Benítez, Jaime, 1908-2001

<p>Jaime Benítez Rexach (October 29, 1908 – May 30, 2001) was a Puerto Rican author, academic and politician. He was the longest serving chancellor and the first president of the University of Puerto Rico.</p>

<p>Jaime Benítez Rexach was born on Vieques, a small island about twenty miles off the shore of mainland Puerto Rico, to Luis Benítez and Candida Rexach. Among his ancestors were the noted Puerto Rican poets María Bibiana Benítez, Alejandrina Benítez de Gautier, and José Gautier Benítez. His mother died when he was seven years old, and his father died a year later. It fell to his older sister, who lived in San Juan, to raise him and his siblings. Benítez attended local public schools. In 1926 he left the island to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he received an LL.B. degree in 1930 and an LL.M. in 1931. That same year he passed the District of Columbia bar examination and returned to Puerto Rico. He earned an M.A. at the University of Chicago in 1938.</p>

<p>In 1931 Benítez began a career in education at the University of Puerto Rico that spanned four decades: he was associate professor of social and political sciences (1931–1942), chancellor of its main campus in Río Piedras (1942–1966) for nearly 30 years. In 1948, during his tenure as chancellor, the university's pro-independence student body invited nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos to the Río Piedras campus as a guest speaker. Benítez did not permit Albizu access to the campus. As a result, the students protested and went on strike. The university was temporarily shut down and the leaders of the strike expelled from the university. As chancellor, Benítez also attracted many distinguished scholars and artists who had left Spain after its civil war, including Nobel Prize-winning poet Juan Ramón Jiménez and Catalan cellist Pablo Casals.[4] In 1966, Benítez became the first president of the University, position in which he served until 1971. When Benítez began teaching, the university had five thousand students; by the time he left, the number of students at the university increased to forty thousand under his leadership.</p>

<p>Jaime Benítez was Puerto Rico’s leading scholar for nearly 70 years. From his first teaching assignment in 1931, he rose to become a major influence on Puerto Rican and American education, serving nearly 30 years as chancellor and then president of the Universidad de Puerto Rico. Elected Resident Commissioner in 1972, Benítez focused on solidifying Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth during his tenure in Congress. In many respects he was a consummate insider and a loyal member of the Partido Popular Democrático (Popular Democratic Party, or PPD), but Benítez never shied away from confrontations with party leadership. In the U.S. House, his animated personality and considerable intelligence won him friends on both sides of the aisle. Democrat Phillip Burton of California spoke of the “enormous commitment and concern and unique intellect [of] the Resident Commissioner… and [of] what a joy it is to listen to and associate with such a decent human being.”</p>

<p>Benítez was born on Vieques, an island east of Puerto Rico, on October 29, 1908, to Luis Benítez and Candida Rexach. He counted among his ancestors some of Puerto Rico’s most respected 19th-century poets, Maria Bibiana Benítez, Alejandra Benítez, and Jose Gautier Benítez. When Jaime Benítez was seven, his mother, and then his father, died within a year of each other. Jaime went to live with an older sister in San Juan, where he enrolled in the public schools. In 1926 he moved to Washington, D.C., to begin studies at Georgetown University. He graduated in 1930, completing a master’s degree in law the next year. After passing the District’s bar exam, he returned to Puerto Rico in 1931 and accepted a teaching position at the Universidad de Puerto Rico. Benítez and his wife, LuLu Martinez, had two daughters, Clotilde and Margarita, and a son, Jaime.</p>

<p>Founded in 1903, the Universidad de Puerto Rico was a middling institution when Benítez began teaching in its political and social science department during the Great Depression. After taking leave to earn a second master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1938, Benítez returned to Puerto Rico. He accepted another teaching position at the university, and three years later he became chancellor until 1966, when he became president of the university.</p>

BENÍTEZ, Jaime, a Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico; born in Vieques, P.R., October 29, 1908; B.L., Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 1930; M.L., Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 1931; M.A., University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill., 1938; author; instructor, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, P.R., 1931-1942; chancellor, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, P.R., 1942-1966; president, University System of Puerto Rico, San Juan, P.R., 1966-1971; member, Constitutional Convention of Puerto Rico, and chairman, Committee on Bill of Rights, 1951-1952; member, United States National Commission for UNESCO, 1948-1954; United States delegate, University Convention, Utrecht, Holland, 1948; National Convention of UNESCO, Paris, France, 1950, and Havana, Cuba, 1952; president, National Association of State Universities, 1957-1958; delegate to Democratic National Convention, 1976; elected as a Popular Democrat to the United States House of Representatives for a four-year term (January 3, 1973-January 3, 1977); caucused with the Democratic Party; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1976; professor, Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, P.R., 1980-1986; died on May 30, 2001, in San Juan, P.R.