{"id":19,"date":"2026-03-16T14:58:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T17:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cels.org.ar\/mida\/?post_type=informe&p=19"},"modified":"2026-03-25T00:37:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T03:37:29","slug":"argentina-en-report-1","status":"publish","type":"informe","link":"https:\/\/cels.org.ar\/mida\/en\/informe\/argentina-en-report-1\/","title":{"rendered":"REPORT 1 ARGENTINA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

General Assessment of the Period June 2024 \u2013 June 2025. A Far-Right Government with Its Own Agenda and Cross-Cutting Impact<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Within the MIDA framework, Argentina occupies a position analogous to that of the United States under Trump: the far right controls the national executive and is deploying a rights-dismantling agenda from within the State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since December 2023, Argentina has been governed by Javier Milei, a leading figure of the global far right in South America. His party, La Libertad Avanza, is a coalition of various political forces that includes defenders of the last military dictatorship, anti-abortion activists, right-wing evangelicals, ultraliberal businesspeople, and landowners in favor of evicting indigenous communities. The agenda it seeks to impose therefore responds to those interests. A defining feature is the president’s identification with the Austrian School of Economics \u2014 that is, a view of the state as an obstacle to the free expansion of the market, which is conceived as the true regulator of social relations. The effects of this conception of the state and the market translated into massive cuts in public spending, without affecting budgets for security, defense, or reserved intelligence funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the months covered by this report, we identify deep setbacks across each of the human rights groups analyzed. Direct attacks and threats to those rights generated by the government operate through a pincer movement that combines the defunding and closure of social programs with repression of social protest and public attacks on political opponents. Where the far-right agenda has not been fully imposed, this has been linked to the persistence of the very social protest the government seeks to discourage. Mass marches against cuts to education and science, and a peak of mobilization following the president’s homophobic remarks at the Davos Forum in Switzerland, gradually subsided after the brutal police crackdown of March 12, 2025, in the city of Buenos Aires, during weekly protests against pension cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In parallel, a process of synergy between the local and the global was observed, through the hosting of international far-right conferences in Argentina (the Madrid Forum in September and CPAC in December 2024), as well as the participation of La Libertad Avanza officials and figures in similar forums in the United States and Europe (CPAC USA, Budapest, the Transatlantic Summit, among others). The tone of the geopolitical realignment was set by the emergence of a new “Monroe Doctrine” for Latin America under Donald Trump’s second administration from January 2025, along with the alignment of far-right governments worldwide behind the U.S. president and in support of the extermination policy carried out by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Milei administration operated throughout this period without a parliamentary majority, leading it to rely systematically on the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) as its preferred instrument for imposing reforms it could not pass in Congress, or simply did not wish to subject to legislative debate. This mode of governing by decree \u2014 which during the period under analysis affected labor, migration, and trade union rights \u2014 itself constitutes a setback in terms of democratic and institutional quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The June 2024\u2013June 2025 period is shaped by three major coordinates. The first is the consolidation of fiscal adjustment as the framework within which all other rights are processed: cuts to sexual and reproductive health, care policies, university funding, and pension benefits are not isolated phenomena but \u2014 as we note \u2014 expressions of a deliberate policy of State reduction that disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable sectors. The second coordinate is the systematic repression of protest: in Argentina, the use of force against demonstrators has become a predictable and regular feature. The third is the response of civil society: mass marches, general strikes with high participation, and judicial injunctions that managed to halt \u2014 at least temporarily \u2014 some of the most serious setbacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The June 2024\u2013June 2025 period in Argentina confirms and deepens a central MIDA hypothesis about far-right governments: the attack on rights is not a side effect of austerity policies but a program in itself, executed with ideological coherence and broad objectives. The Milei administration acted simultaneously and with varying intensity against sexual and reproductive rights, labor rights, the rights of migrant populations and indigenous peoples, the right to social protest, and freedom of expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three features distinguish the Argentine case. The first is the speed of dismantlement: within eighteen months. The second is the use of decrees as the preferred instrument for bypassing legislative debate on the most contentious reforms \u2014 the DNUs on strikes, migrants, and refugees \u2014 which, beyond representing a substantive setback for the affected rights, also constitutes a procedural setback for the democratic quality of the system. The third is the criminalization of protest as a sustained policy: in none of the other monitored countries did the repression of demonstrators acquire the regularity and visibility it had in Argentina during this period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against this backdrop, the resilience of Argentine civil society is remarkable: general strikes with high participation, mass mobilizations capable of articulating diverse demands, and judicial injunctions that succeeded in halting specific measures. The question the next period of analysis will need to answer is whether these forms of resistance can accumulate enough force to reverse some of the already-consolidated setbacks, or whether the pace of dismantlement will continue to outstrip the pace of rights recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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