician even in negotiations with foreign partners. In the past, Milei described Brazilian President Lula da Silva as an “angry communist”, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as an “ignorant” and Colombian President Gustavo Petro as a “murderous terrorist”.
The last time Argentina got into a diplomatic dispute with Spain. When Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said Milei was “on drugs” during last year’s campaign, Argentina’s president responded by saying the Spanish government led by socialist Pedro Sánchez was only bringing “misery and death” to the country. It is to Spain that Milei will head in May. However, not for a state visit, but at the invitation of the far-right Vox movement, which the Argentine president is supposed to support before the European elections.
However, his supporters don’t seem to mind such fads. Milei’s support has been around 50 percent since his election. In April, despite the economic situation, the attack on universities and the health crisis caused by dengue fever, it fell just one percentage point to 49 percent. The president is particularly popular among the young population, where 64 percent of respondents trust him. However, over 50 percent of Argentines expressed disapproval of both the amount of pensions and the situation in education. As many as 30 percent of Mileia’s voters then said that the government had handled the dengue fever outbreak badly. Dissatisfaction with current topics can thus be a strong warning for Miley against further similar actions.
The author is an editorial associate.
Tags: cutting state slowing resistance growing Argentinas president angered students supporters A2larm
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