The institutions that once existed to protect her no longer existed.
Autopsy reveals Agostina Vega died from mechanical asphyxiation with body dismemberment; suspect Claudio Barrelier charged as investigation continues. Milei administration eliminated gender protection ministry and cut 89% of violence prevention budgets, removing 13 essential programs since 2023.
- Agostina Vega, 14, found dead after seven-day search in Córdoba; autopsy shows mechanical asphyxiation and dismemberment
- Suspect Claudio Barrelier charged; death occurred between 11 p.m. May 23 and 5 a.m. May 24
- Milei administration eliminated Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity; cut 89% of violence prevention budgets since 2023
- Thirteen essential programs eliminated, including emergency support for extreme violence victims and Acercar Derechos (59,032 people assisted through February 2024)
Singer Lali Espósito retweets past criticism of President Milei as Argentina reels from the murder of 14-year-old Agostina Vega, highlighting tensions over dismantled gender protection institutions.
On a Monday evening in early June, as the details of a fourteen-year-old girl's death began to circulate through Argentina, singer Lali Espósito returned to a post she had written years earlier—a message that had sparked her public conflict with President Javier Milei. She retweeted it without new commentary, just two words appended: "How dangerous. How sad."
The girl was Agostina Vega. She had been missing for seven days before her body was found in an open field in the Ampliación Ferreyra neighborhood, south of Córdoba's city center. The autopsy revealed that she had died from mechanical asphyxiation. After death, her body had been dismembered. Claudio Barrelier, a man now charged in connection with the crime, remains the sole suspect. Forensic examiners determined the killing occurred sometime between 11 p.m. on Saturday, May 23, and 5 a.m. on Sunday, May 24—hours before her family reported her missing to police. The condition of the remains, decomposed over nearly a week in the field, made certain conclusions difficult. Pathologists found what they described as possible signs consistent with sexual abuse, though definitive confirmation would require additional testing that typically takes several days to complete.
The discovery of Agostina's body set off a wave of public mourning and anger. Family members, friends, and neighbors gathered to demand justice. Across social media, celebrities posted images of the girl and calls for accountability. Ángela Torres, Cinthia Fernández, Georgina Barbarossa, Julieta Díaz, Leticia Siciliani, Dolores Fonzi, and Nazarena Vélez were among the public figures who used their platforms to express fury and sorrow. Espósito shared a post on Instagram with Agostina's photograph, directly demanding justice for the murdered child.
But Espósito's decision to resurrect her old message to Milei pointed to something larger than a single crime. For more than two years, the Milei administration has systematically dismantled the institutional infrastructure designed to protect women, girls, adolescents, and LGBTQ+ people. In December 2023, the government began closing agencies, eliminating programs, and repealing protections. The Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity—already downgraded to a sub-secretariat in June 2024—was erased from the government's organizational chart entirely. For the first time in thirty-seven years, Argentina had no national body dedicated to advancing women's rights.
The cuts went far beyond bureaucratic reorganization. According to Amnesty International, funding for the country's primary violence prevention and response programs fell by eighty-nine percent between 2023 and the present. Thirteen essential programs were eliminated outright. Among them was emergency support for victims of extreme violence and the Acercar Derechos program, which until February 2024 had provided legal and psychological assistance to nearly sixty thousand women and people of diverse gender identities. The government also moved to remove the legal category of femicide—gender-motivated murder of women—from the penal code. In January 2025, then-Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona had written that the administration would eliminate the figure because "feminism is a distortion of the concept of equality." The government, he argued, defended equal protection under law; no life should be valued above another.
Espósito's retweet, then, was not simply a response to one murder. It was a statement about the absence of the systems that might have prevented it, or at least responded to it more quickly. A girl disappeared on a Sunday morning. She had been dead since Saturday night. The institutions that once existed to protect her, to investigate her disappearance with urgency, to provide support to her family—many of them no longer existed. What remained was the work of families, neighbors, and celebrities with social media accounts, demanding justice in a vacuum where government responsibility had been deliberately withdrawn.
Citações Notáveis
How dangerous. How sad.— Lali Espósito, reposting her earlier criticism of Milei
Feminism is a distortion of the concept of equality. No life should be valued above another.— Mariano Cúneo Libarona, former Justice Minister, on eliminating femicide from the penal code
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did Espósito choose to retweet an old message rather than write something new about Agostina's death?
Because the old message was about Milei himself, and what happened to Agostina didn't exist in isolation. It existed in a context Espósito had been warning about for years.
What was in that original message?
The source doesn't quote it directly, but it was something that started their public feud. Something about danger, about what his policies would mean. When she reposted it, she was saying: this is what I warned you about.
Did the government actually eliminate protections for women?
Yes. They closed the entire ministry. Cut the budget for violence prevention by eighty-nine percent. Removed thirteen programs that were actively helping women. One program alone had assisted nearly sixty thousand people.
And they wanted to remove femicide from the law?
The justice minister said feminism itself was a distortion of equality. That no life should be valued above another. Which sounds neutral until you realize it means treating the murder of a woman the same as any other murder—erasing the pattern, the targeting, the gender dimension.
So Agostina's death became a symbol of something larger?
It became impossible to separate them. A fourteen-year-old girl was murdered, dismembered, possibly assaulted. And the institutions that existed to prevent such crimes, to respond to them, to support families—they had been deliberately taken apart.
Did other celebrities respond the same way?
They posted about Agostina, demanded justice. But Espósito did something different. She connected the dots. She said: this is what happens when you dismantle the systems designed to protect girls.