LibGuides: History: Latin American History

Primary Sources for Latin America

Sarah Lawrence College & Beyond
Historical Newspapers

Keep in mind that as you begin to develop a specific research topic there may be more pertinent primary source archives for you to utilize. The resources below are just jumping off points.

General Primary Sources

The Avalon Project Contains digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government from across the World and from a plethora of time periods.
Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera Princeton University's growing repository of digitized primary sources.
Slave Societies Digital Archive (SSDA) Digital copies of ecclesiastical and secular documents related to Africans and Afro-descended peoples in the Americas.
Harvard Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection More than 5,000 rare 19th century Latin American pamphlets containing political and social commentary.
John Carter Brown Library Spanish America Collection Full-text of one of the world's largest collection of books printed in Spanish America. Primarily in Spanish, the site includes links to sub-collections by country.
Latin American Political Campaign Ephemera Collection From UC San Diego Digital Collections.
Latin American Travelogues A digital collection of Latin American travelogues the 16th-19th centuries.
Library of Congress Luso-Hispanic Digital Collections
The Mapas Project "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."
Memoria Chilena Chilean historical documents from the National Library of Chile.
Onda Latina: The Mexican American Experience Over two hundred digitized audio collections including interviews, music, and informational programs related to the Mexican American community and their concerns from the radio series "The Mexican American Experience" and "A esta hora conversamos" the Longhorn Radio Network, 1976-1982.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection from UT Offers a list of links to historical maps on other Web sites. You can also see their "historical maps from our collection." Keep in mind that some links may not work.
SALALM Latin American & Caribbean Digital Primary Sources An extensive list of open access digital archives organized by format and country. Formats included are: “Historical Texts by Country“, “Historical Texts General“, “Statistics“, “Recorded or Audiovisual Source“, “Visual Material by Country“, “Visual Material General“, and “Miscellaneous.”
World Digital Library: Latin America and the Caribbean "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." This is the section dedicated to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Art and Music Collections

Chicano / Latino Visual Art Online - Calisphere Online searchable portal within Calisphere which contains thousands of digitized cultural and artistic images.
Princeton Latin American Posters Collection Government, NGO, and activist posters from nearly every country in Latin America, but most prominently from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Venezuela.
NYPL Luso-Hispanic New World in Early Prints and Photographs Prints and photographs of the New World in the NYPL.
The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings Mexican and Mexican America recordings of over 100,000 historical Spanish-language songs.
University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art The online collection of The University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA). Contains "images of each artwork, texts on every artist, unique artists' statements, and the UECLAApedia - a glossary devised to illuminate themes and terms arising from the study of Latin American Art."
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820 A gallery of color images, interpretive essays and a searchable bibliography on visual culture in Spanish America.

American Music (formerly American Song) This link opens in a new window A growing database of over 12,500 tracks that illustrate our countrys history through music. Includes the following genres: country, folk, jazz, bluegrass, Western, old time, American Indian, blues, gospel, R&B, and shape note singing. Scope: United States. Dates: Varies.
Smithsonian Global Sound This link opens in a new window Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries is a virtual encyclopedia of the worlds musical and aural traditions. This collection provides users with a variety of online resources, including access to full length streams of the vast audio database. Scope: Worldwide. Dates: Varies.

See the Primary Sources page to gain a better understanding of what a primary source is.

Historical Newspapers via Sarah Lawrence College Library

New York Times This link opens in a new window Comprehensive digital coverage back to 1980 is available for this internationally renowned U.S. newspaper through the ProQuest database. The complete text of recent articles is provided in the ASCII format. The New York Times Book Review and Sunday Magazine are provided in PDF format. Scope: Worldwide. Dates: 1980 to present.
New York Times, ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window Full page and article images with searchable text from 1851-2013. Digital reproductions of every page of the New York Times are available to be searched and researchers can also scan through the front pages, advertisements, editorials, obituaries, and other features of the newspaper. Searches can also be constructed for specific date ranges. Scope: Worldwide. Dates: 1851 to 2013.
Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window Ethnic NewsWatch contains and searches as one both Ethnic NewsWatch, which is a current collection, and Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, which is an historical collection. Ethnic NewsWatch, the current file, covers 1990 to present and Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, covers 1959-1989. Includes newspapers, magazines, and journals of ethnic, minority, and native presses. Scope: United States and Canada. Dates: 1959 to present.
Early American Newspapers (1690-1876) This link opens in a new window Includes thousands of U.S. historical newspaper titles from all 50 states. Search through news content in individual publications as well as images and advertisements. Scope: United States. Dates: 1690 to 1876.

Additional Historical Newspaper Resources

Historical Worldwide Newspapers Online: Latin America Extensive list of open access newspaper sites compiled at Bowling Green State University.
Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library "The Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library (CNDL) is supported by the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), a cooperative digital library for newspapers resources from the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. CNDL provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean newspapers, gazettes, and other research materials on newsprint currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections. CNDL continues to add historical and current newspapers through ongoing digitization and born-digital curation, expanding the geographic, temporal, political and linguistic variety of the newspapers."
History of the Left in Latin America Cornell University digital repository including the full run of Los Libros and the newspaper supplement, La Cultura en México.
Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press This collection consists of Mexican and Mexican American publications based in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico. Publication dates range from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.
Chronicling America : Historic American Newspapers Search by newspaper title, state, date, or keyword to search across hundreds of historic American newspapers from 1836 - 1922. Users also have the option to highlight text, download pages as PDFs and more.
HathiTrust Search across various newspaper collections. Access may vary depending on the partnering institution. Use the advanced search to limit to a specific format.
Internet Archive Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, music, images, TV news, and more.
Alternative Press Center The Alternative Press Center (APC) is a non-profit collective dedicated to providing access to and increasing public awareness of the alternative press. They also publish the Alternative Press Index.

Suggested Databases

Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) This link opens in a new window Social sciences and humanities resources on Latin America, the Caribbean, and Hispanics/Latinos in the United States. Contains 300,000 records, 170,000+ of which contain full-text links. Search for articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Scope: North, Central, and South Americas. Dates: 1970 to present.
Britannica Online (Encyclopedia) This link opens in a new window Online encyclopedia with over 100,000 new and revised articles written by Nobel laureates, historians, curators, professors and other experts. See “Media Browse” for short videos and images on a wide variety of topics. Scope: Worldwide. Dates: Varies.
Anthropological Literature This link opens in a new window Index to articles and book chapters about anthropology, archaeology, and related disciplines. Coverage includes resources in over 50 languages. Scope: Worldwide. Dates: 1700s to present.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from the 15th century to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. This authoritative database provides indexing of more than 2,300 academic historical journals in over 40 languages. Scope: Worldwide (excluding the United States and Canada) Dates: 1953 to present (some titles back to early 20th century).
Humanities Full Text This link opens in a new window Provides full text, abstracts, and bibliographic citations for noted scholarly resources as well as specialized magazines in the humanities. Topics include art, classical studies, dance, film, journalism, philosophy, religion, and much more. Scope: International. Dates: Varies.

MOxLAD - Montevideo Oxford Latin American Database Contains historical economic data for Latin America. Dates: 1870 to 2010.

Librarian Tip: When searching for names of people and/or places be sure to include alternative spellings to capture all pertinent results. Additionally, if searching across multiple languages think about how different languages refer to the person, place, or thing and utilize all terms.