Blase Bonpane

Blase Anthony Bonpane (April 24, 1929 – April 8, 2019) was the director of the Office of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, which he co-founded with his wife Theresa in 1983. Throughout his life, he worked on human rights issues as well as the identification of illegal and immoral aspects of United States government policy.[1]

Blase Bonpane
Bonpane in 2010
Born(1929-04-24)April 24, 1929
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
DiedApril 8, 2019(2019-04-08) (aged 89)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California Irvine
OccupationHuman rights and peace activist
OrganizationOffice of the Americas

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.[2][3]

In 2006, The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation awarded Bonpane the Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.[4]

In June 2018, Bonpane announced he would stop broadcasting World Focus.[5]

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.

Peace and justice activities

Bonpane hosted 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.[6] On 15 May 2018, after 50 years of broadcasting, Bonpane retired from the program. "Blase’s commentaries and his guests on World Focus were truth-tellers with a passion for justice, human rights, and peace. It’s an understatement to say he will be missed."[7] He died two weeks short of his 90th birthday on April 8, 2019.[1][8][9]

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 served on the Advisory Council of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

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).

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.

Recognition

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
gollark: It's also possible that more complex systems may have been impractical before computers came along, although that doesn't apply to, say, approval voting.
gollark: First-past-the-post is the simplest and most obvious thing you're likely to imagine if you want people to "vote for things", and it's entirely possible people didn't look too hard.
gollark: I don't know if the people designing electoral systems actually did think of voting systems which are popular now and discard them, but it's not *that* much of a reason to not adopt new ones.
gollark: There are plenty of things in, say, maths, which could have been thought up ages ago, and seem stupidly obvious now, but weren't. Such as modern place value notation.
gollark: Obvious things now may just not have been then.

References
  1. "Blase Bonpane, Noted Human Rights Defender & Office of the Americas Dir., Died". democracynow.org. April 9, 2019. Archived from the original on April 9, 2019. Retrieved April 9, 2019.
  2. Arellano, Gustavo (April 10, 2019). "Blase Bonpane, USC football player turned priest turned peace activist, dies at 89". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on April 11, 2019. Retrieved April 11, 2019.
  3. Washington Post, February 4, 1968, "A Priest in Guatemala."
  4. "Blase Bonpane, Author at Nuclear Age Peace Foundation". Archived from the original on 2016-08-25. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  5. "Office Of The Americas » Blase Says Goodbye to World Focus after Half a Century of Broadcasting". Archived from the original on 2018-12-14. Retrieved 2019-04-12.
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2008-11-14. Retrieved 2009-11-22.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. "Office of the Americas » Blase Says Goodbye to World Focus after Half a Century of Broadcasting". Archived from the original on 2018-06-14. Retrieved 2018-06-14.
  8. "Blase Bonpane Obituary - Santa Monica, California". 2019-04-14.
  9. "Blase Bonpane, USC football player turned priest turned peace activist, dies at 89". 2019-04-10. Archived from the original on 2019-04-11. Retrieved 2019-04-11.
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