Subject Guides: Latin American Studies: Primary Sources

Primary Source Databases at HBLL

American Indian Histories and Cultures Explore manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals. From Adam Matthew.
Arte Publico Hispanic Historical Collection (EBSCO) A digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature and culture. Manuscript, book, and newspaper content in the areas of Hispanic American civil rights, religion, and women's rights ranging from the eighteenth through the twentieth century.
Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 Alternate title: Latin America: Confidential Print, 1833-1969. Confidential Print: Latin America, from Adam Matthew and Archives Direct, covers the whole of South and Central America, plus the non-British islands of the Caribbean, from just after the final Spanish withdrawal from mainland America in the 1820s to the height of the Cold War in the 1960s. Covering revolutions, territorial changes and political movements, foreign financial interests, industrial and infrastructural development (including the building of the Panama Canal), wars, slavery, immigration from Europe and relations with indigenous peoples, amongst other topics, the files in this title form a vital resource for any scholar of Latin American history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture (Gale) Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 presents a broad history of crime in the long 19th century derived from French, German, Spanish, Australian, British and U.S. sources. The collection includes trial transcripts, court proceedings, police and forensic documents, photographs, true crime literature and detective novels, and newspaper accounts. This archive appeals to scholars in the fields of history, literature, law and criminal justice, as well as other fields.
Digital National Security Archive (ProQuest)
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment (ASP) Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment documents the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America from 1534 to 1850. The database includes prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, letters, photographs, and original facsimiles.
Feminism in Cuba, 1898-1958 (Gale) This collection, compiled from Cuban sources, spans the period from Cuban independence to the end of the Batista regime. The collection sheds light on Cuban feminism, women in politics, literature by Cuban women and the legal status of Cuban women.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 (NewsBank) The single largest compilation of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries
Latin Americanist Research Resources Project Includes access to following databases: Latin American Periodicals Tables of Contents (LAPTOC) - a searchable database of the tables of contents of more than 800 journals published in Latin America; Latin American Open Archives Portal (LAOAP) - provides access to social sciences grey literature produced in Latin America by research institutes, nongovernmental organizations, and peripheral agencies; Presidential Message - contains digital images of more than 75,000 pages of Mexican and Argentinian presidential speeches from the early 19th century to the present.
Public Life in Contemporary Argentina (Gale) Vida Publican en la Argentina Contemporanea presents an extensive grassroots view of Argentina and the recent social and political changes that have taken place there. Material on Argentine society and politics beginning with the year 1996 and running to the present.
Sabin Americana Digital Archive (Gale) Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more. With over 6 million pages from 29,000 works, this collection is a cornerstone in the study of the western hemisphere.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This resource is designed as an important portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period 1490-2007, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Close attention is being given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today. Adam Matthew.
World Newspaper Archive (Newsbank) World Newspaper Archive is a fully searchable collection of historical newspapers from around the globe. This uniquely comprehensive online resource was created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) - one of the world's largest and most important newspaper repositories. Latin American Newspapers includes more than 35 nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American newspapers, featuring titles from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and elsewhere.
World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean (Gale) A rich collection of primary source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean; academic journals and news feeds covering the region; reference articles and commentary; maps and statistics; audio and video; and more.

