When I first met her, Andrea Delfino was smoking a cigarette in front of the shuttered offices of Télam, the state-run press agency in Buenos Aires. It was March 24, the anniversary of Argentina’s military coup in 1976. The entrance to the building was barricaded, but outside there was a hive of activity. Union leaders drank maté as journalists placed calls and conducted interviews from a tent set up by the Buenos Aires Press Union.

Delfino, a journalist at Télam and a spokesperson for the union, had been camping out in front of the shuttered offices for nearly three weeks, since far-right president Javier Milei announced the closure of the press agency and the dismissal of seven hundr4ed employees on March 1. It’s part of a series of attacks on public services by the libertarian leader, who promises to take “the chainsaw” to the Argentine state.

“We made the decision as an assembly of workers to reject the forced leave to which we are being subjected and therefore remain at the doors of the building day and night,” Delfino explained.