Human Rights Activist Examines U.S. Role in Central America in Lawrence Lecture

APPLETON, WIS. -- One-time missionary turned human rights activist Blase Bonpane shares his views on justice in Latin America in the Lawrence University address, "Guerrillas of Peace: A Response to U.S. Foreign Policy in the Americas," Tuesday, May 22. The address, at 7 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center Auditorium, is free and open to the public.

A former U.S. Marine who became an ordained priest in the Maryknoll Order after leaving the military, Bonpane worked as a missionary in the 1960s in Guatemala, where the poverty he witnessed converted him to a life of social activism.

In 1983, Bonpane founded, and still directs, the Office of the Americas, a non-profit education center in Los Angeles dedicated to world-wide issues of peace and justice. He has written extensively on "liberation theology," including the 1985 book, "Guerrillas of Peace," and has led numerous fact-finding delegations to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba and Mexico to combat human rights abuses.