A happy day for all parents except the inhabitants of Mendoza: why?

However, it didn’t last long. In 1966, the third Sunday in June was formally instituted in homage to an American father …: In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd delivered a sermon in which he paid homage to his father, Willian Jackson Smart, a veteran of the Civil War in the United States.

According to the eulogy, he did not raise his six children with love and dedication until after his wife died during her sixth childbirth. The man I was born on June 5 and his daughter proposed, precisely, that on this date they all celebrate Father’s Day.

The proposal had national repercussions, informally celebrating across the United States the date proposed by this girl based on the birth of her devoted father.

But President Lyndon B. Johnson, who took office after Kennedy’s assassination, decided much later, in the mid-1960s, that the celebration took place on the third Sunday in June each year. And the world has changed too.

For reasons still to be elucidated (but suspected), in Argentina was also adopted this Sunday to honor parents. The same has happened with most of the countries on the planet, with a few exceptions, moreover, such as Uruguay, Spain, Germany, Brazil and Mendoza …

Indeed, only the province of Cuyo has remained faithful to the memory of San Martín and his double paternity: of the Fatherland and Merceditas.

By law 5131/87, governed by resolutions 316/2000 and 774/2001, it was established that throughout the territory of Mendoza, Father’s Day would continue to be celebrated every August 24. However, one could say that today Father Mendoza has his two days, because the third Sunday in June does not go unnoticed.

Recall that the same was true for the whole country: in 2017, the Chamber of Senators of the Nation was seized of a bill which, in its first article, stipulated: “Be instituted on August 24 of each year as ‘Father’s Day’ in honor of the date on which General Don José de San Martín became such”.

The project promoted by Mendoza Senators Julio Cobos (UCR) and Anabel Fernández Sagasti (FpV), however, did not prosper as a law, although he also proposed that “it would be held when it coincides with Sunday, or failing that, the following Sunday in each calendar year”.

Another extraordinary case in Argentina occurred last year, when Governor Gerardo Morales ruled that for purely business reasons and because Jujuy was in the midst of a crude coronavirus outbreak, Father’s Day would be celebrated on Sunday July 12, 2020 in this province.