National & Regional Archives

Archives and Libraries of Guatemala A list of archives and libraries in Guatemala.
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No digitized records available through this link.
Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico) This link takes you to the AGN's finding guide, "Guía general de los fondos." To search the catalog, click on the "+" icon next to the small manila folder in the top left, then select the collection that you want to search.
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No digitized records available.
Main webpage of the AGN:
http://www.gob.mx/agn
Archivo General de Notarías, Fondo Siglo XVI (Mexico) El Acervo Histórico del Archivo General de Notarias de la Ciudad de México conserva un total de 98 libros de protocolos del siglo XVI.
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Digitized records exist but do not seem to be accessible online. Some transcriptions and summaries are present.
Biblioteca Nacional de Argentina Colecciones Digitales
Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia Biblioteca Digital Digitized collections from Colombia's National Library.
Biblioteca Nacional de Uruguay Colecciones Digitales Digitized collections from the National Library of Uruguay. Items include books, maps, photographs, illustrations, medals, coins, and others.
Biblioteca Nacional Digital do Brasil Includes manuscripts, photographs, recorded music, newspapers, drawings, engravings, books, maps, ephemera, sheet music, pamphlets, and more. Materials accessible by searching in their digital catalog.
CIA Documents on Human Rights in Latin America This information deals with human rights in Latin America, with some documents dating from 1964 to 1995. Most of the documents concern El Salvador and Guatemala, but the collection also contains records on Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras, Chile, and Peru. Some documents were released in 1993 to the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, which sought information on 32 alleged human rights violations in El Salvador between 1980 and 1991. These records reveal that U.S. citizens, other foreigners, and indigenous people on both the left and right in El Salvador and Guatemala were victims of these kidnappings, murders, and other human rights abuses. This collection includes Agency publications analyzing the dynamics surrounding the improvement or worsening of the human rights situation in these Latin American countries, such as a CIA Inspector General's report and a Special National Intelligence Estimate on the performance of El Salvador regarding human rights.
National Archives of the United States Contains U.S. government records on Latin America.
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Digitized records available.
Portal de Archivos Españoles (PARES) Documents from: Archivo de la Corona de Aragón Archivo de la Real Chancillería de Valladolid Archivo General de Indias Archivo General de la Administración Archivo General de Simancas Archivo Histórico Nacional Archivo Histórico Provincial de Álava Archivo Histórico Provincial de Bizkaia Archivo Histórico Provincial de Gipuzkoa Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica Sección Nobleza del Archivo Histórico Nacional
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Digitized records available.
World Digital Archive (Library of Congress) The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world. The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.

University Library Collections

Hover over the "i" icon to see a brief description of each resource.

Click on the "more..." link below each link to see if there are digital records available.

Benson Latin American Collection (U.T. Austin) The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is one of the premier libraries in the world focused on Latin America and Latin@ Studies. In partnership with the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies (LLILAS), the Benson Collection is a regular destination for visitors from throughout the world. The library’s holdings include nearly a million books, magazines, newspapers, journals and other materials. This collection is complemented by a world-class archival collection containing manuscripts, art, maps, letters and other one-of-a-kind materials. The collection is continually enriched by a vigorous acquisitions program and by a growing collection of original digital resources available online.
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Digitized records available.
Cuban Heritage Collection (U of Miami) he Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami collects, preserves, and provides access to primary and secondary sources of enduring historical, research, and artifactual value which relate to Cuba and the Cuban diaspora from colonial times to the present.
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Digital records available
Digital Library of the Caribbean (DLoC) Founded in 2004, the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) provides users with access to Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials held in archives, libraries, and private collections. dLOC comprises collections that speak to the similarities and differences in histories, cultures, languages and governmental systems. Types of collections include but are not limited to: newspapers, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official documents, documentation and numeric data for ecosystems, scientific scholarship, historic and contemporary maps, oral and popular histories, travel accounts, literature and poetry, musical expressions, and artifacts.
Latin American and Caribbean Collections (U of Florida) Founded in 1951 to support emerging scholarly interest in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Latin American and Caribbean Collection has since grown to become one of the University of Florida’s preeminent collections. The Latin American and Caribbean Collection (LACC) now holds approximately 500,000 volumes, over 50,000 microforms, thousands of current and historical serial titles, and a large number of digital resources.
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Digitized records available.
Latin American Collections (UNM) There are significant manuscript collections as well as substantial compendiums of silkscreen and photo-offset posters, engravings, lithographs, block prints, photographs and other creative and graphic works such as chapbooks and artists’ books. These materials are held in the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections (CSWR), located in Zimmerman library. Unique archival holdings on New Mexico as a contested territory of the Vice Royalty of New Spain (1598-1821) and independent Mexico (1821-1848) offer excellent opportunities for research in Latin American, Indigenous, Chicana/o and Southwest studies.
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For the digital Latin American Collections:
http://libguides.unm.edu/Special_LatinAmerican_Collections/Digital

For the general UNM Digital Collections: http://econtent.unm.edu/
Laures Rare Book Database & Virtual Library (Tokyo) This digital resource will hopefully serve as a useful tool for researchers investigating the complex history of cultural interaction between Europe and Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as the history of Western printing techniques in Japan, the history of Western books printed about Japan in Early Modern Europe. The focus of the database is determined by its bibliographical content, namely books on Christianity related to Japan. There are, however, many other artifacts, including maps, both Western and Japanese, that bear witness to this encounter between East and West and that are not directly or solely related to the history of Christianity in Asia. There are also other resources that touch upon the contacts between East Asia and Latin America, in particular through the exchange of information that marked the trade that was carried out by way of the Manila Galleon.
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Digitized records available.

