Six months on: How Argentinian women really feel with ‘anarcho-strongman’ Javier Milei in charge

Since Chainsaw-wielding ‘traditionalist’ Javier Milei became president of Argentina, violent attacks have increased and many women feel afraid like never before. Following last week’s firebombing of two lesbian couples, Anna Hart reports from Buenos Aires and hears from women who say it is like ‘being ruled by apes’

Milei has used his presidency to pander to a young generation of disaffected male voters – with women and LGBT+ citizens as collateral damage (Getty)

Sex education is paedophilia. Abortion is genocide. End the homosexual dictatorship!” Guada Romero, a 40-year-old veterinarian, rolls her eyes as she translates for me the freshly sprayed graffiti defacing a popular feminist mural in La Plata, a city one hour south of Buenos Aires.

It’s 1am on Tuesday and we’ve just left a milonga at the Gaggiotti Raul N dance salon, a traditional dance-music hall, where we watched women in twinsets and pearls and old men in rumpled linen suits tango-dancing alongside young gay couples in boiler suits with asymmetrical haircuts and rockabilly tattoos. 

My Argentinian friends brought me here to see how the younger generation – and most notably, the queer community – have reclaimed the tango, the original subversive Argentinian dance. After this, the sight of extremist graffiti comes as a shock.