Growing up in a politically polarized El Salvador, Roberto Bonilla ’18 was left with a lot of unanswered questions. But at Whittier College, the political science major is working on finding answers.
Bonilla’s examining how the United States may have affected political ideology in his home country, which—intentionally or not—could have affected the outcomes of Salvadoran elections for almost two decades.
“As I was digging a little deeper into the research and what had already been done about the elections there, I found something that hasn’t been connected yet to the elections,” Bonilla said. From 1989 to 2004, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party won four consecutive presidential elections—a trend that Bonilla theorizes could be partly attributed to the influence of a televised educational program in the 1960s, “teleteacher,” in addition to ARENA’s control of print and televised media.
The program was developed through the Alliance for Progress, an economic cooperation program set up between the United States and Latin America. The central message, particularly in the social sciences, Bonilla said, “was to teach children the American values: individualism, capitalism, free market.”
Drawing upon his research, he painted a picture of classrooms with 7th to 9th grade students in Latin America’s smallest country, for whom television was still an exciting novelty. On the screen beamed an authoritative teacher, dressed in a sharp suit, in contrast to the Salvadoran teachers who likely didn’t share the same looks, manners, or ways of communicating with them, Bonilla said.
“I think we overlook the impact that those subtleties can have on reinforcing that idea, or validating those ideas,” Bonilla said. He added that he’s not making a judgment about neoliberal political values. Rather, he’s interested in tracing the spread of those ideas in people’s minds.
The teleteacher program ended shortly before civil war erupted in El Salvador. In its wake, the ARENA party emerged in the 1980s, with ties to the conservative party that had been in power at the time that the teleteacher program was around. Thus, Bonilla hypothesizes that a good portion of the students who were exposed to the teleteacher grew up to become potential voters in the ’80s and ’90s and may have affected the outcomes of those elections in ARENA’s favor.
He’s landed on a theory that could have implications beyond El Salvador. His research about the subtle ways that a larger country can influence the politics of a smaller one, even unintentionally, can be applied on a more global scale, said Professor Deborah Norden, chair of Whittier College’s political science department.
For instance, Bonilla is looking into whether a similar effect occurred in Paraguay, which was also part of the Alliance for Progress, received educational funding, and had a cultural exchange program with the U.S.
“That’s where I would actually see if I’m onto something good, or something big,” he said.
Bonilla has the time and support to research the political history of his home country thanks to the funding of a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, which provides students with funds to pursue academic projects.
Norden had suggested that he pursue the competitive fellowship after seeing Bonilla's infectious enthusiasm light up in her Latin American politics course. He went beyond the required readings to dive deeper and examined questions with the critical thinking of a graduate student.
When Bonilla learned that he’d been accepted, he said that he was “so excited” to have received “one of the best emails that I’ve ever had.” Bonilla had transferred to Whittier, a decision that he credits as likely one of the best he’s ever made.
