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Upon assuming office, Argentine President Javier Milei ordered a ban on inclusive language and “everything related to gender perspective” in the public administration. He then proceeded to eliminate the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI). Within the context of this ongoing “cultural battle,” various figures in the cultural and media sectors recently denounced censorship in official content agendas. 

What are the consequences of banning words and making topics invisible? What does it mean when state-promoted culture stops addressing certain issues? What can be done about this? Presentes spoke with various researchers and cultural figures to understand the current context and outline possible courses of action.

“The struggle continues. Nothing is won forever. Everything is in dispute. This is part of that cultural battle. We cannot abandon any position in order to continue questioning and criticizing what is being imposed,” Geraldine Rogers, a researcher at CONICET, professor at the National University of La Plata, and one of the authors of Cultural Censorship and Dictatorship (2009), told Presentes.

When asked about this topic, the researcher's first thought is the idea of ​​freedom promoted by the government. “An increasingly restricted or limited freedom, in which culture is seen as something that can be controlled. It seems that what they are trying to do is control authentic culture, which is something alive. Culture is based on its diversity, on a constant questioning of itself, interrogating things without limits or narrowness, addressing all topics in the most varied ways possible. That is a living culture,” Rogers explained.

The masks of inequality

The Tocqueville Paradox, Diego Tatián, a researcher at CONICET and professor at the National University of San Martín (UNSAM), argues that “masked as an advance for freedom,” the government of La Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances) “aims to eradicate the root of the problem, which is nothing other than the yearning for equality.” He continues: “The rollback of equality must be extreme if it aspires to make hierarchy the natural order of things and the abandonment of the plebeian imagination finally irreversible.”

Goyo Anchou is an independent filmmaker, director of the film Homophobia! (2024), which premiered in April at BAFICI, and a programmer for the Mar del Plata Film Festival. Last July, he and a colleague went to one of the cultural centers in Buenos Aires belonging to the National Ministry of Culture to offer a series of Argentine films. The response was blunt. They were recited an informal censorship code regarding “prohibited” content in national cultural centers : “1. LGBT, 2. Feminism, 3. Criticism of the dictatorship, 4. Defense of the previous government, 5. Inclusion of Lali Espósito.” “This is the first time this has happened to us,” one of the programmers apologized, “we’ve worked here forever and our programming has never been supervised like this.”

When Anchou posted this on social media, other voices joined in. Director, screenwriter, and actress Eva Dans shared that she went to the Mariano Moreno National Library Museum in mid-July to see the exhibition “The Buenos Aires Affair: 50 Years” about Manuel Puig, but “it was gone.” “They told us that the new director who took over said, ‘They’re taking this garbage down by Monday.’ She removed it three weeks early because it had LGBTQ+ themes and was critical of the dictatorship,” she recounted on Twitter . The National Library denied that the director, Susana Soto, had made those statements. However, the exhibition’s curator, Martín Villagarcía, confirmed that the tribute was supposed to end in late July and was taken down early .

Regarding the modus operandi, Anchou explained: “The executive is careful not to leave anything in writing, all communication is oral. But if you dig a little among the affected people, you start to find testimonies, always off the record.”

The government is not taking responsibility

When contacted by Presentes, the National Ministry of Culture denied the existence of a censorship code or any directives. They also maintained that there are 130 Bicentennial Houses where the employees are from the municipalities, not the national cultural ministry. And they emphasized that the Ministry promoted a tribute to Sandra Mihánovich. 

Regarding diversity, what is observed in the official cultural agenda are contents about the Afro-Argentine population, native peoples and some -few- about women or people with disabilities. 

“While exhibiting women artists is necessary because there is still underrepresentation in many areas, it’s also important to focus on how that cultural production is bringing that struggle into play. Clearly, the far-right government doesn’t want to make that conflict visible. In other words, its cultural agenda constantly avoids disputes like those presented by feminism or the various diversity movements,” Federica Baeza, cultural manager, professor at the National University of the Arts, and former director of the Palais de Glace, explains to Presentes. 

Public media and forbidden words

The silencing extends to public media.

“There are no voices of workers, nor of the marchers, nor of the people who participate in any protest, whether it's cultural, university-related, against the Basic Law, or from social organizations. The focus is always on showing the police and repressive operation and not including the voices of the protesters. We weren't at the demonstration in front of the INCAA (National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts). But we were at the university protest and the March 8th demonstration,” Lorena, a worker at Public Television and delegate of the Buenos Aires Press Union (Sipreba), explained to Presentes. 

