On an overcast Saturday morning, Sabrina Díaz is helping her five-year-old daughter, Ayme, prepare for International Women’s Day. Mother and daughter plan to march together through the streets of Buenos Aires.
“It’s not just a day to celebrate, but rather a day of reflection, and I try to explain it in words she’ll understand,” says Díaz, 39, a teacher at the University of Buenos Aires. “It is a day when we try to appreciate the women in the past who fought for the rights we now have, and to try not to lose them.”
The sparkles in their hair shimmer against the overcast sky in front of Congress. Ayme plays with a purple balloon, a colour representing gender equality that’s worn by many fellow protesters in the crowd.
“It’s important to me that she accompanies me at marches, [she has done] ever since she was in my belly,” Díaz explains. “For her to grow up with another perspective – a perspective of rights, of diversity, that people are different in distinct ways but that todos y todes have the same rights.”
The familial duo are among the tens of thousands of campaigners who are taking the streets. The crowd is motivated – demonstrators feel their rights are increasingly under attack from the budget-slashing policies of President Javier Milei’s government.
Many of those marching hold up signs protesting Milei’s “chainsaw cuts” that have affected access to abortion and the President’s initiative to remove femicide from Argentina’s Penal Code.
Since taking office in December 2023, Argentina’s self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” leader has – among other measures – eliminated the INADI anti-discrimination watchdog and closed the Women, Gender & Diversity Ministry.
He has railed against “murderous” abortion, “radical feminism” and slammed the woke agenda.
Echoing the annual tradition, the National Federation of University Teachers (CONADU) are staging a one-day Women’s Day strike to demand better wages, working conditions and an end to patriarchal violence within university settings.
Consistent with his approach to union action, Milei promised to dock a day’s pay for state employees who join the walkout.
‘Moving backwards’
Díaz considers that the feminist progress made during her lifetime is under attack. Argentina is “moving backward” under the Milei administration, she argues.
She hopes the younger generation will continue moving beyond “white feminism” to better acknowledge the inequality that exists between women, as well, due to differences in citizenship, class and sexuality.
“There are also women who can’t be here because they were killed,” she explains carefully to her daughter.
In front of the National Congress building, the Atravesados por el Femicidio NGO displays 172 pairs of purple shoes in front of Congress as a form of collective memory – each boot, high-heel and sandal represents a recent victim of femicide in Argentina.
One of the pairs belonged to Melissa Kumber, who was just 27 years old when her ex-partner, a federal police officer, shot her in the head in 2019.
Melisa’s mother, Claudia Vallejos, painted her daughter’s shoes purple for the demonstration. It took years for her to muster the strength to do so, she said.
“There are many mothers who have put the shoes of their own daughters here. It is a way to visualise femicide,” the 54-year-old said. “Because femicide exists, and we are their voice. We are the other face of femicide, because our love for our daughters doesn't die, it continues.”
“I still have another 27-year-old daughter, and I have a lot of fear that when she falls in love, that when a man appears in her life, that again I won’t be able to help her.”
Carola Labrador, another organiser of the project, lost her daughter Candela Sol Rodríguez to femicide in 2011. The young girl was kidnapped, raped and killed at age 11. 9ix years later, her killers were jailed, with two of the perpetrators handed lifetime prison sentences.
“After so many years, we continue demanding justice for those who aren’t here,” Labrador said.
Both women wore shirts displaying the photo and name of their lost loved-ones.
Closeby, a 10-year-old girl — who told the Times she’s been attending the annual women’s march since before she can remember — holds up a homemade sign reading: “Merecemos vivir sin miedo” (“We deserve to live without fear”).
Pedro Santas Deluca said he attended the march to collectively fight against a strengthening “hateful and violent” discourse in Argentina. He feels much of it stems from Milei.
Two months ago, for the first time in his life, the literature professor was verbally attacked on the street for his sexual orientation.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think hate is now invited. And I think women are even more at risk,” Deluca said.
“What are you left with as a citizen in order to confront these strong policies against women, members of the LGBTQ collective, against retirees? We have to take to the streets, and with joy,” the 57-year-old said.
“Many difficult things leave you stuck at home, because you don’t think you can do anything. But then what happens now, in this case, is that someone finds hope, the possibility that another way is possible. Individually, nobody can do anything, but here we are hand in hand.”
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