BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND MARTÍN KOPPEL
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Banging on drums and singing songs against the government, 20,000 students marched to the Argentine congress here June 7 to protest a new education bill proposed by president Carlos Menem. The measure introduces tuition fees for the first time in public universities and ends university autonomy. Thousands of students participated in similar mobilizations in Corrientes, Santa Fe, Paraná, Rosario, Tucumán, Salta, Córdoba, and other provinces.
Brushing aside the protesters, deputies adopted Menem's Law on Higher Education 112 to 15. Deputies of both major opposition parties walked out of congress in protest before the vote.
Thousands of furious students surrounding the building of the National Congress jeered and booed legislators when the vote was announced that night. Small groups of students pelted riot police with rocks. After the bulk of demonstrators left the scene, the cops attacked the students with high-pressure water cannon, chasing dozens into a nearby pizza parlor and beating several students.
"Education is our right, a social right, it must be free," said Melina Yangílevich, 23, who studies history at the National University of the Province of Buenos Aires in Tandil. "Menem, if he has his way, will make it virtually impossible for any of us from the working class to be able to go to college." Yangílevich and 70 other students from her campus made the 250-mile trip to the capital "because no matter what happens we must stand for what we believe in - public education."
The bill introduces fees of up to $300 per month. Each local university administration will set the amount of tuition, which it will be obligated to do since the federal government plans to drastically cut funding to public schools as part of implementing the new legislation. Tuition will also depend on the income of a student's family. Government officials point to this provision in their effort to win public support. The students' opposition to the introduction of tuition "is absurd," Menem told the Argentine daily Clarín, "because a fee for those who can pay a quota will benefit those who can't." He claimed that the new fees will help finance scholarships for students from working-class families.
This argument "is a fraud," said Yangílevich. "It's the state's responsibility to fund education for all. As it is, many of us can hardly afford to buy books and pay rent and transportation."
"Wages are very low, and unemployment is high," added Paula Parra, 20, a student of physical education, "especially for young people." The same day as the vote on the education bill, the government announced that unemployment had climbed to nearly 14 percent at the end of May.
"The federal government will also have more power over the content of textbooks, class syllabi, course requirements, and when it can send cops into a school to put down a `disturbance,' " said Nelson Favian Torres, 21, from the University of La Plata. These decisions are now made by a council made up of elected representatives of students, alumni, and faculty. No single group can have more than 50 percent representation on the council.
The new legislation gives the executive branch of the government the power to pick the university councils with a majority composed of professors and deans. "This destroys university autonomy," Torres said.
The June 7 mobilizations were part of a series of student protests in the last few months, which included occupations of universities in Córdoba, La Rioja, and other provinces. The action that received the most publicity nationwide was a sit-down by 5,000 students around the National Congress June 1. The students blocked entrances to congress, preventing many deputies from entering and forcing the government to postpone discussion and vote on Menem's proposal. The action infuriated the president, who called the students "seditious, anti-democratic, and fascist." This widely publicized comment was the point of much ridicule during the June 7 demonstrations.
"Today's youth are not like those even of my time," said Alicia Castigliego, 31, who is the general secretary of the University Federation of Argentina, the national organization of college students that called the June 7 marches. "Those entering [the universities] are no longer the apathetic ones who lived through the military dictatorship - now they're not afraid."
In provinces such as Córdoba and Río Negro, striking teachers and other unionists have joined the students in their protests against the Law on Higher Education.
Many workers and students interviewed by Militant reporters in Córdoba and Buenos Aires pointed to the new education bill as another piece of the austerity measures that the capitalist rulers here have been implementing to shift the burden of a deep-going economic crisis onto the backs of working people.
On June 6, Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo announced that Argentina was officially in a recession. The government will not pay federal employees their June wages until mid-July, Cavallo said, in order to meet "obligations with the International Monetary Fund" - that is to continue paying interest on the country's foreign debt to imperialist banks and other financial institutions. In most provinces other than Buenos Aires, state employees - including teachers, hospital workers, and water and electrical utility workers - have not been paid for nearly two months. The resulting desperate economic conditions have provoked occupations of hospitals and government ministries, strikes, and street protests often met by fierce police repression.
"The fight is far from over," said Manuel Raúl Arce, 23, from the University of La Plata, as the June 7 protest outside the National Congress was winding down. "Menem rammed through his education bill. Let's see how he does with his other measures."