Frank Bonilla Papers

Born in New York in 1925 of parents who migrated to the U.S. from Puerto Rico, Frank Bonilla grew up in East Harlem and the Bronx, spending several of his middle and high school years in Tennessee and Illinois. Following his graduation from Morris High School in the South Bronx, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, served with the 190th Infantry Regiment, the 65th Infantry, and fought in World War II’s Battle of the Bulge. When an injury removed him from the front lines, he joined the ranks of the Puerto Rican National Guard in Germany. Upon returning to the U.S., he earned his B.B.A. in 1949, graduating cum laude from the College of the City of New York, his M.A. in Sociology from New York University in 1954, and his doctorate in Sociology from Harvard University in 1959.

Bonilla began his academic career in 1960 as a member of The American Universities Field Service in Latin America. Starting with a project initiative on behalf of UNESCO and the Economic Commission for Latin America, his research for the next three years in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil investigated the relationship between social development and education in Latin America. In this period, Dr. Bonilla lectured at seven U.S. campuses and at the Pontifícia Unversidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.

Upon joining the Political Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1963- 1969), he pursued his interests in Latin America as a senior staff member at MIT’s Center of International Studies. He joined an extensive investigation into Venezuelan politics, conducted in collaboration with the Center for Development Studies of the Central University of Venezuela (CENDES), served as Program Advisor in Social Science to the Ford Foundation in Brazil, and lectured as Visiting Professor at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. He would subsequently become Professor of Political Science and Senior Associate of the Institute of Political Studies at Stanford University (1969-1972).

In 1973, Bonilla became Director of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños (Centro), a position he held for the next 20 years. During his tenure, he provided the intellectual, political, and organizational leadership that helped to define the field of Puerto Rican Studies and to firmly establish the Centro as a vital academic and community resource. Within a short time of its founding, the Centro’s organizational structure and research agendas were shaped by commitments to collective governance, scholarship in service of community, and broad accessibility.

As Director of the only university-based institute in the United States devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the Puerto Rican experience, Bonilla oversaw research in history, political economy, demographic transitions, and social and cultural development. His most well- known contributions were made to the History Task Force, through his close collaboration with Ricardo Campos, with whom he published such landmark works as Labor Migration under Capitalism (1979) “A Wealth of Poor: Puerto Ricans in the New Economic Order” (1981) and Industry and Idleness (1986). Bonilla also taught at CUNY’s Graduate Center, where he was on the faculty of the Political Science Department from 1973 to 1993 and the Sociology Department from 1977 to 1993. In 1986, he was appointed Thomas Hunter Professor of Sociology at CUNY’s Hunter College.

One of the most enduring projects Bonilla launched as the Centro’s Director is the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), co-founded with three colleagues in 1986. What began as a national consortium of eight university-based research centers grew to include more than twenty universities and to serve as a model for other initiatives that pursue interdisciplinary research cooperation in Latino Studies. Bonilla served IUPLR as Managing Co-Director from 1988 to 1993 and Executive Director from 1993 to 1995. He remained on IUPLR’s National Board of Advisors for several years following his retirement.

In addition, he served on the Boards of Directors of the Empowerment Institute of the Community Service Society of the City of New York, a 140-year-old nonprofit organization involved in social and education issues, and of Open Mind, The Association for the Achievement of Cultural Diversity in Higher Education. A small sample of additional affiliations includes the Social Science Advisory Board of the Poverty and Race Research Institute, the National Puerto Rican Task Force on Educational Policy, and the Puerto Rican Organization for Growth, Research, Education and Self-Sufficiency (P.R.O.G.R.E.S.S., Inc.).

Among his many honors, Bonilla received the Distinguished Alumni Award from CCNY in 1972 and the Ralph C. Guzmán Award of the American Political Science Association in 1986 for Excellence in Scholarship and Service to the Profession. He was recognized by Mercy College in 1987 and by the University of the District of Columbia in 1993 with Doctor of Letters Honors Causa Awards, by Hunter College with the President’s Medal in 1993, and by the Council of Dominican Educators with its Service Award also in 1993. In 2003, he was the first recipient of the Public Intellectual Award of the Latino Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association; and the Award was subsequently named after him.

Though formally retired by the late 1990s, Dr. Bonilla continued to emphasize the importance of promoting Latino academic and policy research capabilities and bringing Latino voices and perspectives into the U.S. foreign policy arena. He remained an active member of many organizations and continued to publish and spearhead numerous initiatives well into the new millennium. He died after a long illness on December 28, 2010.

Sources:

Excerpted from a biography by Rose Muzio and accessible at http://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/frankbonilla-page. Any changes and/or additions are archivist’s own.