Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Saturday, October 19, at 4:50 p.m.

The desk chairs were heaped atop each other in the university lobby as if to shield it against a storm. Across the building’s facade hung a banner that read, “Without decent wages, UBA doesn’t work.” Outside its gates, adjacent to the entrance, another loudly declared “Facultad tomada” (“School taken”). 

On Wednesday, the School of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), one of more than 30 institutions of higher learning under occupation by their student bodies, held its classes in the courtyard affectionately known as Plaza Seca and along Santiago del Estero, between Carlos Calvo and Humberto Primo. 

The demonstration, which began on Monday, has served as a show of force after President Javier Milei vetoed legislation this month that would have provided essential funding for public universities. Work stoppages are currently scheduled for next week, and the Teachers Union Association has announced that select class will be held in Plaza de Mayo on Tuesday.

“The school building is under student control,” explained Nazarena Sciola, a 24-year-old sociology student and a vice president for UBA’s student-led Centro de Estudiantes de Ciencias Sociales. “We determine who comes in and who goes out. The outdoor classes are meant to raise public awareness of our demands, but they’re also a response to Milei, who has said that the students at public universities are ghosts. We exist, and we’re here to study, no matter what he claims.”

For several nights, Sciola and a rotating group of approximately 100 schoolmates have slept in sleeping bags in the school’s ground-floor classrooms. On Tuesday, a group of students arranged a watch party for the Argentina-Bolivia match that saw the Albiceleste triumph 6-0 behind three goals from Lionel Messi. The evening before, they held a screening of Relatos Salvajes — an Oscar-nominated comedy exploring how Argentines respond when pushed to their breaking point.

Days after the veto, the Ministry of Human Capital issued a 6.8% salary increase for university professors and staff via decree. The Argentine Federation of National University had been seeking 63.5%, claiming the figure represented the value lost to inflation since Milei assumed office in December. According to the University Professors Federation, the average monthly salary for a professor teaching 10 hours per week was just AR$276,981 (approximately US$240 at the MEP dollar rate) in September.

“I just crashed on the floor”

“Personally, it distresses me to think that I may not be able to continue my studies next year because the government won’t pay its teachers a living wage,” said Candela Flax, a 20-year-old sociology student. “There’s a feeling that no one knows what’s going to happen, that there are no limits with this administration. It makes it really difficult to get on with life.”

Flax, who lives in Boedo, spent the night at the university earlier in the week after she found herself chatting with classmates until close to midnight. That she hadn’t brought a sleeping bag, or a toothbrush, proved no impediment.

“I just crashed on the floor,” she said with a smile, tapping the ash from a hand-rolled cigarette. “It was a little tricky, but I wasn’t going home at that hour. I’ve been running into people I know pursuing different careers who I never get to see. That’s been interesting.”

Despite the circumstances, the mood on Santiago del Estero was unmistakably jubilant as professors and adjuncts addressed their respective classes amid the intermittent cheers, blasts of crazy string, and plumes of colored smoke that typify the street celebrations for new graduates.

Around 6:00 pm, a half dozen students began dicing onions and carrots for a cauldron of chicken guiso. One of them was a 21-year-old sociology student from Tegucigalpa named Fernando Lopez.

“I’ve always viewed the University of Buenos Aires, and the national universities in Argentina, as a beacon for the rest of Latin America,” Lopez told the Herald. “I think it’s terrible the way this administration has attacked them.”

“In Honduras, public universities are very exclusive,” he continued. “I think that’s true of a lot of Latin American countries. It seems to me that the current government wants to replicate that model and dismantle everything that has been built here.”

An uncertain future for students and faculty

In the wake of Milei’s university funding veto, the ruling party La Libertad Avanza (LLA) revealed it was preparing regulations that would require non-resident foreign students to pay a fee to study at the country’s public universities. (These students are already required to present a DNI to enroll, although they have a grace period to settle their legal status.) To do so, LLA would need to modify the Migration Law and Higher Education Law that guarantee the right to a free education.

“There’s a lot of hate going around right now,” Lopez added. “There’s this xenophobic idea that we’re freeloaders, like we don’t contribute to the country in any way. But fiscally, there’s no difference between us. I pay the same taxes as anybody else who studies here. If we have to pay additional tariffs, what’s to stop them from making native Argentines do the same?”

By a quarter to nine, the sun had set on Plaza Seca, and a single lecture on French philosopher and theorist Michel Foucault was winding down. While a line formed for rice and stew on the street outside, the class’s professor, Jorge Lulo, fielded questions from his students. There would be a strike next week, he told them, but what might happen after that he couldn’t predict.

Now 65, Lulo has taught political science at UBA for 36 years. He confided that while he remains committed to his students, the Milei administration’s austerity measures have begun to take a toll.  

“Whereas many teachers work for [the research institute] CONICET, I’m exclusive to the university,” he said. “The salary decrease has been indisputable. I don’t know the percentage exactly, but I would put it between 30 and 40%, so my wife and I have felt it.”

“I see the occupation as something symbolic,” Lulo went on. “We have to be careful not to exhaust this instrument because if occupying schools and strikes becomes our only response to this budgetary asphyxiation, we risk further weakening the institution. If public education is to survive, it will be through the efforts of all of us, students and teachers alike.”

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