'For women, it's like living in a country ruled by apes'

Following last week's firebombing of two lesbian couples in Buenos Aires, Anna Hart speaks to Argentinian women who fear the rise of violence under the new president Javier Milei

-  Anna Hart

"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. But these scrawls are also in keeping with the mood of the new Argentina under Javier Milei, who decided that the week of International Women’s Day was a good time to take down the portraits dedicated to female figures in Argentinian history on display in Casa Rosada.

It was on the balcony of this pink-hued presidential palace that, in 1951, Eva Peron addressed thousands of impassioned supporters in Plaza de Mayo. But today, the “Salon de las Mujeres” stateroom has been rebranded the Hall of Heroes, and the female faces have been replaced by those of men. “They’re trying to destroy the spirit of Argentinian women,” says journalist Lucia Rivera. Women here now openly joke that they shouldn’t be surprised if Milei repaints Casa Rosada blue.