Online Digital Collections: Maps

Early Modern Maps of the Americas (U of Chicago) The Early Modern Maps of the Americas Collection contains maps from the University of Chicago Library’s Map Collection and Special Collections Research Center. The collection follows the representation of the Americas in early modern cartography. The maps date from the 16th through the 18th centuries, giving a wide perspective of how the Americas were illustrated. The maps in this collection range from detailed maps of Mexico, the Caribbean, North and South America, to colorful world maps that portray the engraving techniques of cartographers.
Latin American Cities Late 19th & early 20th century maps (U of Chicago) Late 19th- and early 20th-century sheet maps of Latin American cities that are held at the University of Chicago Library's Map Collection.
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The cities portrayed on these maps were not at all alike.

Some of the smaller and more out-of-the-way places--Oaxaca and Puno, for example--still had the morphology of late colonial cities. In Spanish-speaking Latin America, this meant that city streets were built on a simple grid centered on a plaza surrounded by governmental and religious buildings. The non-Spanish-speaking cities were similar but less uniform in their street pattern. (Cuzco and to a much smaller extent Mexico City were the only substantial cities whose form was influenced by pre-colonial Amerindian settlements.)
Diseños Collection (California State Archives) This collection contains images of 493 hand-drawn sketch maps that were originally created from 1827-1846. The hand-drawn sketch maps, or diseños, were used by the Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. governments to demonstrate land grant boundaries for individuals. Following California’s statehood, the original records were transferred to the U.S. Surveyor General of California and later the National Archives, as was the practice with other U.S. land grant records. The diseños in the State Archives’ collection are complete and accurate copies of the original hand-drawn maps and were created in the 1860s as directed by the California Legislature. Each diseño includes naturally occurring boundaries—such as rivers, mountains, rock outcropping, and trees—as markers. Many of the diseños have labeled neighboring properties, show existing travel routes, locations of houses, and local place names. The diseños are part a larger collection of Spanish and Mexican land grant records at the California State Archives which also include expedientes, or written documents pertaining to the grant petition, and other related title documents.
Historic Maps of Cuba (Texas A&M) This collection contains digital versions of historical maps of Cuba held by the Texas A&M University Libraries. Subject matter includes soils and population.
The Mapas Project (U of Oregon) The Mapas Project has as its focus the digitization and study of colonial Mesoamerican pictorial manuscripts. The term "mapa" was used loosely in New Spain to refer to pictorials that may or may not have had a cartographic dimension, but often showed the territories or landscapes of indigenous communities.

Online Digital Collections: Newspapers & Magazines

Archivo Histórico de Revistas Argentinas (AhiRa) El Archivo Histórico de Revistas Argentinas (AhiRa) agrupa a docentes e investigadores formados en la Universidad de Buenos Aires, en las áreas de letras, historia y comunicación, interesados particularmente en las revistas argentinas y su inserción en los debates estéticos, políticos e ideológicos de la historica cultural de nuestro país. AhiRa pone a disposición de la mayor cantidad de lectores, colecciones digitalizadas de revistas y de otras publicaciones periódicas que representaron momentos significativos en el desarrollo del periodismo cultural en Argentina, acompañadas de sus índices, breves ensayos y artículos críticos, que diseñan algunas líneas de lectura e interpretación.
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Digitized records available.
Hemeroteca Nacional Digital de México (HNDM) La HNDM, provee información hemerográfica y servicios de búsqueda en los contenidos de las representaciones digitales de las páginas de las publicaciones que la conforman. La HNDM publica solo los títulos cuyos contenidos han pasado a ser de dominio público. En consecuencia, el usuario de la HNDM sólo puede acceder en internet a materiales clasificados en esta categoría.
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Digitized records available.
Pepines: Catálogo de Historietas de la Hemeroteca Nacional (Mexico) Con este Catálogo la Hemeroteca abre las puertas a la consulta del acervo público más importante de historieta mexicana con que cuenta nuestro país, acervo que abarca más de siete mil volúmenes encuadernados y otro tanto de revistas sin empastar. Hemos bautizado este Catálogo con el nombre de Pepines porque con esta palabra –derivada del título de la legendaria revista Pepín– denominaban lectoras y lectores de los años cincuenta del Siglo XX a las revistas de historieta popular.

