ACUTV proudly presents
On Campus with your host, ACU
vice president and dean of campus life,
Dr. Gary McCaleb.
Here's Gary.
On campus today,
we're pleased to welcome Reece Mitchell
from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Thank you for being with us.
And welcome to Abilene.
Thank you very much, Gary.
Good to be with you this afternoon.
You have actually spent
over 10 years.
How many years have you lived now in
Buenos Aires?
My family and I've been there 14 years,
just a little bit more than 14 years now.
And your children are of
what ages?
We have a daughter who is 19 years old.
Her name is Laura, a son who's 17.
His name is Jeff and another son
who's 14 by the name of Marcus
and Karen, who is 11.
So the reason I ask about the age
is because that establishes
the fact really your family has grown up
in Argentina rather than in America,
has it not?
Yes, that's very true.
Our oldest daughter was five
years old when we went there.
And the last daughter, the last
child was born in Buenos Aries.
Your work there is the work of a
missionary. And I'd like for us a little
later to get back to
your perceptions of
the long term work such as yours
of an American missionary in another
country.
But first, let's talk a little bit about
rhinoceros the city, because
it certainly must be one of the,
I suppose, 10 largest cities
in the world today.
Yes, the population getting serious at
the present time.
Buenos Aires has a population of about 10
and a half million people and
still counting.
And it's considered to be
by many people who've been there and, of
course, by us as well, the Paris of
South America.
Give us a little bit of a feel, I guess,
what we would call here, the Chamber of
Commerce speech.
You know, what are the
the pros, the attributes
of Buenos Aires, the city?
What if a person what would be the
reasons for people to come
there, move there or visit there?
All right.
Buenos tardes, of course, is at the
southern end
of what we might call the international
airlines, the airlines that go down
to South America internationally.
And in Buenos Tardes from Buenos
Aires, you have to take other commuter
planes, for instance, on into the
country.
So it's central enough located
to have ready access.
The parks are very beautiful.
I can't tell you exactly how
many monuments and fountains that the
city has, but it is really a
very beautiful city.
The OKITA architecture especially
is something that we all enjoy
and never get tired of Spanish,
especially a lot
of older buildings.
The city has some 400 years
old, and the Cologne Theater,
which holds opera and ballet,
for instance, is very old
and not a very unique, very beautiful.
What are the major industries as far
as sources and reasons for employment
and work in Buenos Aires and the
surrounding area?
The surrounding area around
Buenos Aires is farmland
and a lot of corn.
Small grains such as sweet and
cattle are raised right around.
Buenos tardes.
And in Buenos Aires itself,
some heavy industry has found,
such as the Ford Motor Motor Company
on the north side of Buenos Aries,
a lot of textile factories
are found in Buenos Aries,
things like that.
You mentioned Ford, which
raises the question of something that we
continue to hear about in America, and
that is American industries moving
abroad and establishing plants in
other countries and in other continents
because of better
opportunities to find
lower wages
of the employees.
Would would you be seeing
this happening on a regular basis?
Are you seeing more and more American
companies locating plants or
parts of their companies there?
We see some coming in, some
some companies coming in a few
and also a few leaving as
well.
What you find in Buenos Aires is cheap
labor for the company,
but very high taxes on the product.
In other words, a
new Ford vehicle might
cost the company to make
five, six, seven thousand dollars.
But the sale price to the customer
will be something like twelve to fourteen
thousand dollars.
And that's basically because of taxes
and taxes also make it
pro. But by and large,
to export, and so,
for instance, in the case of Ford Motor
Company, they very seldom have exported
their vehicles to other countries.
What is produced by Ford,
by Renauld, by Fiat, by the Troian,
by Peugeot, which all our major
car manufacturing companies,
the production is used
locally from the standpoint
of education.
How would you compare and contrast
the education of
the young people of Argentina
to the education of young
people in America?
You have two basic different
divisions or categories of education
in Argentina. This is on the elementary
and secondary level levels.
You have public high schools, public
grade schools and you have private
schools. And so the quality
education varies somewhat there.
Our children are presently enrolled in a
private bilingual Spanish
and English grade school
and high school.
And we feel like the quality
of education that's that our children are
receiving there is very high.
They study some 13 subjects
in high school per week
and they go
from eight o'clock in the morning till
about four or five o'clock in the
afternoon.
When you say 13 subjects or are
they studying any any subjects that are
different or other than
what the American students would be
studying?
They have a greater emphasis and
they study it for about four years.
Geography, for instance, in high school,
they'll study Argentine geography.
One year in high school, they'll study
Latin American South American
geography. One year they'll study
geography of Europe and
the rest of the Americas.
For instance, for another year, they
really studied geography a lot more.
