Blase Bonpane
Blase Bonpane is the director of the Office of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, which he co-founded with his wife Theresa in 1983. He works on human rights issues, and identification of illegal and immoral aspects of United States government policy.
Bonpane served as a Maryknoll priest in Guatemala and was assigned by the Cardinal of Central America as National Advisor to Centro Capacitacion Social, a center for university and high school students working in the field with indigenous people on matters of health, literacy and labor organization. He was expelled from that country in 1967 in the midst of a revolution. (Washington Post, February 4, 1968, "A Priest in Guatemala.")
Contents
Mediation in Latin America
He played a significant role in the dialogue in Latin America between Christianity and Marxism. (Guatemala: Occupied Country, Eduardo Galeano, Monthly Review Press, 1969) Blase Bonpane led investigative delegations to Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica and Peru. He traveled through the conflict zones of Chiapas, Mexico together with Bishop Samuel Ruiz on a series of peace missions and served on the board of SICSAL, a hemispheric ecumenical secretariat based in Mexico City. He also participated in peace missions to El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador and Iraq. (See the Blase Bonpane Collection, Department of Special Collections, UCLA Research Library; Collection 1590).
A complete list of Bonpane's awards together with those granted to him and his wife together and to the Office of the Americas can be seen here.
Books
- Guerrillas of Peace; Liberation Theology and the Central American Revolution", originally published by South End Press
A trilogy of his books has been published by ,
- Guerrillas of Peace on the Air Red Hen Press 2002.
- Common Sense for the 21st Century' Red Hen Press 2010
- Civilization is Possible, Red Hen Press 2008.
- The Central American Solidarity Movement", University of California 2005.
- Imagine No Religion, (Blase Bonpane's autobiography) Red Hen Press 2011.
Education
Bonpane received his PhD in Social Science from University of California Irvine in 1984. He has served on the faculties of the University of California Los Angeles, California State University Northridge, and California State University Los Angeles.
He hosts the radio program "World Focus" on Pacifica Radio station KPFK in Los Angeles at 10:00 am each Sunday (90.7 FM) as well as internationally from the KPFK site.[1]
Blase Bonpane was a leader of the International March for Peace in Central America, December 10, 1985-January 27, 1986. This venture from Panama to Mexico included some 30 nations and 400 participants.
Bonpane currently serves on the Advisory Council of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Electoral Politics
Bonpane ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992 as a member of the Green Party. He received 6,315 votes and 7.56% of the vote in Congressional District 30 (Los Angeles), the highest ever for a Green in the United States in a five way race, in which there was also both a Democratic and Republican candidate.
References
External links
- Office of the Americas website
- VIDEO: Blase Bonpane speaks at a peace rally at Arlington West
- VIDEO: Blase Bonpane for Congress (1992) interview during campaign
- VIDEO: Blase Bonpane for Congress (1993) post-election report at Green Parties of the West conference
- Year of birth missing (living people)
- Living people
- American Roman Catholic priests
- American democracy activists
- American human rights activists
- American memoirists
- American political writers
- American male writers
- American talk radio hosts
- California Greens
- Liberation theologians
- Maryknoll Fathers
- Pacifica Radio people
- Green Party of the United States politicians
