Among the 300+ databases available at the William H. Hannon Library is The Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century (formerly Gale World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean). This resource offers a range of content for the region, providing opportunities for research into issues and events in contemporary Latin American and Caribbean history, as well as historical perspectives back to the colonial period. Coverage extends from the 15th to 20th century, providing information about the Indigenous peoples of the region, the Conquest “(La Conquista”), colonial rule, religion, struggles for independence, and political, economic, and social progress and issues in newly independent nations.
The database includes more than 1.4 million pages of historical material across 33 archival collections from the United States and Europe. The historical collections provide access to original manuscripts, signed letters, expedition records, reports, maps, diaries, descriptions of voyages, ephemera, and more. Specific archival collection include (but are not limited to):
- Brazil’s Popular Groups, 1966-1986
- Colección de Documentos Inéditos Relativos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y Organización de Las Antiguas Posesiones Españolas de America y Oceania (Collection of Unpublished Documents Relating to the Discovery, Conquest, and Organization of the Former Spanish Possessions in America and Oceania), 1864-1884
- Conquistadors: The Struggle for Colonial Power in Latin America, 1492-1825
- Dispatches From U.S. Consuls in Havana, Cuba, 1783-1906
- Latin American History and Culture: An Archival Record, Series 1: The Yale University Collection of Latin American Manuscripts, Parts 1-7
- Latin American and Iberian biographies
- Latin American Independence: Nineteenth Century Political and Official Pamphlets
- Mexican and Central American Political and Social Ephemera
- Papers of Agustin de Iturbide, 1799-1880
- US State Department records on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico and more
The Backstory
We added this resource to our collection 10 years ago to support the growing curriculum within LMU’s Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies (CLST) department, which reflected an explosion of scholarship in the field related to Caribbean and Afro-Latinx studies. At the time, LMU introduced new courses to examine areas throughout the Caribbean. Fast forward to today, professors such as Vanessa Diaz are offering courses in “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico” – a course that garnered the attention of late night talk show host, Jimmy Fallon, when he interviewed Bad Bunny.
The Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century also supports courses such as “Colonial Latin America” (History), “Critical Indigenous Studies” (Chicanx Latinx Studies), and others. For courses such as these, students’ examination of the colonial history of Latin America and the Caribbean becomes imperative. This is where the Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century database becomes incredibly useful.
Useful Tips
To facilitate navigating over a million pages of archival material, this databases features a visualization tool called “Topic Finder” which helps users discover related topics and keywords. One option for visualizing search results is to display keywords as “tiles.” For example, a search for “Puerto Rico” yields the following:
A second option for visualizing search results as a “wheel.” For example, a search for “Cuba” yields the following:
Clicking on any terms in the above wheel will reveal a list of related archival material to explore, all within the same database.
Of course, the database offers a basic search feature that can retrieve materials in a wide variety of formats. For example, a simple search for “Puerto Rico” yields 972 monographs, 8 manuscripts, and 380 articles from newspapers and periodicals dating back to March 11, 1801 for the “Translation of a Letter from Don Joaquin Garcia, Governor of the Spanish Part of St. Domingo, to the President of the United States [then Thomas Jefferson].”
You can find The Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century through our databases search. You can also find this and other related resources on the Chicanx-Latinx Studies LibGuide.
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