Jaime E. Rodríguez O.

He began teaching at California State University, Long Beach, remaining there 1969–1973. In 1974, he began his career at University of California, Irvine, where he taught until his retirement. Between 1980 and 1986, he was Graduate Dean and Vice Chancellor for Research. He was the founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, a bilingual, binational journal published jointly with the University of California and the National University of Mexico.

In 1965 he earned his B.A. in economics at the University of Houston and following year, he earned his M.A. in history also at University of Houston. In 1970, he completed his doctorate at University of Texas, Austin, under the direction of Nettie Lee Benson, with his dissertation on Vicente Rocafuerte and the rise of Latin American identity.

Jaime Edmundo Rodríguez Ordóñez (born Guayaquil, Ecuador, 12 April 1940), historian of Latin America, particularly the independence-era in Mexico. His is now professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine.

In his published work, Rodríguez Ordóñez contends that Latin America was not isolated from events in the rest of the western world, so that it was actively involved in the events of the Atlantic Revolutions. Although the American Revolution and the French Revolution were known throughout the confines of the Spanish monarchy, he argues that they did not directly influence the Spanish territories in the Americas. Rather, Rodríguez suggests that the imprisonment of Ferdinand VII during the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and the subsequent institutional vacuum that this created were the direct causes of the collapse of the Spanish monarchy. It is in this context that countless Juntas succeed each other both on the Iberian peninsula and in Spanish America that sought to represent a government free from French influence, but faithful to the Spanish monarch and monarchy as an institution. The distrust of many Americans of peninsular-born Spaniards and that of many peninsulares in the Americans led to civil wars in which in many cases entire families were divided between insurgents and royalists. Rodríguez Ordóñez has emphasized the importance of the influence of the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz on Spanish America, especially in New Spain and the Kingdom of Quito. He contends this constitution was much more representative and inclusive than many of its contemporaries, including ones from Latin America, which were much more traditional. He stresses the role of elections as a starting point for modern representative governance in Latin America and as one of the reasons why the wars for independence lasted at least a decade.