BUENOS AIRES: Several thousand Argentines joined major student-led protests in Buenos Aires on Wednesday over President Javier Milei’s cuts to free university education.
The second large-scale demonstration in six months in defense of the country’s cherished public university system was called over Milei’s plans to veto a new law that guarantees universities’ funding.
The law angered Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the budget deficit.
While inflation has fallen, his spending cuts have been blamed for a surge in poverty levels, which affected more than half the population in the first six months of his presidency.
A huge crowd packed a vast square outside Congress in central Buenos Aires, where demonstrators waved placards reading “Without education for the people, no peace for the government” or “How can we have freedom without education?”
Ana Hoqui, a 30-year-old psychology graduate from a village 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Buenos Aires who was among the demonstrators, said she came to show support for a system which helped her study medicine. “My parents sacrificed a lot so that I could come study at Buenos Aires University. I could never have trained without the free, public university system,” she told AFP.