They get a good dose of math
and science language,
both Spanish and English,
some computer science and
that kind of thing.
You know, we talk about studying
languages in this country, but
in reality, most of our students graduate
from college and still are able to speak
and communicate in only one language.
Are you able to see students
after studying language
to be able to
actually be bilingual
and communicate effectively in more than
one language?
Definitely so.
In the case of our children, for
instance, they are entirely
bilingual.
Probably their first language, the
language they feel most comfortable in
is Spanish.
And you'll hear some of our younger
children whose idiomatic
expressions are
founded in Spanish, expressing themselves
in English with a Spanish
foundation, if you understand what I
mean. So, yes, there are students
like them and students at this
bilingual school who are
entirely bilingual
from the standpoint of influence
in an educational system.
We hear from time to time people
in other countries talk about
that their educational system is is
strongly influenced by the European
educational system.
Are you able to perceive
a particularly
significant influence either from the
European or the American
perspectives on the education,
or is it independent of either of those
influences?
Yes, most definitely.
Where our children go to school,
there is a definite British
that I mean Great Britain influence
in the school.
The school was begun by an Anglican
church and Buenos
Aires suburb of Burlingham, and
there is a definite British air about
the school, a definite British,
I guess, roots to the school, so to
speak.
And when when
the children finish their elementary
and secondary school, what
what is the relationship between
those years of school and college,
beyond high
school education compared to
the way that the expectations
of American young people to go on to
college?
First of all, I might say that in
Argentina, only eight grades
elementary school goes to eight, eight
eighth grade are
obligatory.
They're necessary to go through the
eighth grade after the eighth grade.
A child has the option or the parents
have the option as to whether the child
will attend any further school or not.
That's right. That's right.
Generally, what happens is if the
child comes from a poor.
The family cannot afford to send the
child to school, even though
public schools, public high schools are
free, tuition is free, the only
thing that it costs the parent is
our, for instance, the expense
of the bus ticket or train ticket to the
school and books.
And so then what on beyond high school
then? Is it even more
selective?
Yes. You would find
fewer people going to universities.
Universities there on the public level
are also free.
And our oldest daughter just finished
first year at the University of Buenos
Aires.
And so there was no expense
so far as tuition was concerned.
She paid for her books and her travel.
And that was all
in New York City.
Method of transportation
is, of course, very different from
much of the other many of the other
cities in the United States.
People don't have cars.
How is how is that how
does that compare to transportation in
and around Buenos Aires of the people
who live there?
Transportation in Buenos Aires
is
public oriented.
In other words, very
few people, relatively few people have
cars.
And the
system is based on a train
system that was constructed
by the British people in the
late 1980s, hundreds,
early. Nineteen hundreds, a
very old subway system built in the
nineteen, eighteen, nineteen,
somewhere in through there, and a very
extensive bus system.
They call their busses colectivos
and they will hold
about 30 people or so their small busses.
We talk a lot about
culture shock from time
to time of people moving from
one culture to another.
Have you've been there
14 years now?
I suppose it might be possible
that the that the culture there is no
longer creating any shock for you.
But can you recall
leaving America going there
and in any kind of adjustments that
you had to make to a different culture?
Yes, I certainly can.
Fourteen years ago, we arrived in
December of nineteen seventy three
and Christmas came shortly thereafter.
And I personally feel
like a missionary or somebody who travels
overseas and is going to be there for
an extended period probably
suffers culture shock.
More feels that at least more
during the holidays, during the times
when, you know, family here
in the States is getting together
Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth
of July, that kind of thing.
We have our holidays, of course, down and
Wednesdays, but a lot
of them are different
over a period of time.
Now that you've been there that long, are
you as aware of of
the changes in culture that might have
been rather
dramatic to you at the time?
In other words, have you do you feel like
you a pretty well
part of that culture now?
Even though you are an American?
We feel very much a part of the culture.
We Mengel, we talk, we
study with Argentine's every
day, and we even have an
Argentine living with us at the present
time.
And but there are certain
things that I remember very well that
were very difficult to adjust to.
And we're kind of we call
it subcounty in Spanish.
It's very difficult to
adapt to there.
We in our country,
when people come from other countries, we
so often use the term foreigners,
international students sometimes.
But as you went to that country, did
you feel that you were a foreigner
and that you were treated as a foreigner,
or were you aware of
the way that you were,
the relationships that you had and so
forth with people there?
Yes, I think very definitely people
looked upon us as foreigners
the way we dressed, the fact
that for the first year we didn't have a
car and we rode bicycles.
My wife and I rode bicycles with our
children strapped to our backs, for
instance. That was not typical there at
all.
I had a mechanic and
near near where we lived.
