Easy Chair Series

Their Trip to Juarez, Mexico

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 18-91

Genre:

Track:

Dictation Name: EC196

Year: 1986

This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 196, June the sixth, 1989.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss our recent trip, about 10 days ago, to Juarez, Mexico. Juarez is across the Rio Grande from El Paso. El Paso and Juarez have an elevation of 4000 feet, but we were at a point in Juarez that is 4500 feet. El Paso, to give you a little more background is a city with a population of a half a million where as Juarez has a million and a half.

We were there in Juarez to visit a church and a Christian Reconstruction work being carried on by pastor Jose Lopez Luna. The speakers were myself and Denis Peacock. And because Denies had to leave before the evening service, Colonel Donor took his place. Pastor Lopez also spoke.

Now the significance of this work is that it is an amazing work of Reconstruction. Pastor Lopez is a remarkable man who has a vision for the conquest of Juarez and of Mexico for Christ and of the whole world. And he has taken very, very important steps in that direction.

I am going to ask Otto to give a description of what he saw there, because he was able to take notes freely whereas I was tied up a good deal of the time speaking. Otto, would you like to give a general picture and then we can go into some of the specific areas?

[Scott] Well, if you come upon that establishment and I called it a mission. I know that is a word that is generally used by the Catholics, but in every sense of the Word I would say this was a Protestant mission. And Jose moved me very deeply when he described his own background.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... that he started from.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Yes, he started from a very humble position. He was converted when he was about 17 and he grew up 600 miles south of Juarez and from the ... in his late teens became involved in Catholic action and then joined the Free Methodists at Nogales in Arizona which is in Mexico and graduated from a Bible school.

Later he left the Methodists and started a movement of his own, became a Baptist for seven years. Then had family problems and moved north. And some youngsters introduced him to the Salvation Army in Juarez and he preached for the Salvation Army for a couple of years. And apparently was doing this when he was taken to a particular neighborhood on the outskirts of town where he is working now. And it was an informal dump with all the tin cans, debris and so forty, very hilly, unpaved roads, very humble... it looked like a self made adobe structure, single ... single story.

Not too far away, I understand they had the cardboard houses and so forth.

[Rushdoony] Yes, about two blocks away.

[Scott] Two blocks away.

And in one of these minor ravines he found a small adobe structure occupied by an American missionary named John Hatfield, who, with his wife, was taking care of seven or eight small Mexican children whose mothers went across the bridge every day to work. And Hatfield was engaged in missionary work there.

And Jose Lopez has {?}. {?} said in a phrase which I think I will always remember, he said, “It broke my heart because this man was doing something.” And he said, “I was only preaching.”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And he joined Hatfield and the two worked together. Hatfield went out and made trips to get donations and so forth.

And the time came in 1971 when Hatfield was totally discouraged. The problems seemed to be endless and insoluble and he left of the states. He went up in the Washington, DC area with his family to try to earn a living. And Jose, then, was left with the entire effort.

How he managed, I don’t know, but Reverend Peacock came across him in his travels. And, you know, Denis gets to a lot of places and began to publicize this effort.

By the time we went out {?} and by the time I saw it, it was really quite extensive. A school with about 120 pupils from kindergarten to the sixth grade, an orphanage with 40 girls and 40 boys and a room for another 40, a piñata factory, plans to set up an automobile service center, a repair center, a church, quite impressive.

Seven homes created and built for as many homeless families and the Mexican Congress had set aside the land of this effort. Of course, that is sort of an informal rental. The Mexican government actually legally owns all the religious land in the country of Mexico. Religion is officially outlawed. There is a sort of a tolerance or a toleration established which is unwritten and illegal and the government can take the land back at any time it chooses, but as long as it is doing so much good, it is unlikely to do so.

Now there are some other things I would like to say about it, but I think I would like to hear your opinion.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Let me describe the area a little more, because the setting in itself is something. In Mexico the rich live downtown, because that is where there is likely to be both power and water. The hills which we would call the view lots are the undesirable areas because you have to walk a long ways downhill to get water, haul it up by bucket, very, very difficult.

