Fernández y Medina, Benjamín (1873–1960)

Born in Montevideo on March 31, 1873, Benjamín Fernández y Medina was a Uruguayan writer and diplomat who held numerous positions in public administration, especially in the diplomatic corps. He was secretary to the chief of police in Montevideo in 1897 and drafted the new police code. In the late 1890s he served on the departmental board of elementary education in the capital (one of the chief administrative bodies overseeing the new national public education system), and during the first two decades of the twentieth century he worked as the first official for the interior ministry and for the ministry of foreign relations. Fernández y Medina sympathized with the Colorado Party and supported two-time Colorado president José Batlle y Ordóñez. During Batlle's second term (1911–1915), Fernández y Medina was appointed undersecretary of foreign affairs. He later held diplomatic appointments in Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Cuba, and Mexico, retiring from the foreign service in December 1935.

In addition to Fernández y Medina's career in public service, he was a member of literary and historical societies, including the Real Academia Española and the Real Academia de la Historia, and a founding member of the Instituto Histórico y Geográfico del Uruguay. He also established a reputation as a newspaper and magazine editor, and author of criollista short stories, anthologies of poetry, and literary and historical studies. He died in Madrid on July 16, 1960.

See alsoBatlle y Ordóñez, José; Education: Overview.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fernández y Medina, Benjamín. Cuentos. Clásicos Uruguayos, no. 74. Montevideo: Ministerio de Instrucción Pública y Previsión Social, 1965.

Scarone, Arturo. Uruguayos contemporaneos: Nuevo diccionario de datos biográficos y bibliográficos. Montevideo: A Barreiro y Ramos, 1937.

                                 JosÉ de Torres Wilson

                                  William G. Acree, Jr.