Outrage in Argentina after two teen girls murdered as femicide crisis endures

Argentina has reacted with fury after the bodies of two murdered teenage girls were found just two days apart. The latest killings underscore the South American country’s enduring femicide crisis despite years of feminist campaigning, and have prompted alarm over the decision to cut support for victims of gender-based violence under the far-right administration of Javier Milei.Police found the remains of Agostina Vega, 14, on Saturday, in a field on the outskirts of the city of Córdoba. She had been fatally strangled and her body had been dismembered, according to local media reports.She had left home on the night of Saturday 23 May, and took a taxi to the home of Claudio Barrelier, 33, a friend of the family.He was arrested after a taxi driver told police that he had taken Vega to an intersection that matched the location of Barrelier’s house. CCTV footage showed her entering the house, but there was no sign of her leaving. The case is being investigated as femicide: killing of a woman or girl because of her gender. Barrelier is in custody and denies murder.“Just like they murdered my daughter, there are going to be loads of Agostinas, and this can’t happen again,” said Agostina’s father, Gabriel Vega, during a press conference on Wednesday evening.He also questioned online speculation about her lifestyle. “People are posting photos of her when she went out dancing,” he said. “Why don’t they post photos of her going to school?”Barrelier was already involved in a legal case for allegedly kidnapping a woman in 2025. He was held for 20 days in that case before being released on bail.The body of Dulce Candia, 17, was found in a septic tank at an abandoned building site in the town of Eldorado, in Misiones province, on 28 May. She had been missing for 12 days, and pathologists believe she had been dead for five or six days. Like Vega, the cause of her death was strangulation.A 47-year-old taxi driver has been arrested on suspicion of her murder. Raúl Maslowski, director general of security for Misiones provincial police, told local TV channel 6 that Candia had been in a “romantic relationship” with the man, who was 30 years her senior.Murder of teenage girl sparks protests across Argentina – videoThe two girls were found just days before feminist activists held the 11th annual Ni Una Menos (Not a single woman less) anti-femicide march on Wednesday. The protest, which became the nucleus of a new wave of feminist activism across Latin America, was first held on 3 June 2015 after 14-year-old Chiara Páez was murdered by her boyfriend.This year’s march came two and a half years into the presidency of Milei, a far-right economist whose government has shuttered the ministry of women, genders and diversity, axed support for women fleeing gender-based violence, and moved to remove the crime of femicide (as distinct from murder), from the nation’s criminal code.Data compiled by the supreme court indicates that rates of femicide have fallen from 250 in 2023 – the final year of the previous government – to 200 in 2025. The government has argued that its economic reforms create a stronger and more stable economy, which they say leads to lower rates of violence without the need for state intervention.Feminist campaigners have rejected this narrative. They say much of the decline is because fewer femicides are properly registered. Moreover, the main jurisdiction that appears to be seeing a genuine drop in cases is the populous province of Buenos Aires – but this is controlled by the opposition, and unlike the national government, it still has a provincial ministry of women and diversity.“This decline that the government is claiming, which isn’t true, has to do with refusals to register a crime as a femicide,” said Lucía de la Vega, who coordinates work on violence against women at the Center for Legal and Social Studies, a human rights non-profit.“It also has to do with the elimination of places and entities that gathered statistics and registered violence against women.”Senator Carolina Losada, of the government-aligned Juntos por el Cambio party, has pushed a draft law that would introduce harsher punishments for false accusations of rape and other sexual crimes. However, a recent analysis by the public prosecutor’s office showed that just 0.09% of gender-based violence reports were false. Meanwhile, an estimated 77% of all crimes are never reported.The bill, and similar projects, have not been approved at present but, as support for survivors is withdrawn, such discourse makes it even harder for them to seek justice, said feminist lawyer Soledad Deza.When she heard of Agostina and Dulce’s cases, Deza felt “a great sense of powerlessness”, she said.“Given what we feminists have been warning of all along, it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she added.Amid the outcry over the deaths of Vega and Candia, news broke of the killing of a 30-year-old woman on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Noelia Romero had called the police and told them that her boyfriend, Tomás Adrián Núñez, was holding her hostage. Officers went to the house, but while they spent hours waiting to be granted a warrant, Romero was murdered.Immediately afterwards, Núñez attempted to take his own life, according to local media. He was taken to hospital, where he was accused of the murder and formally placed in police custody. Núñez had previously been reported for gender-based violence by both Romero and a former partner.