The Ar­gen­tine Re­pub­lic and T&T are cel­e­brat­ing 60 years of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions.

To mark the oc­ca­sion the Em­bassy of the Ar­gen­tine Re­pub­lic in part­ner­ship with Guardian Me­dia Ltd screened Soc­cer Soul: Eli­jo Creer an Ar­gen­tine Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion doc­u­men­tary on the Ar­gen­tine Foot­ball team fea­tur­ing Li­onel Mes­si at Movi­eTowne, Port -of-Spain on Tues­day evening.

The event al­so marked Ar­genti­na’s Na­tion­al Day – the cel­e­bra­tion of its 208th In­de­pen­dence Day.

Ar­gen­tine Am­bas­sador Gus­ta­vo Martínez Pan­di­ani, who pre­sent­ed his let­ters of cre­dence to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo just one month ago, re­flect­ed on the his­tor­i­cal mile­stones and the bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion.

“To­day, Ju­ly 9, we Ar­gen­tini­ans cel­e­brate our In­de­pen­dence Day af­ter the Pa­tri­ot­ic Rev­o­lu­tion of 1810,” he said.

“Our na­tion­al he­roes and found­ing fa­thers de­clared Ar­genti­na’s in­de­pen­dence in 1816. Two hun­dred and eight years ago, Ar­genti­na be­came an in­de­pen­dent na­tion and we are very proud of such a his­tor­i­cal achieve­ment.

“But this evening . . . con­sid­er­ing the in­ten­si­ty of our bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion and re­gion­al in­ter­ac­tion, I pro­pose to you to cel­e­brate not on­ly our In­de­pen­dence but al­so our in­ter­de­pen­dence. Af­ter all, we con­sti­tute to­geth­er the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. In 2024, we al­so com­mem­o­rate the 60th an­niver­sary of Ar­genti­na and T&T diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions, an im­mense mile­stone (in) our strong and per­ma­nent friend­ship in­deed.”

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne wel­comed the new Ar­gen­tine Am­bas­sador who he said he said with re­gard to set­ting in­to the coun­try and tak­ing up en­gage­ments with key stake­hold­ers and of­fi­cials, he was far ahead of the curve.

“Through­out these past six decades T&T have strength­ened and deep­ened the bi­lat­er­al en­gage­ment across a range of ar­eas in­clud­ing trade, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, dis­as­ter man­age­ment and ed­u­ca­tion with a par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on Span­ish lan­guage train­ing,” Dr Browne said.

“And one of the things that re­al­ly unit­ed us is our com­mon loves of sports in gen­er­al and in foot­ball in par­tic­u­lar. I am the un­of­fi­cial Pres­i­dent of the Li­onel Mes­si fan base, I am in a po­si­tion to whole­heart­ed­ly en­dorse your ex­cel­lent de­ci­sion to make foot­ball and the Al­bice­leste the theme of your first diplo­mat­ic event in our coun­try.”

Com­mer­cial head of TV Stephano Ol­liviere high­light­ed the role of the me­dia in fos­ter­ing glob­al un­der­stand­ing and uni­ty through sports in his wel­come re­marks.

“Sports has a unique abil­i­ty to bring peo­ple to­geth­er, tran­scend­ing bor­ders and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences,” he said.

“Through our part­ner­ship, we can high­light these mo­ments of uni­ty and shared pas­sion, fos­ter­ing a sense of glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. When me­dia hous­es and diplo­mat­ic en­ti­ties work to­geth­er, we strength­en the trust au­di­ences place in the in­for­ma­tion they re­ceive. This trust is cru­cial for main­tain­ing the in­tegri­ty of our cov­er­age.”

In 2022, Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed part­nered with the diplo­mat­ic corp for the launch of The Home Of Foot­ball, which was GML’s cov­er­age of one of the most an­tic­i­pat­ed sport­ing events, the 2022 FI­FA World Cup.

The event, which was host­ed by GML’s Robert Du­mas, was sup­port­ed by Rel­lon Brown Dom­i­nant Sev­enth Pro­duc­tions, Dibe Drag­ons, Sol­era, At­lantic Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and CARIB Brew­ery Ltd.