In Memoriam: Frank Bonilla, Renaissance Man (1925–2010) by Susanne Jonas | University of California, Santa Cruz | [email protected]
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lasaforum summer 2011 : volume xlii : issue 3 on the profession In Memoriam: Frank Bonilla, Renaissance Man (1925–2010) by SuSanne JonaS | University of California, Santa Cruz | [email protected] I was privileged to know Frank Bonilla for As a scholar and professor, Frank began in One of Frank’s seminal collaborative forty-plus years, from my early graduate the early 1960s with the American studies, published by the Centro’s History school days in Massachusetts through his Universities Field Service in Latin America. Task Force, was Labor Migration under retirement years in southern California. He worked in Brazil, where he taught and Capitalism (1979). While focused on the Without his mentoring, I would not have wrote about agrarian reform and favela Puerto Rican experience, it became a stuck with Latin American political studies poverty, the issues of the day. While an paradigmatic work for understanding in an era of cold war scholarship. associate professor at MIT (1963–1969), migration circuits and cycles, and a model Subsequently, in the 1970s–1990s, without he did pioneering work in Venezuela with for Latino migration and diaspora studies. his colleagueship and intellectual influence, José Silva Michelena of the Centro de As early as 1977, Frank had already begun I would not have made the leap into Latino Estudios del Desarrollo, writing a piercing writing about undocumented migrants, migration studies. I begin with this personal critique of the elites and foreign oil critiquing a U.S. governmental “Domestic experience because I am only one of many interests. Unlike many others during the Council on Illegal Aliens.” Very directly, whose careers and lives he touched, shaped, 1960s, Frank rejected the career rewards of then, Frank and his colleagues at the and enriched. cold war scholarship and used his pen as a Centro paved the way for future tool for social equality. generations of migration scholars. By the Frank was a multidimensional renaissance mid-1990s, he presented a global view: man. His early life as the son of Puerto During his professorship at Stanford Rican parents provided little material University (1969–1972) his graduate "The increasing need for millions around wealth but was very rich in instilling values seminar “Structures of Dependency” the globe to anchor their existence in more for life. He experienced firsthand the became legendary, and students were than one social formation for generations realities of barrio life (in the Bronx and profoundly transformed by it. In the words at a time is transforming the very idea of Harlem) and of racial discrimination in of one of those students, Carlos Vásquez, citizenship, human rights, and the role of other venues and turned these experiences “El Maestro was not only brilliant in his cultural expressions and identities in into a lifetime of struggle for social justice capacity for analysis, but he also knew how sustaining sociability.… What we are now and for the rights of the poor, communities to build confidence in young, inquisitive, stretching for, more urgently than ever, are of color, and migrants. He must have been and rebellious minds.” new standards of international born with personal values of basic kindness responsibility and solidarity." and respect for those around him, for they It was after his return to New York in characterized his entire eighty-five-year life. 1973, going back to his roots, that Frank But the Centro was not simply one more unit made his most lasting contributions. He for academic research. It was infused by Throughout his life, Frank was at the founded and for twenty years directed the Frank’s dedication to addressing the problems center of a large extended City University of New York’s Centro de facing communities of color, such as the multigenerational family spread throughout Estudios Puertorriqueños, eventually over-imprisonment of Afro-Americans and the United States and Puerto Rico. Familia housed at Hunter College. The Centro was Latinos and the need to expand educational was always a priority for him, as he, not without its challenges in the opportunities for these communities. himself, was a priority to his family. In his 1970s-1980s, but it was foundational. In Through New York City’s Puerto Rican later years, his family relationships became the words of the Centro’s current director, Hispanic Leadership Forum and the all the more important. Even beyond his Edwin Meléndez: “As I find more Empowerment Institute of the Community own family, Frank was generous with his information about the creation of Centro Service Society (City of New York), to time and energy to reach out to the families and [its] tumultuous first few years of mention only two, Frank maintained direct of close friends. He befriended my existence, overwhelming evidence points to advocacy involvement with the community. daughter when she came from San Frank as the only leader capable of Nationally he served on the National Francisco to attend college in New York reconciling the disparate forces propelling Commission on Minorities in Higher City, and four years later, he was in the the creation of [the] Centro.” Education, among other entities. audience for her graduation recital. 4 In 1986 Frank was appointed Thomas Within LASA, Frank, his colleagues, and missed by thousands of scholars and Hunter Professor of Sociology at Hunter, once former students played an important role in colleagues, many of them also close friends, again highlighting his teaching and mentoring, founding the Latino Studies section. He also across the nation, the hemisphere, and as well as research. His accumulated participated in LASA panels designed to beyond. scholarship, his service, and the institutions he pinpoint the role of Latino Studies, as well as founded will survive to inspire new Latinos and migrants, and published in the A public tribute to Frank was held at El generations. A list of his publications, awards, Latin American Research Review. Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter and institutional involvements is available at College, on June 9, 2011. Frank Bonilla, the Centro’s website <http://centropr.hunter. At the same time, in various direct and ¡Presente! cuny.edu/sites/default/files/pictures/frank_ indirect ways, beginning in the 1990s, he was final.pdf >. at the forefront of a developing a new [Note: This “In Memoriam” is revised and academic approach that established links and expanded from a version written for the May, Even as he directed the Centro, Frank was demonstrated the growing interdependence 2011 issue of Latin American Perspectives.] n looking for new ways to create intellectual/ between Latin America and Latinos, and institutional community. In 1983 he and between Latin American Studies and Latino three colleagues on other campuses initiated Studies. For example, at several key moments, the founding of the Inter-University Program he influenced our movement toward dialogue for Latino Research (IUPLR), which has between the two fields, despite their different united over twenty interdisciplinary research origins and worldviews, at the University of centers in Latino studies and created a California, Santa Cruz, as we transformed our national forum and voice on issues affecting Latin American Studies department into a Latino communities. The IUPLR’s current department of Latin American and Latino director, Gilberto Cárdenas, writes, “I am Studies. forever grateful and indebted to Frank for the wisdom and guidance he provided me. He Frank was always pushing the limits of was a tremendous inspiration to us and his existing scholarship and breaking new relentless support for interdisciplinary and intellectual ground. He never viewed the pan-Latino scholarly inquiry across regions production of knowledge as an individual and borders has been a lasting hallmark for task. He was always seeking input from those IUPLR.” around him, at the dining table or around the ironing board at home, or in his office or Through the IUPLR, Frank and colleagues those of colleagues at the university, revising around the country progressively expanded and perfecting phrases for a speech he had to the boundaries of collaborative research on give the next day or finalizing an article for a Latinos in the Americas and in a globalizing looming deadline. economy, and on the Latinization of the United States. He coordinated the project Frank influenced untold numbers of scholars “Latinos in a Changing U.S. Economy.” As he over the course of several generations, and wrote prophetically in 1994, throughout the hemisphere, from Brazil to New York. His life, as well as his scholarship, “Over the last several decades, Latinos in the exemplified, furthered, and opened up new U.S. have emerged as strategic actors in major possibilities for North-South collaboration processes of social transformation... The within the Americas. He had a vision that perception that Latinos are now positioned to spanned national boundaries long before this share in bringing about change in the became more common. He will be greatly Americas from within the United States has increasingly taken hold….” 5.