Argentina's Supreme Court Opens Path to Land Reform, Farmers and Indigenous Communities Prepare to Fight

Argentina's Supreme Court last week overturned a lower court ruling that had blocked President Javier Milei's move to revise the 2011 Land Law. The decision effectively opens the door to liberalizing foreign ownership of land and natural resources, just two months after a similar attempt failed in Congress. For activists, this is not merely a procedural win for the government—it is a signal that the last bastion of public land protection is being dismantled.

Since taking office in December 2023, Milei has consistently steered his economic policy toward opening the resource sector to global investors. The 2011 Land Law already capped foreign ownership at 15 percent per administrative department and 30 percent per nationality. But data from the University of Buenos Aires Land Observatory shows the rule is often violated. In Lácar Department, Neuquén Province, about 54 percent of land is foreign-controlled—dominated by United States entities that hold an area 14 times larger than the land of the Mapuche Curruhuinca community.

The national figure is significant too: about 13 million hectares of Argentine land, or five percent of the total landmass, is in foreign hands. That area is equivalent to the entire territory of England. The concentration follows the Andes mountain range—from Salta and Jujuy in the north to Tierra del Fuego—as well as the Paraná River basin along Misiones, Corrientes, and Entre Ríos. These regions are no coincidence: they are rich in mineral reserves, lithium, and freshwater from glacial zones.

The Milei administration did not stop at revising the land law. In 2024, it enacted the Regime de Incentivo a las Grandes Inversiones (Rigi), which loosens capital repatriation, lowers corporate taxes, and exempts imported machinery from tariffs with a 30-year guarantee of regulatory stability. A "super Rigi" proposal even targets frontier projects such as AI data centers and semiconductor manufacturing—industries that require massive amounts of water and critical minerals like lithium, of which Argentina holds some of the world's largest reserves.

The impact on indigenous communities is already being felt. Pablo Volkind, a lecturer at the UBA Faculty of Economic Sciences, says the deregulation has triggered a "flood of evictions" in Jujuy, Neuquén, Chubut, and Misiones. "This is not about what might happen; it is already happening," he said, adding that courts are now moving faster in property disputes that were previously contestable.

"This 'foreignization' policy has been underway since the formation of the Argentine nation-state over indigenous territory, the forced occupation of ancestral land," said Moira Ivana Millán, a Mapuche leader in Lof Pillan Mahuiza, Chubut.

Millán accuses the Milei administration of legalizing practices that were once carried out covertly. She points to the case of British billionaire Joe Lewis, accused of fraudulently buying 12,000 hectares in the Patagonian border security zone in the 1990s for the Lago Escondido estate. The Milei administration withdrew the state's lawsuit in that case earlier this year. In 2024, the government also repealed the law suspending evictions of indigenous communities and dissolved the national registry of indigenous communities—removing two important safeguards.

Criticism does not come only from environmental activists. The Center for Argentine Political Economy (CEPA) estimates the fiscal cost of projects covered by Rigi at US$1.3–2.3 billion per year. That means incentives for foreign investors could be paid by Argentine taxpayers through cuts in public spending or a wider deficit.

For Indonesia, this dynamic is relevant. A number of developing countries face a similar dilemma: attracting foreign investment to spur growth versus safeguarding sovereignty over land, water, and critical minerals. Argentina is a case study of how aggressive deregulation can trigger social resistance and hidden fiscal costs—a lesson worth noting as Indonesia formulates its downstreaming and investment policies in strategic sectors.

With the Supreme Court having opened the way, the next battle will take place in Argentina's Congress, where a slimmed-down version of the property bill is still pending. If it passes, it will accelerate evictions and make expropriation of land for public interest more difficult. The question now is: how far will Milei go before the wave of protests—which has united workers, pensioners, students, and indigenous communities—forces a new compromise?