These roads are not even bull dozed or braided and one where the school, the church and a clinic and Jose’s own home are located is almost the kind of hill that would be best for goats to climb.

We huffed and puffed going up and down a couple of times and I think it would either kill your keep you young if one like Jose had to run up and down several times a day.

The buildings, apart from those that were built for the homeless include a very fine school building, classroom, another building, the dormitories for the boys and girls.

Now this... the rooms are immaculate. The children have to take care of themselves, their clothing, their... the making of their beds, cleaning the rooms, everything. And they do a marvelous job of it. The boys and girls, grades one through six, are so neatly dressed you would think they came from exceptionally fine homes. There is a graciousness, a Christian radiance about them that I found very, very moving.

Otto mentioned their plan to have a shop there. The preliminary work has been done for it. The pit has been dug for mechanics working under a car. They want to start a trade school in order to train young people in a number of activities.

The iron bunk bets in the school were made at the mission’s iron works factory which was downtown.

The piñata factory is in the basement and this year they will manufacture 24,000 piñatas. Their, I think only about a year in production already, but next year they hope to increase it and to increase the outlets.

The small children work two hours each every day in the piñata factory and love it. The work is headed up by one of their school graduates, Jose Campion who went north, came to the States and studied and could have stayed here and they all told him he was crazy to go back, but he has gone back there to work in the school and to take charge of the piñata factory.

Jose’s eldest son is a doctor in town and he is going to head up the clinic they have, a beautiful new building, not quite finished, but it is going to be a medical and dental clinic. They have been treating people medically and dentally with almost no facilities. To get your teeth fixed you had to stretch out on school bench on your back and the dentist kneeled over you. Hardly the best modern practice, but they will have modern facilities as soon as they finish the building.

Jose’s second son came to this country also and studied and his work is rubber reclamation, tires, old discarded tires. They also have a farm about 50 miles south of Juarez. They don’t have water on it yet, but as soon as they do they shall do some planting there.

Jose’s goal is to train up the children and the adult converts to become working Christians, capable, having a trade and thereby becoming functioning and contributing members of society and of the Church.

Jose’s house is across the road from the school.

Now I mentioned that normally only the downtown area has water. Many of the hills have no water and those to which water has been piped is now the case that Jose and his mission compound. The water does not run up the... to the hill areas. They are out of water. Sometime in June and until the rains start in the fall the water pressure is insufficient to get it up the hill.

They now have power coming up the hill. But you must realize that many of the people on the hill are too poor to be able to hook on to the water or to the power.

This is a situation in which Jose works. I think anyone of us would feel it to be a hopeless situation. But Jose Lopez is a man radiant with hope, confident in Christ that he will conquer in his name.

[Scott] Well, I think there is quite a bottom to this, quite a structure. In the beginning Jose said when he was talking about his own experience he was all social work. And the Reconstruction element comes in because his particular mission is working toward becoming self supporting and profitable, not... this is not make work. This is not a joke. These young people... and he is surrounded with young people. We sat with the leaders of his church and they ranged in age from about 17 to about 25. There was only one or two men in their 30s. And ordinarily they told us that boys leave that whole area when they are about 15 and head for the States, but in this case he is holding them until they are in their early 20s. And several who have gone, like the Campion who has set up the piñata factory, have returned. And the piñata factory was started with 500 dollars, man and wife and is now employing a fair number of people and is reusing reclaimed, recycled newspapers, cardboard, wire, colored paper, imagination. It is ... distributes piñatas in Denver and several other plants, distributers in Denver and several other places in Texas. And the manager owner is now thinking of doing his own distribution which requires, of course, more capital because larger outlets pay over 90 day period and not on a 10 day period.

But the main thing here is that because they are earning much of their own way, there is a self respect and an entirely different attitude than the purely pietistic please give me money argument that has doomed so many such efforts. That means a tremendous change in attitude in a country like Mexico that has been inundated with Socialists and envious propaganda.

