Argentina: State anti-feminism

Translated by Marta Laino

Agostina Vega, Dulce María Beatriz Candia e Noelia Carolina Romero are the names of three young women remembered by the thousands of women who took the streets in Buenos Aires on the 3^rd of June 2026 to protest against gender-based violence and feminicides under the slogan “Ni una menos”.

Agostina Vega, aged 14, was raped, hanged and dismembered on the evening of 23^rd of May by a man she knew, presumably her mother’s ex-partner, Claudio Barrelier. Her remains were later found in an abandoned drainage channel.

Dulce María Beatriz Candia, aged 17, was found strangled to death 12 days after she went missing. A 47-year-old taxi driver has been arrested in connection with the murder. According to the police, he was in a romantic relationship with the 17-year-old.

Noelia Carolina Romero, aged 30, was, meanwhile, stabbed to death by her partner Tomás Adrián Nuñez before the emergency services – whom she herself had managed to call – could save her.

The slogan “Ni una menos” was coined 11 years ago in Buenos Aires, following the discovery of the body of 14-year-old Chiara Páez, who had been killed and buried in the garden by her boyfriend. The request made by Argentine women to the government has been simple and consistent since 2015: to be alive, free and debt-free.

The Minister for Security, Alejandra Monteoliva, refused to classify Agostina’s murder as a femicide, which in Argentina is punishable by life detention. This reflects the hostile climate in present-day Argentina towards efforts to combat gender-based violence and femicides. According to official data from the Femicide National Registry of the Argentinean Justice, 200 femicides were recorded, a decrease compared to the 228 recorded in 2024. According to some feminist organisations, this decline is not due to an actual reduction in femicides, but to a decrease in the number of cases recognised and recorded as such.

The ultraliberal Javier Milei, who has served as Argentina’s president since December 2023, has announced his intention to remove the offence of femicide from the Penal Code, arguing that it “legally assigns a higher value to the life of a woman than to that of a man”. Since 2023, Milei has reduced funding for prevention policies by 89%, abolished the Ministry of Women and Diversity, and closed the department responsible for protection against gender-based violence.

Moreover, many programmes providing support to victims of domestic violence have been scaled back or dismantled. Acompañar, a programme that provided financial support to 350.000 women experiencing economic violence through six months of minimum-wage payments, did not assist any beneficiaries in 2025, while the 144-emergency hotline lost two-thirds of its budget.

The Milei government’s measures target not only efforts to combat gender-based violence, but women’s rights more broadly. In the statement issued by “Ni una menos” and read aloud during the demonstration in Buenos Aires, this process is described as a form of “State anti-feminism that promotes violence and cruelty as the only forms of social relations.”

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