Institutional Repositories

Repositorio Institucional (Tec. de Monterrey, Mex) The "Patrimonio Cultural" section has digitized primary source documents in the following collections: Fototeca Manuscritos Novohispanos en Lenguas Indígenas Colección Ignacio Bernal (some document series are restricted).
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Digitized records available.
Digital Collections of the Ibero-American Institute (Berlin) The Digital Collections contain all the digitalized publications of the Ibero-American Institute. You can search the digitalized objects or you may access the different collections. If you want to save the results of your search and exchange them with other users, or annotate the digitalized objects you are working with, you have to use the "login" and create your personal user account. Furthermore, you can create your own virtual bookshelf.
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Digitized records available.
Centro de Estudios de Historia de México (CEHM) El Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso Fundación Carlos Slim, fue creado en 1965. El objetivo fue y es, la recuperación de obras impresas y documentales concernientes a la historia de México, desde la época virreinal hasta nuestros días. Contamos con ochocientas mil piezas entre libros y manuscritos, así como cinco salones para albergar las colecciones más selectas. Entre nuestras actividades se encuentran la publicación de nuestros catálogos tanto de la biblioteca como de su archivo para facilitar su consulta. Nuestra actual sede es un digno marco a tantos y tan variados libros y documentos de nuestro pasado mexicano en el sur de la ciudad de México.
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Digitized records available.

Websites

Brazilian Government Documents (CRL) Executive branch serial documents issued by Brazil’s national government between 1821 and 1993, and by its provincial governments from the earliest available to the end of the first Republic in 1930.
Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) The Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) is a collection of electronic texts orignially written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. Open to the public for research and teaching purposes. Intended as a long-term and inter-disciplinary project committed to exploring the intersections between traditional humanities research and digital technologies, it invites scholars from all disciplines to submit their editions of early American texts for publication on this site.
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Digital editions available, not digitized records.
Kobino: Circulación de libros en la Nueva España La circulación de libros en un territorio como el novohispano puede documentarse con las evidencias históricas localizadas y es una tarea que deberíamos hacer permanentemente en sintonía con la protección de nuestro legado bibliográfico. En efecto, toda esa heredad conservada en repositorios públicos y privados que tiene una procedencia colonial es tan sólo una parte patrimonial, la otra, desaparecida o dispersa, puede rastrearse en la rica documentación que testimonia la presencia de ciertos libros en este enorme territorio. Con esta idea, bajo el principio de que las ediciones más que las obras son responsables de la transmisión de ideas, el conocimiento, los miedo o las ilusiones, emprendimos hace años una compilación de datos que dan cuenta de ediciones precisas en circulación durante la vigencia del Vierreinato de la Nueva España. Así nace KOBINO, como una herramienta útil para determinar y relacionar qué ediciones hemos encontrado en esos testimonios coloniales y cuántas personas tuvieron acceso a éstas. Lo que aquí se presenta sólo es una pieza de un rompecabezas cultural en el que intervinieron numerosas comunidades de interpretación contribuyendo así a delinear el mestizaje del que somos resultado. Queremos que sea útil para otros como lo es para quienes intervienen en su compilación.
LANIC: Latin American Network Information Center The Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) is part of the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) and the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2011, LANIC has also been a part of the University of Texas Libraries as one of the initiatives that is under the LLILAS Benson Collaboration. LANIC's mission is to facilitate access to Internet-based information to, from, or on Latin America. Our target audience includes people living in Latin America, as well as those around the world who have an interest in this region. While many of our resources are designed to facilitate research and academic endeavors, our site has also become an important gateway to Latin America for primary and secondary school teachers and students, private and public sector professionals, and just about anyone looking for information about this important region. LANIC's editorially reviewed directories contain over 10,000 unique URLs, one of the largest guides for Latin American content on the Internet. As of the Fall semester 2015, the average number of clicks from Google search results that landed on LANIC pages was 3,239 per day. Based on data provided by Google, as of October 2015 there were over 500,000 inbound links to pages on LANIC from Web Sites around the world. Additionally, LANIC hosts large amounts of content from or about Latin America: as of October 2015, Google's search index contained over 39,000 URLs for content that lives on the LANIC Web site.
M68, Ciudadanías en Movimiento 1968 evoca a una época de libertad y júbilo, de memoria y olvido, de sueños y revoluciones, de violencia e impunidad. En México, el movimiento estudiantil fue decisivo para impulsar un ciclo de movilizaciones que —a pesar de la injustica, la desigualdad y el abuso del poder— han logrado conformar un patrimonio de derechos individuales y colectivos, así como consolidar a la ciudadanía como una fuerza de transformación política y social. Bajo esta premisa y tras un proceso de renovación curatorial y museográfica, el Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco de la UNAM, abrió en 2018 las puertas de la experiencia museística M68, que consta de tres componentes esenciales: una exposición permanente sobre el Memorial del 68 y los movimientos sociales, el repositorio digital M68 Ciudadanías en movimiento y el Centro de Documentación M68.
World History Commons With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) George Mason University is partnering with the World History Association and Associate Professor Adam Clulow (Monash University, Australia) to create World History Commons. This Open Educational Resource (OER), will provide high quality, peer-reviewed resources for teaching and research in world and global history. World History Commons will introduce new humanities scholarship and pedagogy while preserving and enhancing widely-used resources from World History Matters, the award-winning, NEH-funded collection of world history websites, and the Global History Reader, a collaboration between scholars at Monash University and Warwick University (UK). Content includes website reviews, primary sources, and teaching and methods guides.