Diana Zurco 's contract . She was the first trans woman to ever anchor a news program in Argentina. When the triple lesbian murder happened in Barracas, we managed to cover it . But we couldn't include voices in the protest because they were afraid of speaking out against the government. The goal is to prevent any voices from questioning this government's policies.

Silenced provinces

“This is happening on Radio Nacional as well, and it was further aggravated by the silencing of local programming in the provinces . Central programs were broadcast on Radio Nacional Buenos Aires, and these were rebroadcast in almost every province, to the detriment of local programming,” he explained.

“The role of public media has historically been to give a voice to all those who have no voice. The human right to communication, to a plurality of voices, with a federal and diverse perspective, is being violated. This has never happened before on public television. There was editorial control, and they even took us off the air on weekends, but the censorship has never been so explicit. It's part of the cuts and destruction they're carrying out on the state to impose a single voice—their own,” he analyzed.

The “reorganization”

On May 21st, a blackout of social media and public media websites took place under the pretext of a “reorganization process .” This was the official explanation, using language that in Argentina evokes memories of the last civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983). This seems hardly coincidental, coming from a government that denies the existence of the Holocaust.

Currently, the websites and networks of Public Television and National Radio are back up and running, but not the local websites of National Radio. The websites for the public content of the Encuentro and Paka Paka channels are also down.

In mid-May, journalist Franco Torchia shared information on his social media accounts regarding the silencing of the LGBTQ+ agenda in public media. Among the content being suppressed, according to Torchia, is the documentary *The Unforgivable Joy: The Octavio Romero Case* , in which he participates as a journalist specializing in sexual diversity. The film was produced as a form of reparation by the Argentine State and at the behest of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), since Prefect Romero was murdered in 2011 after publicly acknowledging his sexual orientation, and the State failed to investigate the crime. It premiered in September 2023 and was rebroadcast on Encuentro and Public Television—part of the amicable settlement agreement with the IACHR—but this year it stopped airing.

These are not isolated events

These examples of silencing are not isolated incidents. They stem from a government that aligns its discursive and cultural content with the agenda of “anti-rights” movements in the region. Along these lines is the video that the Casa Rosada (the Argentine presidential palace) published on its social media accounts about Children's Day (using the singular and masculine gender), in which it warned against “gender ideology .” Also relevant is the position of the Argentine Foreign Ministry on the world stage. During the UN Human Rights Council, it supported a proposed amendment—later rejected—that sought to eliminate the word “gender” from a resolution on gender-based violence. Furthermore, it requested the removal from the final document of the 54th OAS General Assembly, held in Paraguay at the end of June, of the terms “gender perspective,” “human rights defenders,” “gender parity,” “sexual violence,” “discrimination,” and “trans women,” among others.

“These attempts reveal the flip side of this idea of ​​freedom. The Milei persona, which managed to seduce many voters with 'Long live freedom, damn it!', now shows its true face, which is a profoundly authoritarian configuration. This made me think about Argentine history. When were there moments of censorship? In the 1930s, after the coup, there was strong cultural censorship, especially of communist culture. The same thing happened in 1955 with Peronism, starting with the decree that prohibited mentioning Perón, Evita, and the Peronist march. Regarding the 1976 civic-military dictatorship, there is a wonderful book, *Attack on Books*, which investigates the censorship and burning of books. And now this appears. It is a concrete censorship, but also an indirect one, which seeks self-censorship,” explained researcher Rogers.

The answer: more diversity

Among the consequences of this silencing, Feda Baeza highlighted “the lack of community recognition.” “The lack of recognition of a subjectivity is also the lack of recognition of the validation of an existence. This then pushes a community that is less diverse, that understands itself less. It pushes toward a homogeneous representation of society. This is a path toward misunderstanding that is only resolved, ultimately, through violence. When there is no political language to name the differences between the various communities within a country, what this does is impoverish civic communication as a whole,” she analyzed.

“Right now, I believe that what we activists can do is assume our responsibility in the public sphere. We need to broaden our agendas, connect with others, interact with voices we haven't yet engaged with, expand our reach as much as possible, step outside our comfort zones, and dare to engage in these debates in the public sphere. I don't necessarily think that art can only criticize. In reality, all artistic expression is political insofar as it can reveal another possible way of organizing the world. I believe that is a responsibility that falls to art circles and activists,” Baeza concluded.