Students from state universities ramped up their conflict against President Javier Milei’s budget cuts on Wednesday, taking dozens of classes onto the streets.
Ahead of a torchlight march through Buenos Aires, professors and students staged “open classes” outside multiple faculties, many of which have been occupied by demonstrators opposed to funding cutbacks for public higher education institutes.
University of Buenos Aires (UBA) students at the faculties of Law, Medicine, Philosophy and Literature, Economics, Social Sciences and Exact Sciences held lessons and lectures outside of their normal spaces in order to draw attention to austerity imposed by Milei’s government on state universities, where 80 percent of higher education students learn.
President Milei vetoed a bill passed in August that granted more funds to universities on the grounds that it jeopardised his cornerstone policy of fiscal balance, even though a congressional budget review estimated that the proposed law represented just 0.14 percent of GDP.
The funds were to compensate for the loss of purchasing power facing professors and non-teaching staff, whose salaries – like all citizens – have slumped amid runaway inflation exceeding 200 percent per year.
The lack of wage improvements has led to the mass resignation of many professors and researchers, say university chancellors.
In the Caballito neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, UBA students from the Faculty of Arts took desks and blackboards out onto the pavement where professors lectured loudly to make themselves heard. Traffic blockades imposed by demonstrators were initially tolerated by the police.
At other faculties, students continued their ongoing occupations of faculties and campus areas in a calm atmosphere that nevertheless allowed classes to take place inside.
Teachers' unions have announced a 24-hour strike for Thursday and another 48-hour strike for next Monday and Tuesday.
Later Wednesday evening, students and teachers will march with torches from UBA’s faculties of Medicine, Dentistry and Economics in the city centre to a building where the Education Secretariat is located, some seven blocks away.
“All united for salary and budget increases, let's defend the public university together,” read social media posts detailing the call put from student activists.
To date, two major marches in support of the public university system have already taken place, though another one is in the works. A date for the protest has yet to be finalised.
Security Minister Patricia Bullrich claimed Wednesday that student protesters ‘“want to generate a revolt,” comparing the situation to violent demonstrations that occurred in Chile in 2019.
“The objective they have is to generate a revolt and try to destabilise” the government, Bullrich alleged. “We are not going to allow it, we are not fools.”
– TIMES/AFP
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