Argentina's president vows to protect indigenous rights

President Cristina Fernandez called on her fellow citizens to "respect cultural identities" and to "recover together rights that have been lost," at a ceremony where she announced measures to guarantee the rights of Argentina's indigenous peoples. "I liked very much reclaiming the sense of all of us being Argentines. I say it as someone descended from Europeans," the head of state said, recalling the Old World inhabitants who came to Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century because "they didn't have food to put on their plates." "I say it so that many will come down from their arrogance and so that we have respect, freedom, equality, fairness and do not trample on traditions," she said. Fernandez considered that the history of humanity "is also a history of discrimination, forgotten or denied identities," and in that sense called on Argentines "to heal those wounds."