Listening to a calling: University’s Rev. Armand Matthew takes civic involvement seriously

By Chris Mahon
The Brownsville Herald

October 16, 2006 - The Rev. Armand Mathew is a man who elicits passionate responses from the people he has met in his line of work. He has been called everything from “that communist priest” to “a treasure.”

In his lifetime, the 83-year-old Mathew has worked all over the Rio Grande Valley and all over the world, including countries as far apart as El Salvador and Zambia. He has worked on debt-relief issues for the Third World, the eradication of landmines, and other issues. In Brownsville, his work keeps him tied to local issues.

Currently, he is on staff of the Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, a position he has held since 2001.

“I still have considerable gas in the tank to do something useful,” Mathew said with a laugh.

During his time at the center Mathew has been intensely involved in Kids Voting USA-Brownsville, a project to encourage — as the name suggests — greater voter turnout by engaging the youth in the voting process. As Election Day draws near, children whose schools participate in the project will vote on most of thee same issues and candidates as their parents will.

His goal with the project is to “increase voter turnout and community participation in public discourse,” he said.

The youngest of 10 children from rural Indiana, he entered a seminary in San Antonio in 1940. That is when his interest in social issues began.

“The first 25 years, I was assigned to seminary work, then I got into justice and peace issues,” he said. He was in Brownsville in the 1970s and 1980s serving at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral.

He also was one of the founders of Valley Interfaith. It was his work there on minimum wage issues that caused some of his opponents to call him a communist, though in humble style that is typical of Mathew, he declined to name any of them.

He left for a time to work more on social justice issues he cared about in Washington, D.C. Upon his return to Brownsville in 2001, he founded the Center for Civic Engagement at UTB-TSC with the assistance of Juliet Garcia, the university’s president. He worked briefly as its director, but resigned that position for health reasons. He then turned his full attention to Kids Voting.

“You’ve got to have the schools involved,” he said.

“They do the teaching and we supply the cash.”

That investment has produced the kinds of returns that make him smile.

“In 2004, after the K-through-12 voting (was all done), we asked, ‘Will your Kids Vote experience motivate you to vote in the future?’ Ninety-three percent said, ‘Yes.’”

This year, the Brownsville Independent School District is expecting between 30,000 and 35,000 children to vote in elections, according to Fernando Perez, a BISD administrator who works with Mathew.

Not everyone thought the project would take off as it has.

“I remember Fr. Mathew coming to me and pitching the idea and I have to be honest, I didn’t think something like that could be successful, but it’s been wildly successful. Kids do vote,” said Antonio Zavaleta, vice president of external affairs at the university.

Mathew says his greatest hope is that the high voter turnout witnessed at schools in Brownsville will not stop once the children turn 18.

Zavaleta says he hopes to see more immediate returns.

“Because kids are involved, they take their parents to task (if they don’t vote). If they’re voting in class and see their parents didn’t have time to vote, they’ll say, ‘Something’s wrong here.’”

Mathew sees civic engagement and this project in particular as part of his missionary work for social justice.

“It’s not just voting — know the issues, the candidates, hold the officials accountable,” he said.

“This is how we develop responsible and informed voters.”

cmahon@brownsvilleherald.com

Posted on Oct 16, 06 | 12:01 am

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