Tell me at one time, he said,
you look very much Argentine.
You look like an Argentine with
your mustache and your darker hair and
this kind of thing.
But he said, when you open your mouth, I
realize you're not.
It was because of my accent.
The reason you need to take a break
for just a minute. When we come back, I'd
like for us to pursue a little deeper
some of the things about the
political nature of the.
Country, as well as the religious
nature of the country, we're
visiting today with Reece Mitchell.
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We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Reece Mitchell, Buenos Aires,
Argentina, one of the
when you think of Argentina, I suppose,
over the last several years,
perhaps one of the most popular names
that people would associate with
Argentina would be the name Peron and
one and then Evita Peron and the
Broadway musical that
was highly acclaimed at the time about
Evita.
And one of the great songs
out of it, Don't Cry for Me.
Argentina and the Perens
apparently played a very dominant
role as personalities
in the country. Could you give us
from your perspective of being in
Argentina for 14 years how there were
perceived and or perceived?
Sure, Juan Peron
became president of Argentina in
about 1945 and
he was a very popular president during
that time from 1945 to 1955.
He was popular for various reasons.
He gave a lot of
poor people jobs.
For instance, he brought a lot of people
into Buenos Aires.
He made the city grow.
He gave impetus to industry,
small industry especially.
And he was popular, especially
because of his wife, Evita.
Eva was very popular with the people.
She had come from a very poor background.
She had a lot of empathy with the
poor.
She also gave a lot of things away,
not to the poor.
And unfortunately, she died
in 1952.
And Mr. Juan Peron's
popularity waned with her death
and he was ousted by a military
government in 1955.
Then you may know, Gary, that
in 1972 he
was able, through the election of a
friend, I guess we could call it
the election of a friend, free election
of a friend. In a democracy.
He was able to come back to Argentina.
He had been in exile in Spain
with his second
wife, Isabel.
And Juan Peron came back
in 1973, actually,
and he was president for one
year until his death in July of 1974.
At that point,
Juan and his second wife had agreed
that she would be vice president
while he was president.
So she Tiko she took over
as president in 1973.
Excuse me, nineteen seventy for
the presidency of the Republic of
Argentina until nineteen seventy
six when she was ousted by another
military coup.
And now
in the 1980s.
How are how are the parents
remembered and how are they
perceived as far as positive
or negative associations by the people
today, and how are they treated
in history of the country?
I think it's very interesting, this
question, because you
see all kinds of political posters,
especially during election time, posted
on walls of buildings, for
instance, downtown Buenos Aires
with their images on the posters.
Think about it. This is a political
leader who died
15 years ago, 14 years ago,
who is still held up, especially,
of course, by the Peronist Party.
It's also called the Justice Party
there in Buenos Aires who still held up
as their national leader.
And so it depends your
question depends on whether you're a
Peronist or whether you're
of the opposing party or one of
the other minor parties as to
whether you think one parent
did a good job during his presidency,
whether he was a good president, whether
he did something positive for the country
or not.
The Peronist Party lost in
the last free elections in nineteen
eighty three.
It was a surprise to the country.
People thought, this is what
I feel. At least their people thought
that Perens party
would win the elections, but they did
not.
They won about 40 percent of the vote
and a man by the name of Raul Alfonsin
came in as president and he represents
what is called the radical
party there
from the standpoint of moving from
government into government and religion
and the relationships that exist there,
because from country to country, we find
there are very different kinds of
relationships that exist.
How would you describe
the the prevailing government
governmental atmosphere and
the prevailing religious atmosphere and
how the two blend or work
together?
Well, I might say here,
first of all, that some
some 90 percent of origin
of the people of Argentina are
Roman Catholic, but only
about 10 to 15.
Percent of that, 90 percent of
the entire population of twenty seven
million actually practice their
faith, the president
of the country, for instance, has to be
Roman Catholic by law,
but at the same time, they
give a great deal of religious freedom
to Protestant groups.
We have to be registered, for instance,
in the country to be able to
live there, to be able to work as
missionaries, to be able to teach the
Bible.
But there is a great deal of latitude,
a great deal of freedom for us
there.
But what is entailed in registering?
You say you have to be registered.
Does that entail being approved
or being cleared to do certain
things or not given permission to
do certain things?
Basic LIGAIRI It simply means
that the church, they want to
know what the church is
that we represent in Argentina.
We had to present some bylaws,
the constitution, so to speak, of the
church, to the federal, to the federal
government and
the names and addresses, phone numbers
and so forth of the representatives
of the church in the country.
But it does not necessarily mean approval
or disapproval at all.
It doesn't come to that at all.
So are you saying there's not
a danger that you could be
that your registration could
be denied and you could be asked to leave
the country or.
