Richard A. Chartier (1953, 1966)
By L. Harold DeWolf ‘26, ‘35, Dean, Wesley Theological Seminary
ANYONE who has seen the vast shanty towns (villas miseria) which constitute increasing parts of most South American cities will never forget them. Even on first view one will see there an enormous, perhaps impossible, task which confronts people concerned with the spiritual, economic and political health of their inhabitants. But the difficulties are much greater than they look. Much that most North Americans take for granted as part of life in any community is missing. A social worker who seeks to begin helping a villa miseria to help itself looks in vain for churches, clubs, unions, or free associations of any kind. After a while it dawns on him that there is here no community or neighborhood, no common purpose, no co-operative effort.
Richard A. Chartier and his wife Jennie set out, in 1959, to serve the people in such a place on the edge of Lanus, a large industrial city near Buenos Aires. Dick was thirty-five years old. He was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts, graduated from Ottawa University, in Kansas, and from Boston University School of Theology. He has subsequently done graduate work in Social Ethics at Boston University. Jennie is from Montevideo, Uruguay, is a graduate of Swarthmore College, and holds a Master’s degree from Boston University. The Chartiers have four children: Anne (9), Elizabeth (7), Richard Francis (6), and little Jennie (5).
When Dick began his work in Argentina, under the auspices of the Board of Missions of The Methodist Church, he had some unusual assets. He would name as first among them his wife, deeply enriched with the best culture of her own Uruguay and of the United States, while fortified also with an indomitable courage, devoted Christian faith and a contagious love of people. While a student in Boston, Dick had been an active leader in good social causes—especially the protest against war and the urgent quest for genuine peace. It was natural that he should be specializing in the study of society and the relevance of Christian faith and thought to social problems. He was and is quick to beam his strong, friendly smile on young and old, wise and simple alike; and behind the smile is a deep, responsible concern.
His appointment in Argentina was originally to the pastorate of a small church in Lanus, a lower middle-class church which maintained a local social service program. The Council for Social Action of The Methodist Church in Argentina was then about to launch a project in a villa miseria, and asked the Chartiers to assume leadership in this project. It soon involved Dick in so much work that he resigned the pastorate.
Three purposes of the new task were defined. The first was to offer a program of social services as a concrete way of expressing concern for and of responding to the critical needs of the people. The second was to root the social services in the structure and life of the local community under the sponsorship and direction of the community itself. It would then cease to be a “Methodist-sponsored” project. This purpose deeply affected the theory and practice of the whole operation, giving it a strong emphasis on “community organization and development”.
The third purpose was to provide a training center in social service for students from the Facultad Evangélica de Teología—an ecumenical theological seminary which has firm historical ties with Boston University and is the strongest Protestant theological school in South America. It was intended that students would thus be inducted into the theory and practice of social service. Moreover, it was hoped that both through their leadership and through the example set by the project, local churches in many cities and countries would learn to co-operate with existing social agencies and to initiate new programs of social service.
It took large vision and undaunted courage to attack the wretchedness of people by the hundreds of thousands in the growing problem of the shanty towns by trying to build a program among a few neighbors in one little collection of shacks. Probably the seeming hopelessness of the task is one important reason while no church had hitherto attempted anything of the kind. Moreover, the same lack of community spirit and social responsibility which afflicted the villas miseria was also present, to somewhat lesser degree, in the country as a whole. Feeling hopeless in the face of the vast economic burdens of the nation, most people were preoccupied with their own private efforts to get what they could for themselves. This lack of social responsibility, which is part of the malaise of the continent, has inevitably penetrated deeply the life of the churches.
When I was in Buenos Aires for three weeks in 1963, lecturing each day at the seminary, I found Dick Chartier teaching a class in Social Ethics there and drawing as many students as he could into the work in Villa Ilasa, the particular little shanty-town which he served. It was obviously not easy. Many theological students were scarcely interested in this “non-religious” and seemingly trivial work, while most others, though approving it, found themselves too preoccupied with academic requirements and other problems of their own to give time to Ilasa. In truth, it seemed a long way from the seminary, on a quiet residential street of Buenos Aires to the shanty town of Lanus. It was many miles and a long bus ride, with changes to make on the way. The mental distance was even greater.
One memorable afternoon I went with Dick to a national school of social work. I was shocked to find that the school was a shoestring operation, with about twenty-five students, a pitiful library, and one old building with only the plainest equipment. However, both the faculty and students impressed me deeply with their high intelligence and their dedication to the needs of the poor. In my hour of discussion with a seminar, the question which interested them most was why I, a university professor of theology—of all subjects—would have any interest in social work and why my former student, Dick Chartier, should be living with his family in a poor little house at the edge of a villa miseria and devoting all his efforts to professionally competent service to the poor, while not doing church work at all! They found such a combination of church and skilled social work almost incredible. One of the professors was regularly helping Dick and some of the students were becoming involved, along with the theologs. Obviously, this experience was giving a number of the most intelligent and responsible young people in Argentina a quite new vision of the church as instrument of a genuine and not merely verbalized Christian love, but they still could hardly believe what they saw and heard.
The visit which my wife and I made to the “galpon” (barn), formerly a wood-drying shed, which served as social center for the project in Ilasa, was one of the most vividly impressive experiences of my life. The lady professor from the school of social work, some students, and other volunteers were conducting different activities in various parts of the cavernous old building. Here was a nursery, there a kind of head-start class to prepare culturally deprived children for school, and in another corner a class in hygiene and home economics for mothers.
Just to walk from the trim little office of the project over to the barn with Dick was an inspiration. He had scarcely any budget to spend. This was almost a bootstrap operation, offering mostly hard work for mutual help. He had no handouts to give. But wherever Dick appeared, the people—from an ancient grandmother to little children—greeted him as if he were the incarnation of hope. So he was.
The work is bearing fruit. The owner of the barn suddenly tore it down and tried to evict the residents of the neighborhood who, indeed, were squatters on his long unused land. But the neighbors had learned to work together. They moved the social service projects into some of their poor homes. Then political and private help was secured. The shacks were saved and the people are on the way to owning their own homes. With the aid of the social service team they have laid out streets, extended water and light facilities, built a little community center, and improved their homes.
Dick and Jennie Chartier have just completed a furlough of studying in Boston. When they return to Buenos Aires, he will be a full-time member of the seminary faculty, more deeply involving more students in real social responsibility and so helping to renew the churches of South America in relevance to the colossal present need.