Items from HBLL Special Collections

Collection on New Mexican Territorial History See this link for more information on the collection: https://findingaid.lib.byu.edu/viewItem/MSS%201509

Online Digital Collections: Images

Archivo Fotográfico de la Universidad de Concepción (Chile) El Archivo Fotográfico de la Universidad de Concepción (AFUDEC) tiene por misión preservar, investigar y difundir el Patrimonio Documental / Visual de la Universidad de Concepción, recurso informativo que aporta al desarrollo de la docencia, la investigación y la cultura en sus diversos ámbitos. Somos un espacio dialogante y abierto a la comunidad, que proyecta su gestión dentro y desde el ámbito regional.
Braceros in Oregon Photograph Collection (Oregon State) An archival photograph collection of the Braceros that worked in the agricultural fields and orchards of Oregon, 1942-1947. The 102 photographs in this collection document the activities of Oregon's Bracero workers - their cultivation and harvesting work in the fields and orchards as well as the farm labor camps in which they lived. Most of the photographs were taken by Oregon State College Extension staff members as part of a larger effort to document the various groups that contributed to alleviate the state's severe shortage of farm labor.
Jeffrey R. Parsons Archaeological Sites Images (U of Michigan) The Jeffrey R. Parsons digital images are part of the Jeffrey R. Parsons collection housed at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library. The images document the archaeologist's field work in the Basin of Mexico and in Peru and are part of the collections' visual materials series. These depict terrain survey work, a variety of ceramic work, and multiple archaeological sites Among the locations documented here are Ixtapalapa, Zumpango, Texcoco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Jauja, Huasahuasi, Junin, and Tarma.
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Jeffrey R. Parsons was Curator of Latin American Archaeology and Director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He was a professor at the same institution for over forty years starting in 1966 and carried out extensive research on settlement patterns in the basin of Mexico, in Peru, and in many other countries. Parsons is known for his role in the development of systematic settlement survey methods in archaeology, a methodology which has become common in archaeological work around the world. Material in the collection include papers, maps, site surveys, photo negatives, aerial photographs and digital scans of the negatives.
Jose Guadalupe Posada collection, circa 1875-1913 (Stanford) The collection contains broadsides, pamphlets, and prints by the Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada. Born in poverty in 1852, Jose Guadalupe Posada became the "Printmaker to the Mexican People," an influence on future Mexican artists such as Orozco and Rivera, and is often compared to such icons as Goya and Daumier. Posada is labelled an artist, a folk illustrator and a political cartoonist; no matter how he is categorized, it is clear that, through his prolific career, "an inarticulate public found expression."
The Luso-Hispanic New World in Early Prints and Photographs (NY Public Lib) The books whose images make up this digital presentation offer a rich sampling of the extraordinary variety of NYPL's pictorial holdings on Latin America from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Images from two remarkable works document aspects of the great civilizations of Mesoamerica, as seen through European eyes. Other books digitized for this collection present wonderful color prints published to enhance accounts of travel and exploration throughout Central America, Peru and the Southern Cone. This digital presentation will grow over time, becoming an even richer source for visual information about monuments, landscape, and local cultures.
Photographic Archive of Historic Havana (Hampshire College)
Photographs from the Leonor Villegas de Magnón Papers (U of Houston) This collection contains 146 photographs and postcards related to Leonor Villegas de Magnón’s personal life, political activism with the international relief service La Cruz Blanca (the White Cross), and the Mexican Revolution. Photographs highlight Magnón’s pioneering work along the Mexico-Texas border as well as her relationships with fellow activists, participants of the Revolution, and friends and family.