And I was just thinking that I picked up this afternoon an excerpt from a column by Pat Buchanan and Pat Buchanan is himself quoting a writer named Steltzer who says, “Contrary to all the liberal caterwauling about the rich United States having a moral obligation to help poor Latin America, these are not poor countries at all. Brazil has huge, rich reserves of iron ore, manganese, gems and gold. Colombia can count among its resources not only cocaine, but also emeralds, coal and iron ore. Argentina is rich in agricultural resources. Venezuela has billions if not trillions of barrels of oil in the ground, but chooses to restrict its production by remaining a member of the OPEC cartel. So, too, Mexico, which sits on huge reserves of oil and cooperates with OPEC by restricting output, thereby imposing an enormous tax on American consumers. And, of course, to say nothing of the dreadful plight of its own people.”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] These are countries that are mismanaged by an elite and degraded and degenerate ruling class.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And that is the reason that men like Jose Lopez and others are in the condition that they are. And the only way out of such a condition is to work and work on your own, because the system is so set up commercially down there that everyone takes the {?}, the bite, the licensing and the bite and the graft and the inspections and the rest of it make it very difficult to do things in a sincere and open fashion. But what Jose is doing is that he is training young men and women...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...to be workers, to use their own resources and their own imagination, to rely upon God and themselves. And it is remarkable how far he has progressed.

[Rushdoony] Yes and I was very profoundly moved the whole time I was there. And I feel that one of the greatest compliments I have ever been paid was when one of them said that apart from Jose himself Denies Peacock was the father of the movement there and I was the grandfather. I was very profoundly moved at that.

The thing that I can’t get over was in the midst of so seemingly hopeless a situation, the magnificent faith and hope those people have, they are filled with joy and confidence and that was very impressive and the fact that they are turning out young people who are now doers and shakers themselves.

[Scott] Well, it is a very strange country in Mexico. Most Americans are content to sit next door to Mexico and never take a look at it. Its original independence was launched by a priest, Father Hidalgo in the War of Independence against Spain. Yet today it is an anti Catholic, anti religious country. Jose’s school is forbidden to teach religion in any form five week days. They have to use the government textbooks, no other textbooks are allowed. No private schools are allowed. No private textbooks are allowed. On Saturday is the only time that they can officially give any religious instruction.

As far as the law is concerned, all religious services are to be confined to the four walls of an official church and they tell me that this is often violated semantically by saying, well, we have a community center or a social club or something of that sort throughout the country. There was a rebellion in the 1930s of wide scale rebellion, religious in nature and Lazaro Cardenas massacred tens of thousands of people. The American press never discovered it. It was right next door. Priests, nuns tortured to death. The New York Times never saw it. It was too... it was beneath attention, I suppose. Today the hierarchy of the Catholic Church of Mexico is deeply permeated with liberation theology. They have a red cardinal down there who has just recently retired. I think they can retire now at 75. And yet there is Jose and the congress has voted him to land because even a backwards government knows that it has to allow somebody to help the people. I understand that even the Sandinistas are allowing American missionaries in so long as they are helping the people, because the government itself, of course, is stealing everything that isn’t tied down.

And it is also interesting from my point of view that the buildings that Jose and his people put up with their own hands climbing the wheelbarrow with the pales of wet cement and all the rest of it, quite impressive, they simply put them up themselves. They didn’t need a license to put them up. The inspectors came by in a very casual fashion and we have here this paradox that a despotism like Mexico actually there is more individual freedom than there is in a free country like the United States when it comes to getting off to standing up and doing something. We have to have a permit to kill a rattlesnake in California or to trim a limb off a tree in our own yard.

[Rushdoony] One of the things that impressed me was the variety of backup things. For example, any day now they will run out of water, but they have two cisterns so that they can take care of all their water needs until the rains begin again. Jose is exceptional in that kind of practical vision. He has made sure that in one way or another their needs are being taken care of.

[Scott] Well, of course, we would do this. There is a myth that has grown to enormous size in this country that nothing can be done unless people are told to do it. The fact of the matter is societies predate governments and certainly this government is a Johnny come lately when it comes to building the United States.

