Biography lived

Biography lived in Havana (after seven years with his mother and stepfather). He studied Commercial Sciences at the University of Havana and Statistics at American University, Washington, United States, continued his studies, thanks to a scholarship at the Department of Labor and U.S. Trade and later in Mexico. He turned down offers of work in Chile and Geneva to return to Cuba in 1958, where he becomes head of the office of Labor Ministry statistics. In 1965 he began working at the Ministry of Culture, was deputy director of the National Dance Theater and the National Council of Culture (1966-1967) and or of Cuba Internacional (1968-1969), directed three departments of the House of the Americas: Literary Research Center (1970-1971), the Editorial Department (1974-1980) and the Center for Caribbean Studies (1979-1980). In 1980 the Cuban government allowed to leave the country to attend a conference at the Sorbonne in Paris.Benitez Rojo visited the French capital to Berlin, where he obtained a U.S. visa in the U.S. and I taught Spanish at Amherst College, Massachusetts. He was also a visiting professor at the universities of Harvard, Emory, Brown, Yale, Pittsburgh and Miami. His literary vocation manifested late: he began to write stories just before 35th birthday in February 1966. The following year he won the Casa de las Americas Prize for his book Tute de reyes and in 1969 the prize of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) by the shield of dry leaves. Survivors, one of the stories of Tute de reyes, was filmed in 1978 by Tomas Gutierrez Alea's own scripted Benitez Rojo. His works have been translated into a dozen languages.