Online Digital Collections: Pamphlets

Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection (Harvard) Scarce and unique pamphlets, primarily from Chile, Cuba, Bolivia and Mexico, published during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Latin American Ephemera Collection (Princeton) The Latin American Ephemera Collection contains thousands of digitized pamphlets, brochures, flyers, posters, placards and other printed items created since around the last quarter of the 20th century by a wide variety of social activists, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, political parties, public policy think tanks, and other types of organizations across Latin America, in order to publicize their views, positions, agendas, policies, events, and activities. The vast majority are rare, hard-to-find primary sources unavailable elsewhere.
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Digitized documents available.
Central American Broadsides (U of Kansas) This collection features broadsides from the Kenneth Spencer Research Library's William J. Griffith Collection of Guatemala and Central America. Dating from the 1820s to 1922, the broadsides are primarily Guatemalan, with a smaller number from Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Many pertain to national and local politics and include election materials, political manifestos, and government pronouncements.
Dupee Mexican History Collection Broadsides (Brown) The Dupee Collection offers nearly 200 broadsides published after the Mexican republic secured its independence in 1821. Chronicled within the broadsides are Mexican partisan politics, religious and anti-clerical debates, popular literature and drama, domestic revolutions and armed conflict with the United States. Most are Spanish-language sources written by Mexican citizens and published in Mexico.
Alfredo Montalvo Bolivian Digital Pamphlets Collection (Cornell) A collection of pamphlets from Bolivia donated by bookseller Alfredo Montalvo.