Somebody said to me somewhere along the line that I... he didn’t quite understand my faith and people being able to do things on their own. And I compared it to the camera that was set up in a big square in New York, a plaza, you might call it, an open space in front of one of the big midtown buildings on a corner. At noon hundreds, tens of hundreds of people crisscross in that square all moving fast as they do in New York during lunch hour. Nobody ever bumps into anybody else. Yet there is no guide, no lines, no paths, no traffic cop. And according to the average specialist today, it would be impossible for that many people to go through that square in conflicting directions without chaos unless some expert were sitting there in a cage giving red and green and amber lights.

[Rushdoony] One of the things that impressed me, Thursday evening May the 25th by evening we were tired. It was an emotionally exhausting day because it was so powerful and moving. And then there was the evening service. And with their singing and my talk and Jose’s and Colonel Donor’s, the service was two hours and about 46 or seven minutes. And no one, old or young in that congregation seemed the least bit tired or bored and I found it exceptional because neither was I. And any meeting here that would last that long would wear me out. But there was that spirit there that was very, very moving. Quite outstanding.

[Scott] I think one of the reasons is that the outer world does not exist. Here in the United States the government is curled into our head and will not get out.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And we get bulletins from the court of higher authorities in the form of television and radio and newspapers and magazines every other second so that we never really feel relaxed. We never really feel that we... our lives are private and our own. We really feel, somehow or another as though we are in some sort of a vast national institution.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But that country is not as highly developed. It may be a despotism, but it is a despotism out of sight.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

A few things I would like to call attention to. Jose, who is a very gracious and kindly man and very gentle towards his fellow pastors who are often very critical of him and have been hostile to the Reconstruction work he is doing, said that one of his problems is with the Mexican pastors who are influenced by Scofield. Otto referred to the cardboard houses on the hillside on the other side of the hill. Because of the high altitude, the area has extremes of heat and cold, snow and freezing weather in the winter and very hot weather in the summer. In fact, the day we arrived it did go over 100.

The next day was a cool 94 or five. But people commonly freeze to death in these cardboard houses in the winters. And Jose has a very real concern with both converting these people and helping them learn how to work and to improve their housing.

As Otto remarked when we were there, it was like being in a third world country, because we were not in the part of Mexico that the tourists see, but the part they do not see.

Now an important aspect of the situation in Mexico is that in some ways from a liberal point of view, it is the most advanced country in the western world, because in the last century the leading Mexican intellectuals seized on the writings of the French revolutionary leaders, the Positivists like Comte and others and felt that the high road to an advanced civilization and to an advanced welfare state was by means of privativism, by separating man entirely from religion, from Christianity in particular and by taking a radically humanistic perspective. To this you have to add the extensive influence of various Socialist writers including Karl Marx on these Mexican intellectuals. They captured the country. They have shaped it and one must say destroyed it. But from a humanistic point of view, no country has more rigorously and for a longer time practiced the tenets of French revolutionary thinking with Positivism added to it.

So when we speak of the backward condition of people in Mexico, we should add there is where we, too, shall be if we continue the present course that our schools, our Washington elite and others are charting for us.

[Scott] Well, that is a very interesting comment. I think it overlooks, it leaped over, you leaped over something that went on under Diaz, you remember.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Capitalism was being tried. And Mexico was being industrialized. The English and the United States, the Americans and the French and the Germans all poured into Mexico and they poured money into Mexico. The English engineered the railroads. We developed an oil industry. Mining efforts were under way and Mexico became quite prosperous under Diaz. And then it was that the Marxists and the Socialists, the Socialist revolutionary Marxists and so forth really went to work with the politics of envy.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And they mounted that revolution beginning in 1910 which ran until 1920-21 and ruined the country. I think all tolled I think something like five million people were killed and half of all the property in Mexico was destroyed.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] That is when the church was seized and they wrote the first actual Marxist constitution in the world.

Now Americans, the United States of America has helped keep them in that situation by our philanthropies, government to government, not people to people, two levels here. A government to government philanthropy simply funds the oppressor and yet this is where most of the American money has been. And going back to that quote on Buchanan’s column and I don’t know Stelzer is, but he is obviously very bright, talking about the situation of Latin America overall which, he says, is hell on the people who live under the misgovernment. The best answer, says Stelzer for Bush may be simply get out of the way. Let nature takes it course. Let the Latin nations default if they wish. Let the banks take the hit and let the people of Latin America choose {?} or generals or Populists or Socialists to rule them and let them face the consequences of their decisions. It is time they grew up and stood on their own feet.

