After months of conflict and strikes, Javier Milei’s government yielded to the demands of Argentina’s university community and on Wednesday ordered a pay increase for professors and other higher education workers. It also announced it will allocate funds to boost universities’ operating budgets and those of their hospitals, though it will not increase grants for financial-aid scholarships for low-income students. The announced raises represent a partial reversal of the president’s budget-cutting measures, but remain below the university-financing law passed by Congress that Milei refuses to implement. For that reason, universities warned that the measure is “an important step but by no means definitive or sufficient.”

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“Where do the disappeared people in Mexico come from?” That is the question Dr. Luciano Valenzuela, a biologist, posed as he opened the workshop the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) organized to explain a new search method. It will be part of a project carried out over the next three years in Mexico and Central America to shorten the search for migrants who have disappeared on Mexican territory.

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A 63-year-old Argentine tourist, identified as Eduardo Ignacio, was arrested on Sunday in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais on racial discrimination charges after photographing and filming a 7-year-old Black boy aboard a tourist train, and sharing the images in a messaging group with racist comments that included the phrase: “I can take him as a slave.” The case, recorded on the steam train that connects the municipality of São João del-Rei with the historic city of the same name, raises to three the racism episodes involving South American tourists in Brazil over the past five months.

An Argentine court on Tuesday ordered the case to proceed to trial against Diego Armando Maradona’s last lawyer and legal representative, Matías Morla, as well as his sisters Rita Mabel and Claudia Norma Maradona, who are accused of defrauding the sports icon’s legitimate heirs in the exploitation of his commercial trademarks. More than five years after the star’s death, the National Criminal and Correctional Court No. 43 rejected a request to dismiss the charges and declared the investigative phase closed.

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Mariano Páez, father of lawyer and influencer Agostina Páez, was filmed imitating monkey gestures at a bar in Santiago del Estero — the same racist gesticulations that led to his daughter's indictment for racial slur in Brazil, where she spent over two months detained in Rio de Janeiro. The incident took place just hours after the young woman's return to her home province.

Climate change is setting the stage for increasingly extreme phenomena that present challenges to agriculture. In the Argentine city of Santa Fe, researcher Raquel Lía Chan, 66, created GMO seeds designed to combat one of the countryside’s greatest threats: drought.

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Lexar has partnered with the Argentine Football Association ahead of this summer's World Cup to launch a storage collection range branded with the reigning champions' famous soccer jersey.

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Medellín, Colombia – Argentine President Javier Milei banned some 60 journalists from the country’s Presidential Palace today.

The formerly accredited reporters had their fingerprint access withdrawn from the building’s security system today, with Milei citing claims of espionage and Russian funding. 

This is the latest in a pattern of repression of press freedom during Milei’s presidency, with rights groups denouncing increased harassment against members of the media. 

According to local media, the journalists who once reported from the government headquarters daily were told that they would not be permitted entry to la Casa Rosada on Thursday morning. 

Milei attacked journalists on his X account, calling them “corrupt, bribed” and accusing them of “breaking security laws”. 

The president and his followers have since circulated the slogan #NOSALP via X, meaning “No odiamos lo suficiente a los periodistas” (“We do not hate journalists enough”). 

Milei justified the ban by citing a recent criminal complaint by the Casa Militar, the presidential security unit, against journalists from Todo Noticias (TN), a local news station. 

Two TN journalists were accused of espionage after pictures from the interior of la Casa Rosada were broadcast on the news channel, something the Casa Militar claims could expose political or military secrets. 

Javier Lanari, a member of Milei’s communications team, similarly claimed via X that today’s ban was a “precautionary measure following allegations of illegal espionage made by the Casa Militar.” No further details explaining the move were given and no official statement has been released. 

This latest blanket ban also follows the prohibition earlier this month of journalists from various Argentinian outlets who were reported to have been involved in an alleged Russian disinformation campaign in the lead-up to the 2024 elections. 

In the wake of Milei’s decision, members of Congress from across the political spectrum denounced the move, presenting a draft resolution calling for the immediate reopening of la Casa Rosada to the media. 

Marcela Pagano – a lawmaker and former member of Milei’s party La Libertad Avanza – also filed a criminal complaint against the libertarian president later in the day, comparing the exceptional decision to the repression of the country’s military dictatorship. 

“Restricting journalists’ freedom of expression is the first step towards silencing any dissenting voice, a situation we in Argentina have experienced during our country’s darkest hours,” she said via X. 

Her criminal complaint accuses Milei, Lanari, and Sebastián Ignacio Ibáñez (head of the Casa Militar) of supporting a decision that constitutes “continuous and irreversible damage” to the “republican system, to freedom of the press, to the right to public information and to the professional practice of journalism.”

Featured image credit: AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko.

The post Javier Milei bans dozens of journalists from Argentina’s Presidential Palace appeared first on Latin America Reports.

The demand over funding and salaries at public universities in Argentina shows no signs of abating. Protests and strikes resumed this week to demand that the government of Javier Milei respect the university financing law, while the academic community awaits a ruling from the Supreme Court of Justice on the government’s noncompliance. Since Tuesday, schools affiliated with the country’s largest university, the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), have been occupied by students. And faculty unions are staging strikes across the country all week.

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“Milei is an employee of the big businessmen who have made millions in recent years and expect to make many more with him. He is not a lion, he is a pampered kitten of economic power.” It was October 2023, and Myriam Bregman, from the lectern assigned to her at the candidates’ debate, issued a warning about the man who, days later, would become president of Argentina. While many politicians avoided confronting a figure whose popularity was rising fast, Bregman delivered one jab after another, using the same ironic, irreverent style that infused the libertarian discourse — only in the opposite direction.

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The World Cup kicks off this Thursday when Mexico host South Africa at the historic Estadio Azteca, and FIFA has never wished more for the ball to start rolling. Once again, the game and its universal passion call for the rescue of the world or, at least, to bring it some peace of mind. Soccer aspires to serve as the very same unifying force that soothed tensions after World War II, even if the latent, globalized geopolitical tension makes it difficult.

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