Milei’s war on photojournalists
A group of seniors and photojournalists are pushed by a police line during in front of Congress on April 16, 2025, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo © Susi Maresca.
Opinion • Susi Maresca • May 23, 2025 • Leer en castellano
Every Wednesday for the past 30 years seniors have gathered to protest in front of Argentina’s Congress in Buenos Aires, and they’ve done so with renewed vigor since Javier Milei took office in late 2023. But over the past months, they’ve been targeted by unprecedented state violence, as have media workers covering their actions.
Seniors are demanding an increase to the minimum retirement pension—it currently sits at $257 a month at the official exchange rate—and acces to medicine for free, something the new government revoked. They also seek the continuation of a system that has allowed nine out of every 10 women and eight out of every 10 men who worked in the informal sector—as domestic workers, construction workers, and day laborers—to receive a pension.
On March 12, soccer fans mobilized to support the pensioners. They rallied under the slogan “You have to be a real coward to not defend retirees,” words that soccer star Diego Maradona spoke in the 1990s.
The police response was massive. Four different forces (National Guard, Federal Police, Buenos Aires City Police and the Buenos Aires Airport Police) fanned out around Congress. An hour before the protest's official starting time, a brutal crackdown began on Hipólito Yrigoyen Avenue.
I hadn’t taken a mask or helmet that day because I told myself I was just going to hang out. Tear gas blinded me for several minutes, despite the fact I was wearing goggles. The response teams in the medical tents worked fast, relieving the noxious effects of the chemicals designed to attack different parts of your body.
In these kinds of violent situations, photojournalists and reporters try to gather in spaces where we can reduce risk. Although it may seem that such spaces no longer exist, we try to create them as we go.
As we shot images on either side of the street, a teargas canister hit Pablo Grillo, a fellow photojournalist, in the head. Corporal Héctor Guerrero of the National Guard fired the projectile. We know this thanks to the courageous work of the Police Mapping collective, which compiles information from human rights activists, journalists, photographers and research scientists.
Grillo is still in intensive care, two months later. He’s slowly getting better, thanks in part to the solidarity of many. We’re still here.
A photojournalist is hit by tear gas and a water cannon during the repression of seniors near the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina on March 12, 2025. Photo © Susi Maresca.
Always in the crosshairs
“Journalism is either free or it is a farce,” said Rodolfo Walsh, an Argentine journalist, who was murdered by Special Forces during the civilian-military dictatorship, which ruled between 1976 and 1983. Over that period, authorities disappeared 233 photojournalists, adding them to ranks of at least 30,000 others who were disappeared. History makes clear that when economic, political and corporate elites violate human rights, they also go after the press.
In 1997, a thug murdered photojournalist José Luis Cabezas of Noticias magazine in Buenos Aires. He put two bullets in his head after one of Cabezas’s photos showed the face of Alberto Yabrán, one of the country’s most influential businessmen. He took the life of a colleague who put himself on the line to reveal a truth the powerful didn’t want us to know. Evidence implicated the police and the national government in the killing. This murder occurred while Argentina was a democracy.
I’ve been taking pictures since I was little. I witnessed the violence against the uprising in the context of economic collapse on December 19 and 20, 2001 and have worked as a professional photographer for almost a decade. I feel like we’ve been living through a sea change since the pandemic.
In April 2021, in Andalgalá, Catamarca province, authorities arrested 12 people for defending the right to water. Photojournalist Walter Mansilla was among them. Provincial police targeted him for a violent raid and beat him. At the time, the Association of Argentine Graphic Reporters (aRGra) and the Argentine Press Workers’ Federation condemned the police actions. I covered that story until the police released all the arrestees two weeks later.
In June 2023, in Jujuy province, police launched a massive and brutal wave of repression against Indigenous communities. I was there to cover how lithium extraction leads to dispossession and violence. Police arrested a journalist and a congressperson. Numerous people lost their eyes after police shot them with rubber bullets. Two hit my hand and another grazed my head, but I avoided serious injury.
On August 10, 2023, a police operation in Buenos Aires City led to the death of Facundo Molares. Molares was a photojournalist and political activist. I filmed as two officers pinned him to the ground by kneeling on his neck and head. This time, I feared reprisals. Elections were coming up. I didn’t leave the house for three days.
Taken together, these events suggest a turning of the tide. Neofascism doesn’t appear out of the blue, surprising us from one day to the next. There are warnings, hints, signs.
