Jacob Sugarman 
Dolores Reyes had always kept a peaceful profile on social media. She has never owned an X account, and when she posted to Instagram, she often did so to alert followers to a reading or to promote her novels Cometierra (Eartheater, 2019) and Miseria (Misery, 2023). So when she received a torrent of insults and violent threats in early November, she was baffled and horrified in equal measure.
“I began asking the people in my circle,” Reyes told the Herald. “No one understood what was happening. Finally, we figured out that some prominent libertarians on YouTube had posted videos claiming that Cometierra was pornography, that [Buenos Aires Governor Axel] Kiciloff was distributing copies to children, and that kids as young as eight were being forced to read it. It didn’t matter that these were all lies. People watched them and believed them.”
Vice President Victoria Villarruel’s tweet opened the floodgates. On November 7, in a post that contained two disembodied quotes from Reyes’ first book, Villarruel accused Kiciloff of subjecting the country’s youth to “degradation and immorality.” She also called for the immediate removal of the novel from classrooms, ending her missive with the rallying cry “with our children NO!!”
“It was a horrible moment,” reflected Reyes, her voice pained. “Not only did the vice president target a private citizen, but she tacitly appealed to her political movement to do the same.”
Cometierra is one of several titles that the ruling La Libertad Avanza (LLA) coalition has denounced for containing pornographic content aimed at “sexualizing children” in recent months. Others include International Booker Prize finalist Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s Las aventuras de la China Iron (The Adventures of China Iron), a feminist retelling of the Argentine epic poem Martín Fierro, and Sol Fantin’s memoir Si no fueras tan niña (If you weren’t such a girl). The latter, first published in 2022, chronicles the sexual abuse Fantin suffered as a teenager by the 30-something leader of a new-age religious group. Each is one of the 100 literary works that the province of Buenos Aires distributes to schools and libraries through its Identidades Bonaerenses (Buenos Aires Identities) literacy program.
This is not the first time that Milei or a member of his administration has targeted a government-sponsored education initiative. On the campaign trail, the ticket regularly inveighed against the country’s Integral Sex Education Law (ESI, by its Spanish acronym), and it has worked to dismantle programs designed to reduce teen pregnancies since being elected. What distinguishes these recent attacks are the tactics employed — stratagems that not only echo the culture wars waged by the right in the United States but also those of the Argentine junta that ruled from 1976 to 1983, when censorship was official policy.
‘An international phenomenon’
Reyes was appalled but unsurprised that Villarruel focused her ire on Cometierra. Set in an anonymous Buenos Aires slum, the surrealist tale follows a nameless woman whose habit of eating dirt imbues her with visions of the dead and the disappeared. With her first mound of earth, she learns that her mother was a victim of femicide at the hands of her father, and before long she’s enlisted to find others’ loved ones who have vanished without a trace. Among other things, the novel functions as a commentary on the brutality of a regime that forcibly kidnapped and killed an estimated 30,000 people.
“A book that explores these themes is obviously going to bother a political movement that treats violence against women as an invention of international Marxism,” said Reyes. “It’s a classist, misogynist, and hateful worldview. What’s more, Villarruel has worked tirelessly to free the very people responsible for Argentina’s crimes against humanity. The way the novel deals with this may be what bothered her the most.”
“We’ve seen this government attack the country’s cinema and its pop stars,” she continued. “Now it’s going after its literature.”
This pattern has not been lost on Alberto Sileoni. Formerly President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s education minister from 2009 to 2015, Sileoni now holds the title of culture and education director for a Buenos Aires province currently under Peronist governance. This has placed him in the crosshairs of the Milei administration and right-wing media figures like La Nación’s Eduardo Feinmann, who has labeled him a “degenerate.”
“It’s an international phenomenon,” Sileoni told the Herald. “La Libertad Avanza is much more aligned with reactionary movements across the globe than it is with the more classical forms of conservatism in Argentina. When you see this kind of campaign, you think of states like Iowa and Florida, where [Republicans] have banned thousands of books from public schools.”
Ironically, it’s not just the Argentine right that appears to be taking its political cues from the United States. On November 17, Governor Kiciloff posted an image of himself reading Cometierra at a table with a mate and thermos beside a stack of books that included Si no fueras tan niña, among others.
