Milei minimizes university budget crisis, but there is already talk of emergency

The libertarian Argentine president, Javier Milei, is seeking to minimize the budgetary crisis in public universities, considering it something normal, in controversy with left-wing opponents, influential in university spaces.

But at the elitist University of Buenos Aires (UBA) the walls are turning black and the elevators and air conditioning stopped working in some buildings last week.

Professors teach classes of 200 people without microphones or projectors, because the public university – among the best in Latin America – is unable to pay the electricity bill.

“This is an unthinkable crisis,” said Valeria Anón, a 50-year-old Literature teacher, at a demonstration against Milei’s austerity measures, held on Tuesday in downtown Buenos Aires, with the participation of thousands of people. . “I feel really sad for my students and myself,” she added.

In its policy of achieving a budget surplus, Milei is cutting expenses in a general and transversal way, closing ministries, cutting funding for cultural centers, dismissing public servants and eliminating subsidies.

On Monday, Milei said Argentina had achieved its first quarterly surplus since 2008.

“We are making the impossible possible, even with the majority of politicians, unions, the media and the majority of economic agents against us”, he said, during a television intervention.

A crowd of university students and professors left the UBA in protest on Tuesday, joining thousands of other protesters in the center of the capital. Some private schools closed in solidarity.

The protests spread to other Argentine cities.

A sign of the more widespread ideological battle taking place, trade unionists and supporters of left-wing parties also filled the streets.

Since July, when the budget year begins in Argentina, the 200-year-old UBA has only received 8.9% of the funds budgeted for it, while facing annual inflation of 290%.

The university has already said that it is having great difficulty keeping the lights on and guaranteeing basic services in university hospitals, which have reduced their capacity.

After declaring a budgetary state of emergency, UBA warned last week that, without a rescue plan, it would close in the coming months, interrupting the studies of 380,000 students.

A statement that came as a shock to Argentines, who consider a free, quality university education to be a natural right.

The UBA has a prestigious intellectual tradition, having already produced five Nobel Prizes and 17 presidents of Argentina.