For too long we Americans have indulged the political immaturity of Latin America. They could be anti American in their rhetoric and UN voting record yet still get American aid. They could be Socialist and still be subsidized by Capitalist institutions. Now they want to default on their debt and be given new money as well. It was time they were introduced to the real world.

Now the thing about Jose is that he has none of the complexes that you would expect to run into. His manner was frank and open.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] He was an independent, mature individual. The young people that he had around with him were very dignified and friendly, but not overly so. You could feel the reality in the situation.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They are taking care of themselves and they are going to be self supporting. They are going to be a shining light for that whole area. And every... I can see why the other pastors are critical, because it makes them look ridiculous.

[Rushdoony] Yes. [36:15]

You are right in calling attention to what transpired under Diaz, but, you see, that story you don’t find in mostly surveys and histories of Mexico told with any detail or any comprehension, because what our scholars are in sympathy with is what the intellectuals there planned.

[Scott] Oh, yes.

[Rushdoony] The radical Positivism which has, of course, triumphed and destroyed Mexico in the process so that we have had a biased history and, increasingly a state department that is more protective of Humanism elsewhere because it is closer to that than to Christianity here and abroad.

[Scott] Well, of course, this is what they did in El Salvador and Nicaragua. They broke up the large estates in the name of agricultural reapportionment or whatever, because they thought it would be better if you had a lot of small farms.

Well, perhaps it is, if you are a poet or if you are Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson in his day, you know, looked at China as the example of what the American society should imitate, all small farms. But small farming is not agriculturally efficient and everybody in the human race is not really equipped to live on the land. We have diverse talents. There are men for whom farming is a vocation and a great many more for whom it is not. If we have a situation... in the rich country of Mexico and Central America where they have, I think Mexico has enough oil to take care of the world for another 200 years, but we are not allowed to go in to go after it, not even when it benefits them.

[Rushdoony] And with all their oil wealth they are losing money on oil because of the corruption.

[Scott] Well, everything is corrupt. Remember when I went down there, I do, about eight years or so ago and I talked with a number of industrialists. I was living then in San Diego and the first place thing they wanted to know was where I was living and I told them and they immediately wanted to discuss real estate prices in San Diego, because these were men who were burdened by their wealth. There is no way they could liquidate their assets and get out of the country without having to pay an enormous tribute to the government. So they were more or less held by their physical assets, their stores, their factories, their employees and so forth which they had begun to look at as so many chains. What they wanted to do was to be able to get out with their wealth before the inevitable collapse.

And, of course, the collapse when it did come, was only half way. Remember the devaluation and the nationalization of the banks and so forth. Well now a man like Jose has been freed by his conversion from all those worries. He is not worried because he feels he is doing the best he can for the greatest number of people that he can. He is worshipping God and he is being everything that a man should be. So there is no worry in his eye. Whereas the wealthy men that I talked to were haunted by the political situation.

[Rushdoony] Do you remember, Otto, early in this decade shortly after you moved up here we spoke at a conference in the Bay Area together with Jose Lopez.

[Scott] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And General Rio Spond of Guatemala.

[Scott] Yes, yes.

[Rushdoony] And Denis and the location of the meeting had to be changed three times because the media and the left were threatening to picket it and to break it up.

[Scott] Because of Rio Spond.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And, of course, General Rio Spond who is, by the way, one of our Chalcedon readers is, in his own way, doing a great deal for the Reconstruction of Guatemala, creating a very, very important work down there.

Now in that instance, no one in the media was concerned with here are a couple of men from Latin America with a remarkable story to tell.

[Scott] Not a single reporter covered the story of, if they did, not a single editor ran the story.

[Rushdoony] That is right. All they were ready to do was to cooperate with the left in letting them know where we were going to meet in order to have the meeting disrupted.