Topical Digital Collections

Cordel: Literatura popular em verso (Casa Rui Barbosa) O Acervo de Literatura Popular em Versos da Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, o maior da América Latina, atualmente com mais de 9.000 folhetos de cordel foi formado a partir da década de 1960 e, dessa iniciativa resultou uma extensa bibliografia, composta de catálogos, antologias e estudos especializados.
Documenting Ethnobiology in Mexico and Central America (Gettysburg College) Documenting Ethnobiology in Mexico and Central America (DEMCA) is a data portal in development for the presentation, exchange and discussion of traditional ecological knowledge, particularly the nomenclature, classification and symbolic and economic use of flora and fauna in Indigenous communities of this region. It will provide users registered as Project Managers or Community Liaisons with a mechanism to upload and share their own materials (textual, photographic, and audio) and to offer these materials for identification and commentary by the DEMCA community of users.
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Registered users will be able to search or browse DEMCA's resources through linguistic means (e.g, Indigenous nomenclature, the semantics of plant and animal names), project or community filters, functional uses (e.g, fencing, ointments), collection data (e.g., altitude), and Western nomenclature (e.g, by binomial name, browsing by genus). Eventually users will be able to tag entries, create and store records in personalized databases, and download these sets of linked entries to their computer. Audio recordings of narratives and discussions in Indigenous languages on local flora and fauna will be accessible through continuous or line-by-line playback and the contents will be displayed in transcription and translation (Spanish) formats. Eventually video will be incorporated.
Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade (Michigan State) FORTHCOMING "Enslaved" will be launching in the Spring of 2020. We are currently adding resources to our database.
First Blacks in the Americas: The African Presence in the Dominican Republic (CUNY) First Blacks in the Americas is a fully bilingual (English and Spanish) digital educational platform devoted to disseminating sound historical information about the early presence of people of black African ancestry in the first colonial society of the Americas of modern times, the society of the colony named La Española (‘The Spanish One’) by the Spanish colonizers when they arrived in 1492 and throughout the sixteenth-century. This is the same society that, over a process of roughly three hundred and fifty years of settlement and creolization, would evolve into the Dominican ethnicity and Dominican nation, and which we know today as the Dominican people and the Dominican Republic, respectively.
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Includes bibliographies and primary source documents, including maps
Freedom Narratives (York U, Canada) Freedom Narratives focuses on the enforced migration of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade from the 16th to the 19th century. The biographical accounts included here include the testimonies and stories of individuals born in West Africa whose voices have long been silenced. This digital repository of autobiographical testimonies and biographical data establishes where people came from, why they were enslaved, whether or not they freed themselves, and what happened to them.
Gabriel García Márquez Archive (UT Austin Ransom Center) The digital archive of Colombian-born writer Gabriel García Márquez includes manuscript drafts of published and unpublished works, research material, photographs, scrapbooks, correspondence, clippings, notebooks, screenplays, printed material, ephemera, and an audio recording of García Márquez's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. The searchable, online archive is comprised of approximately 27,500 items from García Márquez's papers. The papers (English | Spanish) of Gabriel García Márquez, acquired by the Ransom Center in 2014, include original manuscript material, predominantly in Spanish, for 10 books, more than 2,000 pieces of correspondence, drafts of his 1982 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, more than 40 photograph albums documenting all aspects of his life over nearly nine decades, the Smith Corona typewriters and computers on which he wrote some of the twentieth century's most beloved works, and scrapbooks meticulously documenting his career via news clippings from Latin America and around the world.
Memoria política de México A collection of transcribed primary source texts, studies, and bibliography on the political history of Mexico.
Mexican Cookbook Collection (UT San Antonio) UTSA’s Mexican Cookbook Collection is comprised of more than 1,800 cookbooks, from 1789 to the present, with most books dating from 1940-2000. In addition to broad general coverage, the collection includes concentrations in the areas of regional cooking, healthy and vegetarian recipes, corporate advertising cookbooks and manuscript recipe books. UTSA Libraries Digital Collections features a selection of manuscript cookbooks from the collection. These handwritten recipe books provide an intimate view of domestic life and Mexican culinary culture.
Mexico Documents Collection (U of Houston) The Mexico Documents Collection contains 162 documents (personal and official correspondence, government orders, decrees, pamphlets, and government announcements), varying from a parchment document with elaborate signature to official typed decrees from the Office of the President. Chronicling Mexico from 1570-1913, the collection spans four distinct periods of Mexican history: the Colonial Period, Mexican Independence, the Mexican-American War, and the Mexican Revolution. A large portion of the collection is from the years between Mexican Independence (1821) and the end of the Mexican-American War (1849). Nearly all of the items are in Spanish but many have accompanying English translations. Notable individuals found in the collection include Mexican Presidents, Santa Anna de Lopez and Porfirio Diaz, and Jose Joaquin de Hererra. Additionally, some materials document American military actions in Mexico during the Mexican-American War. Lastly, there are an assortment of documents chronicling religion in Mexico as well as business and land transactions. The original materials are available in UH Libraries' Special Collections in the Mexico Documents Collection.
Perspectives on the Mexican Revolution Part of their Digital Collections for the Classroom series. Has essays, photos, and documents about the Mexican Revolution from the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Primeros Libros de las Américas A collection of books printed in Mexico in the 16th century available in digital format.
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Impresos americanos del siglo XVI en las bibliotecas del mundo / American imprints from the 16th century in libraries of the world
The Saint-Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789 (U of Maryland) The website is designed to provide online access to both the French originals and the English translations of key primary sources dealing with the grain shortage faced by the colony of Saint-Domingue in 1789. Alongside the French original, each translation is presented with a brief historical introduction to situate the reader in the time period and help understand how this particular pamphlet fits into the episode. Each document has been reviewed by one of the scholars on our Board of Advisors. These pamphlets are primarily drawn from the University of Maryland’s Special Collections, although related items available at other institutions have been included as well.
Slave Biographies (Michigan State) Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network is an open access data repository of information on the identities of enslaved people in the Atlantic World. It includes the names, ethnicities, skills, occupations, and illnesses of individual slaves. Phase one of a multi-phase project is presented here. Users of the website can access three data sets: one about slaves in Maranhão, Brazil, one about slaves in colonial Louisiana, and another about freed slaves in Antebellum Louisiana. They can download datasets, search for ancestors, and run statistical analysis.
Slave Voyages (Emory) This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of mostly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action.