This Tuesday, Javier Milei encountered the first major brake on the political experiment he leads, and with which he intends to turn Argentina into one of the most liberal countries in the world.. After four months of insistent attacks and disqualifications of those who do not agree with his project, the Argentine president worked a miracle, almost a mixture of water and oil: he united in the same demonstration Peronists, radicals, social democrats, students, professors, the two labor confederations and even ultraliberal legislators.

“The UBA defends itself!” was the cry in the center of Buenos Aires, already collapsed since midday by the tens and tens of thousands of people who converged towards Congress, first, and the Plaza de Mayo, later, to leave a message at the doors of the Casa Rosada: “In defense of public education”. The demonstration has been the most important since Milei came to government on December 10 of last year.

The University of Buenos Aires (UBA) is a center of higher education founded in 1821 and where Argentines and foreigners can graduate for free. Although the UBA led the protest, it has spread to several provinces, with a strong axis in Córdoba, in the center of the country.. The National University of Córdoba is the oldest in Argentina, founded in 1613, and more than 50,000 people came out to defend it throughout the day.. In November, Milei won in Córdoba with 76% of the votes.

The dispute between the government and the universities arose from the financing of the very extensive network of public universities, which a good part of Argentines identify with the power of their extensive middle class and the possibility of social advancement.. The UBA counts among its pride the five Argentine Nobel Prize winners, who were students and, in some cases, professors in its faculty.. The UBA also gave the country 16 presidents.

“How can I not defend the public university, if it made me what I always wanted to be? A biologist defending nature. I think my parents would not have been able to pay for a private university,” Juan Cruz Martín, a 27-year-old biologist who joined the march, told EL MUNDO.

“I am the son of Spanish immigrants, and I owe the possibility of social advancement to the free public university,” repeated in recent days Jesús Rodríguez, Raúl Alfonsín's Minister of Economy in the '80s.

In those years, the Argentine democratic spring, no one raised what is repeated today from sectors of Milei's government and from the president himself: the UBA spends its budget in an obscure way, which is nourished by public resources, and promotes ideological indoctrination.

The “indoctrination” thing falls by its own weight: Milei has among its ministers several graduates of the UBA. Budget management is another matter: public universities have their academic and budgetary autonomy guaranteed, but the government maintains that their management of funds must be audited, since the university would be a kind of 'black box' of politics, especially of radicalism, a party that historically leads the student centers of Argentine higher education houses.

While this dispute is being resolved, the UBA accuses the government of intentionally defunding it. “The budget cut is 61%, and the salary reduction in the four months that Milei has been governing is 35%,” said Matías Ruiz, head of the UBA's Treasury. “We are excited by the support we are receiving from the civil society in this situation,” Ruiz added.

Guillermo Francos, Milei's Minister of the Interior, believes that the protesters are not aware of what is happening: “We are all understanding, except for those who are marching today, who still do not understand what the situation in the country is.”

Among those who dissent from Francos are legislators from La Libertad Avanza (LLA), Milei's party. Nine deputies in the province of Buenos Aires, the most powerful in the country, expressed their differences with the government in a statement: “We express once again our commitment to defending public education, the historic pride of our country.. The healthy discussion that the national government has proposed to have regarding the size of the State and its responsibilities, can in no way affect the fulfillment of its essential obligations.”

But the president, increasingly in his castle, has resorted to social networks to disqualify the march and point out its “politicization”. Milei “liked” or spread several posts in which it is stated that the mobilization is against the audit for the use of university budget funds.

“An image that he shared several times was one taken in the direction of the Plaza de Mayo, where flags with slogans and the logos of the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) and the Communist Party can be seen.. “Any doubt that it is a political march and not a student one?” o “This is how Plaza de Mayo is prepared for the march: logos of the CGT, and the symbol of the communist hammer and sickle. Ah, but the march is not political, eh,” said some of the posts that the president retweeted on the social network

The march comes hours after Milei addressed, on Monday night, a 15-minute message to the country in which he celebrated the first quarter of financial surplus in 18 years, although several economists pointed out that this result was reached thanks to the postponement of an important series of payments by the State.