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CFK at Independence Day celebrations
Buenos Aires Herald
July 11, 2008

The president avoided the traditional Tedeum mass held at the Tucuman cathedral.
Just like at the rally that took place on June 18 at Plaza de Mayo where a man also from Tucuman died when a lamp fell on his head hours before the rally started the president opened the ceremony requesting a minute's silence "for Tucuman citizen Juan Valdes."

Valdes, 54, died when a scaffold made with wooden planks, which had been set up for the rally at the Tucuman Race track, collapsed, also injuring 21 people.

The concrete stands of the race course have a capacity for 17,000 people and, according to the organizers, about 30,000 people from different parts of the province participated in the rally.

Valdes arrived in Tucuman as part of a delegation of railway workers from Taf Viejo. "Valdes was a municipal employee who had been working at the Legislative Council... he came because he wanted to participate in the ceremony," said Javier Pucharras, who lead the delegation.

After asking "everybody to remembers Valdes," Fernandez de Kirchner gave a short speech without referring directly to the conflict with the farmers, which has been the main issue in most of her speeches in the last few months.

"Today we are at another historic moment (like the declaration of independence): the construction of a new independence that, this time, unites the efforts of all the nations of South America to construct a different world, more avid for natural resources, with different dangers and different challenges," she said in front of a crowd with hundreds of banners and flags.

"I want to summon all Argentines, as occurred 192 years ago, to build this new independence, the independence of a country of production, of work, of the inclusion of a united South America," she added.

Even though Tucuman Governor Jose Alperovich was expected to give an opening speech, the president was the only speaker at the ceremony. Afterwards, she attended a lunch hosted by Alperovich, together with ministers Anibal Fernandez (Justice), Florencio Randazzo (Interior), and Julio De Vido (Planning), among others.

Fern ndez de Kirchner arrived in Tucuman at 1pm, and a couple of hours later she headed back to Buenos Aires. She did not attend the traditional Tedeum mass; the gesture was received with unease among Catholic Church members. Her husband and predecessor N stor Kirchner had also avoided Tedeum masses in 2006 and 2007, as a result of the Church's critical speeches.

During the service, Tucuman's archbishop Luis Villalba asked the political power to give an example of dialogue and respect.

"The spirit of concord and consensus is a common good that nobody can put at risk for any type of interests, even if they seem legitimate," said Villalba at the service which Alperovich and other provincial authorities attended.

"Dialogue is the only possible path," he said, and even though he did not make a direct reference to the ongoing dispute between the farming sector and the government, he said that "today, more than ever, dialogue is necessary in our country."

"A peaceful co-existence is easy to achieve," he said but added that it requires that "an example of concord is given by the political, ecclesiastical, economic and social powers."
Villalba pointed out that "the presence of the people at the Cathedral is to pray for the future of our nation and request God's grace to continue with the tasks of leading renovation and progress."