Jaime Edmundo Rodríguez Ordóñez (born Guayaquil, Ecuador, 12 April 1940 – Los Angeles, 27 June 2022) was a historian of Latin America, particularly of independence-era Mexico.
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.
Rather, Rodríguez suggested 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.
Rodríguez Ordóñez emphasized the importance of the influence of the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz on Spanish America, especially in New Spain and the Realm of Quito.
He stressed 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.