[Scott] Yes, but the media covers the false refugees from these countries.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The so-called sanctuary movement has had many wonderful chances before the camera.

[Rushdoony] I will never forget at that meeting the marvelous surprise of hearing Jose speak. You didn’t hear him.

[Scott] No, I didn’t...

[Rushdoony] ...because you were speaking...

[Scott] ...at a workshop, I think.

[Rushdoony] ...at a worship. Yes. And I was presiding in a meeting where Jose was speaking. And it was a remarkable surprise, the impassioned and totally confident manner in which he spoke.

[Scott] Well, as you know, Rio Spond is detested by the Liberals of the United States because he stopped the Marxist revolution in Guatemala.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I think it is very amusing because I didn’t think that a Christian should do that.

[Rushdoony] Well...

[Scott] They forgot that he was a general.

[Rushdoony] And Rio Spond told me when we were having lunch that the Soviet Union told the state department to get rid of Rio Spond, to get rid of him.

[Scott] And the state department obeyed.

[Rushdoony] They obeyed. They sent a destroyer down there which waited off shore and said, “Get out.”

[Scott] It is interesting. I always look at individuals in a very high place with a certain sense of wonder at their lack of self consciousness, because history, like oil, brings everything to the surface. Some of these families, some of the families, some of the descendants of these men are going to have to change their names because they will be so ashamed of being descended from such monsters.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

Well, another thing that impressed me tremendously there was how everyone worked. Jose Campion with his piñata factory in the basement of his school.

[Scott] Well, he was very interesting because he had studied business management.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] You remember that he told us that when he went back to Mexico the Mexican immigration authorities were so astonished to see him returning from the United States that they seized his passport and held it for a year as much as to say, “Well, if you insist on coming back we will see to it that you have to stay.”

Well, there was his wife, a slender girl, didn’t look much more than in her late teens, the mother of two and pregnant, working very rapidly and happily there.

[Scott] Well, as I say, it was a pleasant and congenial area. And don't forget. A couple of blocks away the cardboard house people with 10 year old mothers.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Scott] With horrible conditions.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And beyond that we have this whole slew of refugees from the countries to the south of Mexico, from Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador and Nicaragua and so forth and they are flowing up to Mexico toward the American border in greater numbers than anyone can count.

[Rushdoony] When we crossed the bridge into Juarez and rode along he Rio Grande for a short distance, one of the men called my attention to the groups of young men hiding in the trees along the banks of the Rio Grande waiting for an opportunity to go across the border.

[Scott] After nightfall.

[Rushdoony] Yes, because it was either stay and starve or go over the border and take a chance.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] ...that you might...

[Scott] ...they don’t have too much to chance because it is not too great a risk because there is a flourishing counterfeiting business going on, false credentials and the employers are not going to ask too many searching questions as long as they can plausibly plead ignorance of a person’s actual citizenship and these people come in. They are working below the minimum wage and they are working at anything and we have become a country like Europe that doesn’t like stoop labor. We have got all these social workers who think that a dead end job is a bad thing and it is interesting to contemplate the fact that in many cases their parents had dead end jobs and sent them to college.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I mean, how many jobs are there with long and glowing futures? Not too many. But the ... the thing that Jose and Rio Spond and the others, these are people whom Denies Peacock has been in touch with through the years. He has been very active in that part of the world.

[Rushdoony] Well, he got hold of Rio Spond through us.

[Scott] He got it through Chalcedon.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, Protestantism is doing in Central American and in Mexico what it did in the Reformation.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it is like seeing the great wheel of history come around and you begin... I begin to compare these to the workings out of an arithmetical equation. If you do certain things you get certain results. If you have certain faith you have certain consequences. And Central America is undergoing a Reformation.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Jose is one of the pioneers of that movement.

[Rushdoony] In one or two countries the number of evangelicals now is approaching 24, 28 percent.

[Scott] That is a lot.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] That is a great deal.

Especially when you think that converts are... are more active than cradle adherents of any faith.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Someone has said the future of Central America is going to be a battle between evangelicals and Marxists.

[Scott] Well, the Marxists will lose that one.

