Millions reject Miley’s rant about public universities in Argentina

“It is not for sale, the country is not for sale,” sang and cheered as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets this Tuesday in Buenos Aires and other Argentine cities in defense of the free public university. Education is a right, not a privilege, proved to be the watchword of a historic mobilization that brought together students, teachers, workers, trade unionists, human rights organizations and political parties. A collective and widespread reaction to the budgetary suffocation adopted by the far-right government of Xavier Miley against national universities.

The march in downtown Buenos Aires was filled with people from the Plaza de los dos Congresos to the endpoint in the Plaza de Mayo, where a document was read denouncing the dire situation of public universities as a result of the liberal president’s chainsaw. According to organizers’ estimates, about 800,000 people were mobilized. Miley’s allies, the Buenos Aires city government led by Jorge Macri, had 150,000. From the stage, Piera Fernández de Piccoli, head of the Argentine University Federation, read a speech signed with the trade union Front of National Universities and the National University Council: “Without fair salaries for teachers and non-teachers, the public university is unviable (… ) We reject the policy of adjustment and discipline.

Among the speakers, the voices of Taty Almeida, mother of Plaza de Mayo Línea Foundadora, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel emerged. Tati was the first to say: “I reject the Meili government’s decision not to subsidize public universities. “This president says this is a political march, yes it is political, but not partisan.” For his part, the Nobel laureate stressed: “We defend people’s right to live with dignity. “There is no money for education or health, but there is money to buy fighter planes.”

A few days ago, the Argentine government had purchased 24 North American F-16 aircraft from Denmark, which Ukraine had rejected. Although Miley repeats like a mantra that “there is no money”, the plane, built almost 40 years ago, cost $650 million.

“We have to jump, we have to jump, more budget for studies,” a girl joined in singing in the Plaza de Mayo, carrying a large book in her hand with “the future” written on one side and “public and free universities” on the other. Belen Diaz, a kinesiology student at the University of Hurlingham, tells Diario.es how her faculty feel about the government’s adjustment. “It’s about our future, about all my colleagues, who have been Our careers are happening like never before: we don’t turn on the air conditioning, we have to stop the cultural and sports activities. There were scholarships for them and now they don’t. And they cut down our operations in the hospitals.”

The situation of national universities is dire: with the same budget as of 2023 and year-on-year inflation that exceeded 287% in the first quarter, the available funds are clearly insufficient. Faced with this March’s announcement of what promises to be massive, the Human Capital Ministry reported last week that a 70% raise had been ordered in March and that another increase for the same percentage would be given in May. This indifferent response from the government did not deter the call for march: this Tuesday mobilizations took place in cities across Argentina, including Córdoba, Rosario and Mar del Plata.

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Felipe Vega, director of the Common Basic Cycle at UBA, told Diario.es that the government’s announcement is misleading. “The 70% from March and the new 70% from May are not retroactive, so in one case it is a 10-month update and in the other, an eight-month one. So this is actually an increase of 107% against the annual inflation of 300%. It is mathematically inadequate.”

Vega highlighted the reputation of Argentina’s public universities. “Compete among the top 100 best universities in the world. By 2022, UBA was above the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of São Paulo, and we have a budget eight times less than that of Mexico and 15 times less than the University of São Paulo.

There are 57 public universities in Argentina. According to the registry of the Ministry of Education, 2.16 million students are from national universities and 551 thousand students are from private schools. UBA is the largest with 347 thousand students.

No Preach: Diversity

Paloma Garay, a geography professor at UBA, was impressed by the number of people around her. “I’m excited because students are very active in defending the public university. This government says that we provide education to children. Public universities are the universities with the greatest diversity of voices, and those that teach are private universities. One goes to Universidad Católica Argentina, which is an excellent university, but it has the same approach. There are Catholics and Jews at the public university, there are people who identify themselves as leftists and others as rightists; The poor and the rich. “Quality is created by diversity of thought.”

Vega also scrapped the idea of ​​teaching in classrooms. “It is ridiculous to think about the ideological principle proposed by the Miley government. Given the professorship offer, it is impossible to support that statement. For example, Luis Caputo (current Minister of Economy), Axel Kicillof (governor of Buenos Aires Province), and Carlos Melkonian (going to be Patricia Bullrich’s Minister of Economy) graduated from the Faculty of Economic Sciences, all with diverse ideologies. Were inclined. When Miley talks about education in classes, she is the one who proposes that the university study the writers she likes, who are from the Austrian School. What’s wrong is that they only look at Rothbard, Hayek, Friedman. They will also have to look at Marx and Keynes. Fortunately, political power cannot interfere as universities are autonomous.”

The march featured political diversity, with the presence of leftist Peronist Kicillof, through to representatives of the centrist Radical Civic Union, including former presidential candidate Sergio Massa, centre-wing Peronists and other leftist formations.

Student centers of private universities joined this mobilization. Celia Cabrera, a nurse who graduated from a private university, said: “I trained in a private university but I support public education because I have many people in my family who have left public university and who are teachers at UBA. “I defend public schools, which is a great social support, it is a great support that the state has to guarantee,” he said, waving a blue handkerchief that read “Public Education.”

Gabriela Piovano, a leading infectious disease specialist at the Muniz hospital, participated in the march. “If education is private and health is private then you are motivated not by knowledge but by money. Muniz is a teaching hospital, it does not depend on the budget of the UBA, but it depends on the budget of the City of Buenos Aires, which has been ruled for more than 25 years by neoliberalism, which took the cut of both as a practice. Health and educational training. There are residencies in public hospitals that were left vacant because the salaries offered to them were too low, so these students have opted to do internships in private hospitals.

Lack of adjustment and lighting in classrooms

The Superior Council of the University of Buenos Aires declared a state of emergency and decided on some measures such as energy savings. Between April 2023 and March 2024, electricity tariffs increased by 500% compared to the frozen budget. Teachers’ and non-teachers’ salaries have dropped by a third of their value in recent months following the 54.3% devaluation agreed upon by Miley when he arrived at the Casa Rosada on December 10.

Sofia Rivas, a computer engineering student at the UBA Faculty of Engineering, explains how she experiences adjustment to her place of study. “The use of lifts was cut down, two out of six were used, individual classes and classes held at night were reduced, so that natural light could be used.”

The UBA, like the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (Coniset), represents places of academic prestige and is part of Argentina’s heritage. Victoria Garcia, representative of ATE-Coniset (Coniset State Workers Association), said decisively: “For us as Coniset workers, this mobilization touches us very closely because we are in the same situation as teachers, with a huge budgetary crisis. The reasons affected are the national government’s decision to suppress universities budgetaryly, in an attack on the public in general and science and culture in particular.