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.")

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

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

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External links

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