Blase Bonpane, USC football player turned priest turned peace activist, dies at 89

[DBoon]

Source: Los Angeles Times

The Guatemalan government had accused priests and nuns associated with the Maryknoll order of planning to smuggle in arms to help rebels. Superiors ordered the missionaries back to the United States, and told them not to speak to the press about the affair.

But 38-year-old Blase Bonpane couldn’t stay silent. On Feb. 4, the Washington Post ran an essay by the Angeleno that blasted the American government for supporting “an oligarchy of 2 per cent of the Guatemalan people who possess 80 percent of the land and resultant power.”

“I am a patriot,” wrote the former Marine. “It sickens me to see my country on the wrong side in Guatemala. I think the United States is the greatest country in the world, and I don’t want to see it on a self-destruction course.”

Soon after, Maryknoll expelled Bonpane from its ranks. He returned to Los Angeles, and launched a lifetime of antiwar activism that saw him turn into a stateside Jeremiah on Central America, someone whose warnings about the blowback that American influence in the region would create resonates to the present.

Bonpane died on Monday. He was 89.


Read more: https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-blase-bonpane-dead-20190410-story.html

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He was very active in Central America peace movements in the 1970s and 1980s.

[choie]

1. He also was the host

of a show on Pacifica's station KPFK on Sundays that I often listened to called "World Focus"

[catchnrelease]

2. That was it!

I was trying to remember where I heard him on the radio ages ago. Late at night I think?

[choie]

4. It was called "World Focus"

and it was on Sunday at @12:00pm EST, I believe.

[Codeine]

8. He was one of the last vestiges of decency

on Pacifica, and reflected an earlier time when the network was a national treasure rather than the embarrassing joke it has become.

[ucrdem]

3. Fear fearing fear

was the theme song, sung by Bonpane's son Blase Jr:

RIP Blase Bonpane

[choie]

5. aw - I didn't know that...

[area51]

6. RIP

I think I heard commentaries by him that were played on Houston's Pacifica station.

[Codeine]

7. I used to listen to him on Pacifica Radio

back before it became a horrid shitshow. He was inspiring and informative, and I can honestly say he is part of the reason I became who I am today.