In Argentina, June marked the 10th anniversary of ‘Ni Una Menos’, a feminist movement that protested gender violence and femicide, initially sparked by the murder of 14-year-old pregnant Chiara Paez by her 16-year-old boyfriend the year before.
The movement triggered protests in Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, and El Salvador, with the rallying cry “Ni Una Menos”, meaning “Not One Less”. It forced the Argentine government to mandate the collection and publication of national femicide statistics and the creation of women shelters across the country. In 2019, the new government under Alberto Fernández created the Ministry for Women, Gender and Diversity, which strove to eradicate gender-based violence and strengthen the rights of women and gender-diverse people.
Ten years later, Argentina’s feminist movement legacy is under dire threat under Javier Milei.
Image Source: Diputados Argentina via X.
Since coming to power in 2023, the country’s self-proclaimed ‘anarcho-capitalist’ president has dissolved the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity, in keeping with his vow to slash public funding. At the beginning of the year, he also threatened to remove femicide from the penal code and end gender parity on electoral lists, among others.
In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Milei went on a diatribe against “wokeism”, listing “feminism, diversity, inclusion, equity, immigration, abortion, environmentalism, gender ideology” as part of that “woke ideology”.
Mapuche women, belonging to one of the 35 recognized indigenous groups in Argentina, with a population of 300,000, say that under Milei’s rule, they are facing the double onslaught of racism and misogyny. Even though marginalization and persecution have been a historic reality for the Mapuche women, they have been aggravated under Milei’s rule.
On June 3, 2025, Moira Millán, a Mapuche weichafe (meaning ‘guardian’ or ‘warrior’) wrote a letter from her home in Chubut Province, in Argentina’s Patagonia region, to its governor, Ignacio Torres, titled “AGAINST ALL DICTATORSHIP”.
“Since your inauguration as governor, and that of Javier Milei as president, racist, gendered, ageist, and other forms of hatred have become state policy.” The letter read. “[The] money, which should be allocated to health, education, food, etc., is instead being spent on bullets against the Mapuche people, and in particular, against women,” Millán added.
Image Source: Moira Millán via Instagram.
Carina Inéz Fernández, the communications director of Movimiento de Mujeres y Diversidades Indígenas por el Buen Vivir, said that while Ni Una Menos advanced women’s rights in Argentina, Indigenous women remain “marginalized and sidelined,” and are “never a priority,” due to deep-rooted racism even within feminist circles.
In Patagonia, an ecologically diverse region rich with fresh water sources and minerals, development and investment interests have long been met with fierce resistance from the Mapuche people, often led by women. With President Milei’s free market interests drawing more international investment and intervention in the region, resistance has grown, and so has suppression.
In early 2025, the Argentine Gendarmerie, a military force that polices civilian populations, raided Millán’s home in the southwestern village of Corcovado, in the Chubut Province.
“The raid was excessive,” said Millán, whose activism has repeatedly made her a government target, while in conversation with Latin America Reports. “We’re talking about 100 troops. They arrived at dawn, kicking down doors, breaking everything… It was a very ugly situation with a lot of violence.”
Since then, Millán said the territory her house is in has been surveilled, and that she has received death threats.
“Mapuche women have always been combative,” Millán noted, adding, “We have always been at the forefront of the fight for the rights of our territory, of our people.”
And while there has been progress in the visibility and referentiality of Mapuche women’s voices and their courageous actions, the weichafe also stressed that such recognition has prompted targeted persecution.
Millán said her house was raided because Gendarmerie forces were looking for Victoria Núñez Fernández, a non-indigenous member of the Mapuche community from the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
Núñez Fernández was arrested and ordered in-home detention on charges of arson for allegedly starting a fire on a private ranch in the area. Her two-month detention ended in April, when a judge cited insufficient evidence and ordered her release, although the case remains in court.
Communications director Fernández, who said she is aware of more such cases against Mapuche women, says that cases like these exemplify how the judicial apparatus employ fear and tension against the community.
“In these territories, those who put their bodies on the line the most and those who feel the most, whether it’s the consequences of climate change or the related extractivism, are women,” she noted.
Image source: Rafael Edwards via Flickr, Creative Commons Licenses
Millán agrees, saying Núñez Fernández’s arrest signals the aggravation of the persecution of Mapuche women under Milei.
“There has always been repression and persecution, but there was a line [they didn’t cross] of not categorically violating the rule of law,” she said. “The government doesn’t care about respecting the rule of law. It’s sweeping away all guarantees, prosecuting those who provide guarantees, and developing an entire repressive policy that, even without a legal framework, is carried out anyway.”
In her letter to Governor Torres, Millán also addressed how Mapuche women were blamed for starting the widespread fires in Patagonia and labelled “terrorists”.
The Mapuche called this a racist move to create “an internal enemy” out of them and invoke hatred and fear amongst Argentinians. The activist wrote: “Your press conference during those days was a circus act, misogynistic and racist, filled with slander and lies, displaying the names and faces of those you labelled terrorists. Coincidentally, all of them were women. All the women you mentioned are guardians of life, of the land, of our people’s culture…”
“Everything we Mapuche women do is ignored, omitted, scorned, or criminalized,” Millán concluded.
Featured Image Credit:
Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción via X.