No, there is no danger
in that regard from the standpoint of
the president being required
to be a Roman Catholic,
does that mean that Catholicism
is considered to be the
official religion or has in any
way a
direct tie in with the overall government
and politics of the country?
Most definitely.
Roman Catholicism permeates
politics and
it has a great deal of influence in
Congress.
The laws that are passed or that aren't
passed, for instance, are greatly
influenced by the Roman Catholic Church
and the archbishop there and
Buenos Aires, for instance.
One particular example I might give
you is has to do with the divorce
law, which was passed by Congress just
last year, and the Roman
Catholic Church was against that law,
against the passage of that law.
But it passed in spite of the
Roman Catholic Church's influence.
They ran a half page
ads, beautifully done, and one of the
major newspapers against that law.
But their influence has
waned in the last 20 years
and they were not able to keep it from
passing.
How would you interpret the fact that it
passed against their position?
Is that because of is that interpreted
as an anti Roman Catholic position
that was taken or was it just the
sentiments of the people on that
particular issue?
My personal opinion is that it reflects
a lot of indifference on the part of
the populace in general in
Argentina, indifference towards the Roman
Catholic Church. It's not so much
necessarily that they are against
the church and her policies, but
they're just indifferent and it's no
longer a real viable force in
their lives.
Is that an indifference to Catholicism
or an indifference to religion in
general?
Some of both.
You see some of both there you see some
quite a few agnostics and
a few atheists and some
people who are just indifferent, some
people who have seen
a lot of falseness,
a lot of what they perceive
to be lies by the church
and feel like that they can't believe in
her any longer.
Back to the question of registering and
having proper registration
to be able to practice a particular
religion in the country.
Are there ever
occasions when you are aware of the
government checking on you or
do you have to annually give any kind of
report to the government about what
you're doing or the numbers that you now
have in your particular religious
group?
There are no close checks
so far as we know, at least of our
faith.
The closest thing that would come to that
would be a periodic renewal
of the person who is responsible for
that particular belief will have
to go down, for instance, every
two or three years and sign a document
saying that this particular person is
responsible as the person responsible
for that particular.
One of the great freedoms we've always
talked about in this country is the
freedom of religion.
Do you see any difference in the way
that freedom of religion is
made available or is a part of
the overall governmental
practices of this country as opposed
to.
Or as contrasted to Argentina,
there is there is some difference,
definitely, I think basically the
difference is a perceived
difference, how the people perceive
freedom of religion.
And I'm not sure I can explain this, but
I'll try.
The typical Argentine
doesn't really perceive himself as being
free. I don't believe
he is tied by tradition, is
tied by custom.
He's tied by family ties many times
to the Catholic Church.
And he may not really perceive
this openly,
overtly, but it's down deep
in his heart.
And so are you saying that that
cause is, at least in his thinking
processes, there's a sort
of governmental and
family control
that keeps him from feeling free
to make his own decisions about religious
beliefs?
There is some of that indirect
and very subtle type of control
over a person's life individual in
Argentina.
I don't believe that you find the rugged
individualism and that kind
of freedom that came from the pioneers,
for instance, in our own country here.
If the president of the country
is required to be a member of the
Catholic the Roman Catholic Church, does
that leave at least an implication
that says if you want to rise
to the higher levels of government, maybe
even business and industry, but at least
government, that you will
you will do well to stay a member of
this particular religious group?
I think it definitely does.
Gary, I think that you
are looked on with favorable
eyes if you are a Roman Catholic.
That's true of well, it's necessary
if you're president. It's looked on with
favor bills in the Congress
and also in the military.
We had the case of a young
friend of ours who wanted to
go into a military academy,
but he couldn't because he wasn't Roman
Catholic. And this created a real problem
for this particular family.
What is the what is the
present and anticipated future
economic health
of the country?
The present economic health of the
country is very poor.
We're suffering a recession.
You may well know that Argentina
has a 40 plus billion
dollar debt basically to
banks and the United States of America,
and they're just barely paying the
interest at this time.
There is very little unemployment,
however, because there
are no unemployment, unemployment
benefits.
And so anybody who can who is able
to work gets out and gets some kind of
job.
Now, there's a lot of sub employment,
what what they call their sub employment,
which means an architect,
a friend of mine, for instance, who has
trained university training
as an architect, will be working in his
father's print shop.
Hmm.
I'm sorry. We're already out of time
because it's been very interesting to
visit with you about the city and
the country, the country of Argentina.
You expect to be going back soon, I
suppose?
Yes, we'll be leaving March 4th.
Well, we wish you well and your return
there and look forward to visiting with
you again at some future time.
Thank you very much, Gary.
Thank you for being with us on campus
with Reece Mitchell.