Marcelina Meneses’ case and the limits of Formal Equality
On 10 January 2001, Marcelina Meneses, a Bolivian migrant woman, and her eleven-month-old son, Joshua, were attacked and thrown from a moving train in an act of xenophobia, discrimination, and racial hatred. Following this crime, the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires established this date as Migrant Women’s Day, with the aim of ensuring that Marcelina’s memory serves as a permanent reminder of the violence faced by migrant women.

Argentina is often seen—and sees itself—as a pioneer in the field of human rights. It was the first country in the world to prosecute crimes committed by a military dictatorship through ordinary courts and, since the 1994 constitutional reform, it has granted constitutional hierarchy to the main international human rights treaties. Within this framework, instruments such as CEDAW, the Convention of Belém do Pará, and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families commit the Argentine State to guarantee not only formal equality before the law, but real and effective equality.

Yet Marcelina’s case starkly exposes the limits of this normative framework when it fails to translate into concrete national public policies. Her murder can be understood as an extreme form of gender-based violence, but also as institutional violence: there were no preventive mechanisms or state responses able to dismantle the structural conditions that placed her in a situation of multiple vulnerability due to her gender, migrant status, and poverty.

This gap between progressive legal norms and persistent realities reveals a familiar but unresolved problem: the distance between proclaimed equality and substantive equality. Having laws in place does not, by itself, transform social practices or power relations if they are not accompanied by public policies grounded in a human rights approach that is feminist, intersectional, and situated.
On that January morning, Marcelina was travelling on the Roca train line, under conditions of overcrowding and insecurity that are part of the daily reality for thousands of working people. It was there that class hatred and discrimination took on their most violent form, denying her and her child the most basic right: the right to life. For some, their lives did not carry the same value, nor did they deserve equal access to rights—to decent work, public space, or public transportation.

2026: Anti-Immigration Rhetoric
Marcelina’s case revealed the limits of formal equality when it failed to translate into substantive protection. Today, however, Argentina does not present a more favorable scenario: recent reforms have begun to undermine even the existing formal legal framework for ensuring migrants’ rights. In fact, between 2024 and 2025 the Executive adopted two emergency decrees (942/24 and 366/25) – exceptional mechanisms that bypass ordinary parliamentary debate – introducing substantial amendments to the Migration Law and the Refugee Protection Law.

Among the most significant changes are: stricter migration controls that facilitate the expulsion of migrants; limitations on access to public healthcare and education; more restrictive criteria for regularizing migration status and obtaining citizenship; and violations of the presumption of innocence and due process guarantees for refugees and asylum seekers.

The case of Marcelina Meneses had the potential to mobilize broad sectors of society, and this can be explained by the economic, political, and social context of Argentina at the beginning of the millennium. After experiencing the collapse of one of its most severe economic crises, the years following 2001 brought a sustained process of economic recovery and institutional rebuilding that made it possible to open and deepen social debates that usually do not take priority in times of extreme poverty. Human rights organizations, including those working on migrant rights, began to play a much more prominent role in the public agenda, and the State invested in equality policies, such as Migration Law 25.871, enacted in 2004, which recognized migration as a human right.

At the same time, in the past decade feminism has regained strong visibility through what is often described as the “fourth wave,” filling the streets with women and gender-diverse people united around a common demand: “no to sexist violence / stop femicides.” Among the many movements present in marches and public demonstrations, migrant women’s organizations have shown a strong capacity for mobilization. Their demands focus on the need to eliminate prejudices and sociocultural patterns that reproduce xenophobia; address the double discrimination and the differentiated impact of violence on migrant women; and guarantee real inclusion in workplaces, educational spaces, and decision-making arenas.

Unfortunately, Argentina today is going through one of the most significant regressions in human rights in its recent history. Its alignment with the United States, under a logic of acquiescence, prioritizes economic interests and individual benefits over collective rights and traditions of solidarity. In this context, the Argentine state replicates U.S. practices by securitizing public discourse in order to criminalize migrants, producing and using misleading data to generate public outrage, and issuing decrees that should be exceptional in order to avoid legislative debate.

This situation, in which the Argentine state itself contributes to democratic erosion and rights violations, requires— in the author’s view— the combined use of institutional, legal, and social pressure strategies. Regarding institutional mechanisms, in June 2025 a group of legislators introduced a bill to annul Decree 366/25, arguing that it modifies fundamental rights of the migrant population living and working in the country and that it does not constitute a genuine case of “necessity and urgency” that would justify changing a law through a presidential decree.

In addition, the Judiciary has already ruled in specific cases on the unconstitutionality of Decree 366/25. In the decision “Mondragón Herrera, Leonel Felipe s/ Nacionalidad y Ciudadanía – Solicitud de Carta de Ciudadanía,” the Federal Court of Paraná No. 1 declared the decree unconstitutional for violating the republican principle of separation of powers and the supremacy of the National Constitution, finding that the Executive cannot modify by decree a legal regime whose regulation corresponds to Congress. This precedent is highly relevant for lawyers and other legal practitioners dealing with residence denials or deportation cases.

At the regional level, on October 28, 2025, IACHR expressed concern about Argentina’s reforms related to human mobility. This statement, which reflects the position of the main regional human rights body, confirms that Argentina’s migration policy is already under international scrutiny and may serve as a basis for litigation within the Inter-American system.

Regarding mechanisms of social pressure, it remains crucial to continue supporting the struggles of feminist, Latin American, and migrant women’s organizations in marches and public demonstrations, in order to make visible—before national and international audiences—what is happening to migrants in Argentina. In the meantime, CAREF and other organizations have suggested compiling a list of “friendly institutions” where people can be referred for assistance—especially in areas such as health and education—so that migrants can seek guidance and support knowing that their rights will not be violated.

Conclusion
Beyond these immediate strategies, the struggle against xenophobia also takes place in the sphere of memory and public narratives about violence. Collective memory—reflected in Migrant Women’s Day—is a key feminist tool for non-repetition and awareness-raising. However, without genuine intersectional policies capable of preventing outcomes like Marcelina’s, commemoration alone is not enough. The eradication of xenophobia and the achievement of substantive equality for migrant women remain, in Argentina, an unresolved historical debt.