Jaime Benítez Rexach
| Jaime Benítez Rexach | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico | |
|
In office January 3, 1973 – January 3, 1977 |
|
| Preceded by | Jorge Luis Córdova |
| Succeeded by | Baltasar Corrada |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
October 29, 1908 Vieques, Puerto Rico |
| Died | May 30, 2001 (aged 92) San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| Political party | PDP |
| Spouse(s) | Lulu Martínez |
| Alma mater |
Georgetown University University of Chicago |
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.
Jaime Benítez Rexach was born on Vieques, a small island about twenty miles off the shore of mainland Puerto Rico. The original name on his birth certificate reads "Jaime Jacinto". His mother died when he was six 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.
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). 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. In 1966, Benítez became the first president of the University, position in which he served until 1971. When Benítez began teaching, the university had three thousand students; by the time he left, the number of students at the university increased by forty thousand under his leadership.
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