[Rushdoony] I think you are right.

[Scott] Because thy pull upon the worst elements and their message is one that turns the stomach of everyone with decent instincts. Their message is there is somebody who is doing well, let’s go get him. And this goes against the basic instincts of western civilization.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] We have been... we... at least until recently... I started to say we have been taught to admire superiority. I don’t think that is true anymore, but it is a basic instinct.

[Rushdoony] Well, another thing that impressed me was the hospitality there.

[Scott] Well, they... they work very hard.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... and ....and it was quite an elaborate dinner that they put on.

[Rushdoony] Jose’s wife and mother-in-law and some of the church women fed 20 or more of us and it was quite a feast.

[Scott] It was. Well, those little children and I have forgotten who I discussed this with, have... because of the tremendous, terrible emphasis that is made on sex crimes, molestation, abuse and so forth in the United States, we have 260 million people here and the percentage of these crimes is minute as you know, but then they are exaggerated by exposure and discussion. I remember years ago when I would get off the bus and go home, I was a young man. And I would pass a house where there was a little girl maybe six of five or something and I used to wave and she would wave and smile. One day as I went by her mother saw her and she came running out with her face full of alarm to grab that kid and take her in the house.

And I though, what are we coming to? There was none of that with the children of the orphanage.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] We stopped to smile and speak and they blossomed. The lights came on in their eyes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It was a real pleasure. And this is the way life is supposed to be. We are not supposed to be terrified of one another. We are not supposed to raise children to be terrified of all adults and to portray men as monsters and so forth and so on.

And the idea that you could adopt one of those children for 30 dollars a month.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...is a very important one.

[Rushdoony] I was about to mention that. That is 360 dollars a year. They have room for 20 more boys and 20 more girls. This is boarding room. And these will be the future of Mexico.

[Scott] No question. They are the future of that area because when Jose began these efforts the people in the neighborhood began to come around. His congregation was formed by the people in the neighborhood who saw what he was doing and who then joined in the effort which is the essence of the congregation.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] One of the big problems with American congregations—and I say this with all my expertise as a non minister—is that it seems to me just looking at the congregation that they expect the minister to carry the ball.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But he can’t.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] The congregation has to carry the ball.

[Rushdoony] Well, the people there enjoy their work. They enjoy the church.

[Scott] Yes, they do. It is a very pretty church, by the way.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] With flowers where the Catholics have stations of the cross.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I was very struck by that, the flowers against the white washed walls. Very pretty. And there was a... do you remember the young men that came up to sing?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Sing hymns? And the man sitting next to me said, “They are dressed in their Sunday best.” And they were very... they were very good, very proud. It was really very pleasant, very pleasing.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] You came away with a better feeling about the human race and about the world as you should.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And yet what were we looking at? We were looking at people who by the average American standards would call for somebody being indicted and sent to prison for just having such a thing exist for people to be so poor. No social workers.

[Rushdoony] No.

Well, if anyone listening is interested in helping without cutting back on their support to us which we need, we would be happy to send on, whether it is 360 or a portion of that to Jose for help in bringing in homeless children into his boarding school.

One of the things, by the way, Otto, that tickled me no end was their old fashioned Hispanic courtliness. Very poor people, but a certain courtliness.

[Scott] Well, all Latin America has that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] You have to be very polite because almost everybody is armed.

[Rushdoony] Well, you weren’t.

[Scott] If they are not actually armed, they can get armed very quickly.

[Rushdoony] Well, I like the way they pronounced your name as Scott.

[Scott] Well, they all do that.

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is almost up. Are there any concluding remarks you would like to make?

[Scott] Yes, the seed bed... Jose has created a seed bed which is going to have many offshoots.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Those people are going to go leave that particular vicinity and continue those efforts elsewhere.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

I should add this one thing, too, that Colonel Donor has also of late helped them. I believe by raising some funds for the furthering of the clinic. So Colonel Donor is an important part there and Mike Bresnan, of course.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is about up. Thank you all for listening and God bless you and do remember the work of pastor Jose Lopez Luna in your prayers. Thank you and good night.