BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — After 11 months in office, the right of Argentina President Javier Milei he made good on his landmark pledge to eliminate the country’s monumental deficits by shrinking public wages, cutting subsidies and suppressing the already low wages of state workers.

Austerity generated misery. But with the country’s left-wing opposition in disarray after he delivered economic disaster that Miley inheritedArgentina has not seen the kind of widespread social unrest that has characterized past economic crises.

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

Mile’s recent veto of a bill that increases spending on university budgets struck a collective nerve in a nation that has long considered free education a critical engine of social progress, drawing the largest demonstrations since the takeover the mandate of the libertarian leader.

Last week outdoor classes held in the Plaza de Mayo, the main square that houses the seat of government, marked the latest in a new wave of protests supporting public universities that has taken hold Argentine in the last month. Students are taking over university campuses in the coming days ahead of another mass protest.

Here’s a look at what the students are protesting and what it means for Mila’s effort to turn crisis-prone Argentina into an economic success story.

Professors and non-teaching staff at Argentina’s public universities are demanding a pay rise to compensate skyrocketing inflation which they say has reduced its purchasing power by 60% this year.

After a march led by students mobilized half a million protesters in AprilMile’s government compensated the universities for operating costs but not for teachers’ salaries.

The average salary for an associate professor is now $320 per month. For teaching assistants, it’s only $120 per month.

The university funding bill, which Milei vetoed, would have raised staff salaries to cover annual inflation from 2024 – which now exceeds 200% – and would have adjusted them for inflation going forward.

Even though Mila’s drastic measures have recently brought monthly inflation below 5%, the number of Argentinians in poverty swelled to over 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 worsened,” said Nicolas Jose Lavagnino, a researcher in the philosophy of biology at Conicet, Argentina’s main research body, which reported the loss of 250 scientists this year due to budget cuts.

The unions reject the government’s offer to raise wages by 6.8% as inadequate. The University of Buenos Aires – one of the largest and most prestigious in Latin America – has warned of mass resignations due to salary depreciation. At least 30 professors have resigned from UBA’s Faculty of Agriculture alone.

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

But the education bill would have cost just 0.14 percent of GDP, raising doubts about the economic significance of Mile’s battle.

“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 the University of La Plata in Argentina.

The irascible president blasted universities as left-wing indoctrination camps.

“How productive are scientists?” he said in 2023 in the electoral campaign, pleading for the defunding of the Conicet research institute. While promising not to get rid of free public education, Milei is calling for universities to be subject to a government audit and do more to clean up. up corruption.

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

Milei’s party in recent weeks has also revived an unpopular attempt to charge tuition fees for non-resident foreigners, who account for nearly 4 percent of total enrollment.

Argentina’s public education system is rare because there are no entry bars—foreigners who cannot afford a bachelor’s degree in their own countries can enroll for free in top public universities such as UBA, where all five countries from the country. Nobel Prize winners studied. Half of Mile’s Cabinet even graduated from public universities.

Some say Milei is justified in demanding more financial transparency, pointing to the alleged misuse of funds and the progressive politicization of what was once a universally respected institution.

“There were contracts with figures in the public sector where absurd things were financed,” said Argentine political consultant Sergio Berensztein, referring to scandals broke out during the mandate of former left-wing president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner over big-budget research projects that audits later showed never existed. “They were simply mechanisms to divert funds for political interests,”

After Milei’s government mustered just enough votes to prevent the opposition from overriding its veto of the university funding bill on October 10, more than 250,000 Argentines – from the far left to the center right – flooded the streets .

The student-led movement has drawn a host of Argentine protesters stung by austerity that has deepened the recession and pushed poverty to its highest level in 20 years – pensioners desperate for better pensionsdoctors angry at poor wages, artists against the closure of the National Film Institute, scientists angry at the highlighted funds, pilots worried about Mile’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 believes Milei miscalculated in going after Argentina’s proud symbol of publicly funded education for the masses.

“It’s like someone came and said, ‘We’re going to get rid of the Plaza de Mayo,'” he said, referring to the historic Buenos Aires square that was filled with protesters last week. “Milei understood this too late. … You cannot decide the fate of the Plaza de Mayo. It belongs to all of us.”

The question of if the demonstrations die in a real threat to Milei remains open.

“I think these protests are not at the point of being life-threatening for Milei, but it is obviously 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 up.”

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