A protest in which football fans joined forces with retirees in front of Argentina’s Congress ended in chaos after police shot rubber bullets and tear gassed the demonstrators, who threw stones and incinerated dumpsters. 

Retirees are among the hardest hit by President Javier Milei’s austerity measures. A report by the Center of Argentine Political Economy (CEPA) found that in January 2025, the government spent 19% less on pensions than in January 2023. The Milei administration also cut a program that made some medications free. 

Soon after Milei took office, pensioners started to protest the cuts every Wednesday in front of Congress, in small demonstrations that often met with a heavy-handed police response. 

The government has defended the cuts as necessary book-balancing, and Milei has said that planned labor reforms will make it easier for companies to hire formal workers, which will create a greater pension contributor base, paving the way to better conditions. But critics have balked at the administration’s treatment of older adults surviving on meager state pensions.

When football fans announced they would join this week’s demonstration, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich issued a press release threatening to arrest people who “violently generate disorder” or break the law. Such individuals could be banned from sporting events, she added.

‘I worked more than a donkey’

The air around Congress was thick with tear gas that made retirees and Federal Police officers alike cough, their eyes red. In a side street, police fired tear gas and shot rubber bullets at protestors, some of whom were clad in shirts of Argentina’s football teams. They threw barrages of stones and bottles at officers. A police car was set on fire and dumpsters all over the city were set ablaze.

Patricia, 66, is a retired maid who asked to be identified by her first name only. She told the Herald the government’s cuts mean she no longer gets her heart medication for free. Her six-year-old grandson, who has epilepsy and cerebral palsy, also stopped receiving free medication in the pediatric hospital that treats him following major cuts by the government.

Patricia is one of the former informal workers who was granted a pension through a moratorium that the Milei administration announced it would not renew when it expires on March 23.

“I worked more than a donkey and I had slave-driving bosses who never wanted to make social security payments,” she said. “And I worked all my life raising three children and then they come to me with this [low] pension, and now they say we don’t deserve it!”

The minimum monthly state pension in Argentina is currently AR$349,122 (US$321 at the official rate, US$284 at the MEP rate). 

Photographer hit by tear gas cannister

Independent human rights group Comisión Nacional por la Memoria (CPM)’s preliminary numbers indicated 200 protestors were injured. A spokesperson for Buenos Aires City Police said 89 people were arrested and 20 people were hospitalized with injuries.

The head of the Association of State Workers union (ATE) Daniel Catalano is among the detained. Photojournalist Pablo Grillo was hit in the head with a tear gas cannister, sustaining serious injuries that required hospital treatment, according to the Herald’s sister title, Ámbito. 

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Bullrich said in an interview with TV channel LN+ Tuesday night that the number of people arrested had risen to 150. She added that 17 police officers had been injured, but not seriously, and acknowledged that protesters and journalists had also been hurt, but that she did not yet have information on how serious their injuries were.

She said that the protesters planned to “take over Congress,” alleging that some of the football fans present belonged to barrabravas — organized, violent fan groups — and had come “prepared to kill.”

Bullrich said Grillo had been “arrested” and called him a “Kirchnerist activist.” Footage circulated on social media and in the press also showed a video of a police officer hitting an 87-year-old retiree with a baton, knocking her over. She, too, was hospitalized, according to the Argentine press.

Francisco “Paco” Olveria, a priest who works in impoverished neighborhoods, was among the protestors wearing a Boca Juniors shirt. “As Maradona used to say, you have to be a coward not to defend retirees,” he said.