"Today is a day of celebration.
You don't have to whistle at anyone, you can think differently
," said President
Alberto Fernández
, after thanking the presence of the governor, the radical
Rodolfo Suarez
, at the act in which the
return of the passenger train to Mendoza,
which will be slower than when it stopped running 30 years ago.
The route, which will be weekly since April, will take between 26 and 28 hours to link the port station of Retiro with the winery town of Palmira, 40 kilometers from the city of Mendoza.
In March 1993, before its closure, it took 20 hours.
The delegation that accompanied the President's visit was joined by the Minister of Economy,
Sergio Massa
, after the meeting with bankers and representatives of the financial world to stop the rise of the dollar.
The photo between the two also took place amid internal rumors and the minister's distancing from the President, as a result of poor economic results and political differences.
They greeted each other in public with a hug.
The act for the return of the train to Mendoza started almost two hours late, around 2:00 p.m. this Wednesday.
Above the formation that had left Retiro on Monday night, Alberto Fernández, Massa traveled a few meters;
the Minister of Transportation, Diego Giuliano, and the president of Trenes Argentinos, Martín Fabio Marinucci.
"We are celebrating that the train has arrived in Mendoza and it is an achievement.
Many believed that we were going to sell a lie but here is the train,
" said Fernández, in front of Kirchner militants and railway workers who participated in the act in the hot Mendoza noon.
And, although a weekly frequency will not generate many new jobs in the Mendoza town where the train arrived, the President was happy because: "Palmira will stop being a ghost town where jobless people wander."
Alberto Fernández showed up with Massa in Mendoza.
The president recalled as a criticism the sad famous phrase of Carlos Menem "
branch that stops, branch that closes
", and predicted that from the first day his administration proposed that "Argentina be federal".
"Today we have to be very happy because this train that crosses the country is a train that is uniting us," said Fernández, and compared this moment with the liberation campaign of America.
"It is ironic, but this is the train on the San Martín route and once again San Martín returns to Mendoza in the name of the train," he pointed out.
He praised his government management: "
In any corner of the country there are works
. The State is present bringing health, transportation, education. You have to remember and have memory, because when we arrived we wanted this train to work and others left it for many years abandoned," said the President.
Massa, smiling during the act in Mendoza, in the midst of tensions with President Alberto Fernández.
He admitted, at least, that
the economic situation is complex
.
"We are in a very complex present, in a very difficult world. When we thought we had passed the pandemic and the war was behind us, the drought appeared, but we did not stop."
In an electoral tone, he called on citizens to be "capable of choosing properly, remembering and having memory because when we arrived we wanted this train to work, for there to be hospitals and schools, for there to be equality".
And he closed with what he said was a personal dream: “Antonio Cafiero used to say that whoever dreams alone only dreams.
But who dreams of others, can change the world.
Do you know what I'm asking you guys?
Don't leave me dreaming alone of the utopia of equality."