If we need to be fully covered, wearing a helmet and mask to cover a protest in a democracy—a constitutional right—and still worry that police are going to aim for our heads, then we aren’t living in a democracy. And that means we must speak out.
One of the first crackdowns since the government of Javier Milei took office, took place during the debate on the Ley Bases (General Law) in front of Congress on February 2, 2024, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo © Susi Maresca.
Weapons of mass creation
A few days after Milei’s government took office, police fired rubber bullets at more than 30 photojournalists and reporters gathered on the sidewalk in front of congress while we worked. I was among them. I was shot four times in my left leg, which led to months of pain.
The Argentine government bore responsibility for most of the violence against journalists last year. Over half of the 179 attacks nationwide were committed by the government or state forces, according to the Argentine Journalism Forum's annual Freedom of Expression Investigation.
The report highlights Milei’s involvement in 56 of the reported episodes. He participated mostly through his rhetoric, which included insults and incitements to violence against those of us reporting on what is happening in the country.
“Graphic reporters in Argentina are living through an extremely intimidating moment,” said Alejandra Bartoliche, vice-president of the aRGra and a reporter with 30 years of experience, in an interview with Ojalá. “We’re watching our comrades getting attacked and having their rights violated constantly, which can’t coexist with the rule of law.“
In the 16 months since Milei took office, there have been 216 attacks against journalists and communication workers. Media outlets have been shuttered, salaries frozen and there have been mass layoffs.
On April 29, Santiago Caputo, a member of the State Intelligence System, threatened Antonio Becerra, a freelance photojournalist working for Tiempo Argentino.
And just two days ago, on Wednesday, May 21, authorities took two photojournalists—AFP’s Tomás Cuesta and independent photographer Javier Iglesias—into custody for filming as the police arrested a senior after beating him up. “They see the press as a target to crack down on,” Cuesta told the media. Both were freed after a few hours.
Earlier that day, Milei had issued an emergency presidential decree (DNU, in Spanish) further limiting Argentines’ right to strike. Although the decree focuses on merchant marines, its third article restricts all workers’ right to strike.
Today, photojournalists are on the front line alongside seniors every Wednesday. On April 16, days after Grillo was shot, one pensioner affixed a sign to his walker that read “Weapons of mass creation,” with an image of my fallen colleague.
What better way to silence history than by targeting those who reveal it?
A photojournalist is tear-gassed while taking a picture with an Eternaut figure during coverage of a protest by seniors on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo © Susi Maresca.
Look for the light
The day after police Grillo was shot, aRGra called a camarazo, a protest in which we held our cameras up where the shooting took place and demanded justice. Images of the day before flashed in my head. The city bore no trace of the brutality we’d experienced—the streets were clean and the sun shone bright and clear on the dome of Congress.
Colleagues, comrades and friends trickled in. In this profession, we often form friendships during intense events. I believe that as people who cover reality, many of us have the gift of intuition, we’ve honed the practice of survival and a love for what we do despite being paid less with every passing day. The growing precarity of our employment is another issue that we should talk about.
April’s camarazo was one of the best attended in recent years. But unlike in previous protests, there was a sense of despair. “We demand the resignation of Security Minister Patricia Bullrich!” we yelled, cameras held high.
“It could have been any of us,” I overheard someone saying in an interview. It gives me goosebumps. I feel a pain in my chest. I remember the images that so many of my colleagues took who were by Grillo’s side. This could have happened to any of us.
Later that afternoon, WhatsApp groups for photojournalists exploded with messages related to the crisis: where to get cheaper masks and helmets, how to organize ourselves so that we can take photos and also take care of each other, what’s the best way to counteract the different types of gases that security forces are using, whom to call in an emergency. Put your name on lists so that the union and aRGra can keep tabs on your whereabouts. Be vigilant amid the urgency of it all.
The urgency of our work, the urgency of what’s happening, the urgency of the demands, the urgency of putting food on the table, the urgency of surviving to tell the stories, the urgency to condemn what happened to a comrade and what’s happening to our social fabric. The urgency.
A month ago, the National Culture Secretariat fired me from my job as a photographer after 10 years on staff.
As Eduardo Longoni, who has worked as a photojournalist since 1979, said recently: “Power likes the darkness. Photographers, light.”
And we’ll always find a way to seek it out.
