Jaime Benitez
Encyclopedia
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
author, academic and politician. He was the longest serving chancellor and the first president of the University of Puerto Rico
University of Puerto Rico
The University of Puerto Rico is the state university system of Puerto Rico. The system consists of 11 campuses and has approximately 64,511 students and 5,300 faculty members...
.
Early life
Benítez was born in Vieques, a small island about twenty miles from the shores of Puerto Rico. 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, Puerto Rico, to raise him and his siblings. His brother was Felix Rexach Benitez who was a contractor in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo and Puerto Rico. Benítez attended local public schools, but in 1926 he left the Island to attend Georgetown UniversityGeorgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
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
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
in 1938.
Career
In 1931 Benítez began a career in education at the University of Puerto RicoUniversity of Puerto Rico
The University of Puerto Rico is the state university system of Puerto Rico. The system consists of 11 campuses and has approximately 64,511 students and 5,300 faculty members...
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
Pedro Albizu Campos
Don Pedro Albizu Campos was a Puerto Rican politician and one of the leading figures in the Puerto Rican independence movement. He was the leader and president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party from 1930 until his death...
to the Río Piedras
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...
campus as a guest speaker. Benítez, did not permit Albizu access to the campus and as a consequence, 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
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry."-Biography:Jiménez was born in Moguer, near Huelva, in...
and Catalan cellist Pablo Casals
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...
. 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 university had grown to forty-three thousand six-hundred students under his leadership.
Benítez published numerous articles, essays, and books. An important contributor to the development of higher education in Puerto Rico, Benítez was the author of a number of books that concern the university system, including Junto à la Torre—Jornadas de un programa universitario (1963); Etica y estilo de la universidad (1964); La universidad del futuro (1964); and Sobre el futuro cultural y político de Puerto Rico (1965). From 1956 to 1971 he was the director and a contributor to La Torre, the University of Puerto Rico literary review. In addition to his academic career, Benítez also maintained an active role in numerous national and international organizations: he was a member of the United States National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
) from 1948 to 1954, and attended the UNESCO conventions in Paris, France (1950) and Havana, Cuba (1952); he was a member of the Constitutional Convention of Puerto Rico, for which he was drafted while attending an UNESCO meeting, and the chairman of the Drafting Committee on the Bill of Rights from 1951 to 1952. In 1956, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
. He served as president of the National Association of State Universities from 1957 to 1958.
A close associate of the political leader Luis Muñoz Marín
Luis Muñoz Marín
Don José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and politician. Regarded as the "father of modern Puerto Rico," he was the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. Muñoz Marín was the son of Luis Muñoz Rivera, a renowned autonomist leader...
, who became Puerto Rico's first elected governor in 1949 and helped achieve a locally-drafted Constitution in 1952, Benítez was part of the Constitutional Convention and collaborated in the drafting of the Bill of Human Rights included in the new Constitution, which recognized citizens' social and economic rights as well as their human rights, as well as the initial draft of the Constitution's Preamble. The two men fell out in 1957, however, when Muñoz declared his "loss of confidence" in Benítez and accused him of using his university position to build a rival political movement to his own Popular Democratic Party
Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico
The Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico is a political party that supports Puerto Rico's right to self-determination and sovereignty, through the enhancement of Puerto Rico's current status as a commonwealth....
, or PDP. Benítez won a vote of confidence in the Council on Higher Education by one vote. They were publicly reconciled before the 1960 elections.
In 1966, the university statutes were changed again to permit greater political activity on the campus and Benítez was effectively kicked upstairs to the new and less powerful post of university president, which he gave up in 1971 due to political pressures under the first non-PDP administration since the 1930s.
In 1972 Benítez was elected Resident Commissioner
Resident Commissioner
Resident Commissioner is the title of several, quite different types of Commissioner in overseas possession or protectorate of the British Crown or of the United States.-British English:...
of Puerto Rico for a four-year term. In the U.S. House of Representatives he was assigned to the Committee on Education and Labor, an important committee assignment for a man who cared deeply about education and who had an interest in social and labor conditions in Puerto Rico. In the 94th Congress, Benítez introduced legislation to extend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to Puerto Rico. He also showed interest in the affairs of U.S. territories, sponsoring legislation to allow American Samoa to elect a governor and lieutenant governor, and supporting the authorization of a loan to the Virgin Islands Government. While in Congress he was a strong advocate of the so-called commonwealth status of Puerto Rico, which he felt was preferable to statehood or independence. A bill to enhance Puerto Rico's relationship with the U.S., HR 11,200, died in committee.
After an unsuccessful reelection bid, Benítez returned to Puerto Rico. He taught at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico (IAU) from 1980 to 1986. He was a professor of government at the American College in Bayamón, Puerto Rico.
On September 8, 2008, the IAU unveiled the publication of a biography of Benítez, edited by former San Juan mayor Héctor Luis Acevedo
Héctor Luis Acevedo
Héctor Luis Acevedo is a politician from Río Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is the son of Héctor N. Acevedo and Toñita, both public servants...
, at a ceremony hosted by Senate of Puerto Rico
Senate of Puerto Rico
The Senate of Puerto Rico is the upper house of the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico, the territorial legislature of Puerto Rico. The Senate is composed of 27 senators, representing eight constituent senatorial districts across the commonwealth, with two senators elected per district; an...
president Kenneth McClintock
Kenneth McClintock
Kenneth D. McClintock-Hernández is the current Secretary of State of Puerto Rico. Mr. McClintock served as co-chair of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign's National Hispanic Leadership Council in 2008, co-chaired Clinton's successful Puerto Rico primary campaign that year and served as the...
at the Puerto Rico Capitol Building, with Benítez' daughter, Margarita Benítez, in attendance. The activity was followed by the opening of an exhibition of photographs of Benítez, open to all Capitol visitors.