“Nothing better than a rainy Sunday reading Argentine literature. Uncensored,” the caption read.
Villarruel, in turn, responded on X that Kiciloff had “exalted pedofilia” by displaying Fantin’s memoir. “Are you seriously using that tragedy to fill the heads of children and adolescents in Buenos Aires province with shit?” she wrote.
Kicillof’s original post recalled a 2022 tweet from California Governor Gavin Newsom that showed him holding a copy of Toni Morrison’s Beloved over paperback editions of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, George Orwell’s 1984, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Newsom’s message was similarly pithy: “Reading some banned books to figure out what these states are so afraid of.”
A questionable criminal complaint
Days earlier, a youth advocacy group called the Natalio Morelli Foundation had filed criminal charges against Sileoni, alleging an “abuse of power” and the “corruption of minors.” During an interview with Radio Mitre at the time, the organization’s president, Barbara Morelli, claimed that her organization had consulted with psychologists over a period of weeks before determining that exposure to this literature could “encourage behaviors and curiosities” that are unhealthy to a child’s development.
“If kids want to read fiction, they should do so at home,” Morelli said.
According to its website, the Foundation is “fervently” committed to protecting the well-being of children and adolescents and to “building a world where every boy and girl can grow up in an environment of love, respect, and equal opportunities.” How the organization aims to accomplish these lofty goals is more opaque, although it purports to offer legal aid for families in need as well as “extensive courses taught by professionals.”
As Página/12 has previously reported, however, the Natalio Morelli Foundation does not appear in any official registry.
The non-government organization also has extensive ties to LLA. In October, firebrand deputy Lilia Lemoine presented her first legislation to Congress — a bill that aimed to increase penalties for those who make false claims of gender violence, and sexual or child abuse — in collaboration with the Foundation. In addition, one of its board members, Sebastián Franco, was an LLA candidate for city council in Lanús, Buenos Aires province.
As for the group’s allegations, Sileoni maintains that Identidades Bonaerenses is an educational tool and that the titles named in the complaint are works of literature. What’s more, he insists, they are taught in high schools and are distributed with disclaimers indicating that they are intended for use in a classroom, under an educator’s supervision.
A source close to Villarruel told the Herald that the vice president’s indignation stemmed from the books’ availability in school libraries. Over the phone, the official argued that every author is entitled to freedom of expression, but the state should not make these titles so readily available to children.
Manufacturing a moral panic
“Kids already have access to illicit materials with the click of a button,” noted Sileoni. “They’re able to see things they can’t handle in the privacy of their bedrooms. These books are not pornography, and calling them that is a convenient way to frighten society. It seems to me that the goal is to generate a moral panic, to have teachers censor themselves, and to eradicate comprehensive sex education.”
“There’s been a revival of a certain conservative logic that says, ‘Don’t mess with our kids,’” he added. “It’s not the same, of course, but it’s one that rhymes with some of the worst moments in Argentine history.”
On November 15, Sol Fantin published an open letter to the families of Buenos Aires. Beneath a quote from the poet and civil rights activist Audrey Lorde that reads, “Silence will not protect us,” she acknowledged the anxiety of parents whose kids may be assigned her memoir while offering an impassioned defense of literature’s power to complicate points of view and build empathy for others. Fantin likewise argued that schools have a crucial role to play in addressing subjects like sexual abuse, and that prohibiting reading materials would only prevent needed conversation.
Eight days after posting her missive online, Fantin participated in a public reading of Cometierra at the Picadero Theater in downtown Buenos Aires to protest recent efforts to ban the novel and other works from school libraries. Nearly 100 authors took part, including Reyes, Cabezón Cámara, and Claudia Pineiro. Reyes’ novel, meanwhile, climbed to the top of the Argentine book retailer Cúspide Libros’ best-seller list.
“This government talks a lot about freedom, and yet it’s putting in jeopardy the very idea of freedom of expression,” Fantin told the Herald in December.
“Art gives us the ability to imagine other worlds and how they might work. I think that’s what this administration finds so threatening.”
