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Open Access E-books and Digital Journal Collections for Latin American Studies: Special Topics, Formats or Country Collections

This is a guide to selected open access electronic text collections and major portals.

Selected Collections

Archivo Historico de Revistas Argentinas (AhiRa)

A collection of cultural magazines.

Archivo Histórico Zapatista

Biblioteca Nacional de Argentina, Trapalanda Biblioteca Digital

Bolivian Digital Pamphlets Collection

More than 700 digitized pamphlets documenting a century of Bolivian literate culture, beginning in 1848.

Cultural Magazines of Latin America

Collection of digitized cultural magazines published in Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador and Puerto Rico during the period between 1880 and 1930. DFG viewer allows for enlargement of images.

Cantos Cautivos

Compiles testimonies of musical experiences in political detention and torture centers in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship. Spanish and English versions include song lyrics.

Cine Chile: Enciclopedia del Cine Chileno

Digital archive of Chilean film history.

Memoria Chilena

Slave Societies Digital Archive (Vanderbilt University)

Formerly "Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies." Presents materials from church and parish archives in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba and Spanish Florida documenting the history of Africans and their descendants in the Atlantic World.

Biblioteca Digital, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango (Colombia) 

The J. León Helguera Collection of Colombiana 

Provides access to unique primary sources on 19th-century Colombian history and culture. The result of a half-century of collecting on three continents, the collection is one of the largest and most wide-ranging in the United States. Materials are grouped into three separate types: broadsides, 1825-1972; pamphlets (including novenas), 1785-1969; and programas, 1819-1914.

A Colony in Crisis: The Saint-Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789

Provides access to both the French originals and the English translations of key primary sources (pamphlets).

Repositorio Digital de Ciencias y Cultura de El Salvador

Includes digital versions of Salvadoran national literature (via the Biblioteca Nacional de El Salvador link).

Digital Archive of the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive

"This Archive is arranged in accordance with the professional archival principles of provenance and original order to reflect the Guatemalan National Police administrative structure, and understanding that structure is a valuable way to start."

Latin American Pamphlet Collection (Harvard)

Scarce and unique 19th century pamphlets, "addressed to fellow citizens ... document the emergence of the Latin American colonies as independent states and illuminate aspects of their populations' social and cultural life."

Latin American Travelogues

Biblioteca Digital Mexicana (BDMx)

Began in 2010 through the efforts of four major Mexican cultural institutions: Archivo General de la Nación, Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), Centro de Estudios de Historia de México CEHM- Carso, and Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.

Biblioteca Palafoxiana (Puebla, Mexico)

“… the first public library in colonial Mexico, and is sometimes considered the first in the Americas.”—Wikipedia.

Medicina Tradicional Mexicana

Digitized encyclopedias of Mexican traditional medicine and medicinal plants, including ethnographic information about Mexican indigenous groups.

Primeros Libros de las Américas (16th C. Mexican imprints)

Held by the Benson Library, UT-Austin, and other libraries.

Biblioteca Enrique Bolaños (Nicaragua)

Bolaños was president of Nicaragua from 2002 to 2007. "In addition to the collection of historical documents of the Presidency of Enrique Bolaños, the FEB will also make available a large body of important historical and educational documents and collections from various periods in Nicaraguan history." Includes the most complete collection of primary sources pertaining to the period of Nicaraguan history in the mid-19th century known as The National War (La Guerra Nacional), 100 issues of the Revista Conservadora published in the 1960´s, and a collection of Nicaraguan laws, from 1821 (Independence) through 1888.

Peru: Instituto Seminario de Historia Rural Andina (University of San Marcos, Lima) publications

Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age

The collection comprises 11 monographs scanned from printed copies and 39 political pamphlets and 2 monographs and a journal scanned from microfilm.

Publicaciones Periódicas del Uruguay

Virtual Library of Plataforma Democrática

"A specialized collection of works about democracy in Latin America ... with free access to the library’s twenty thousand titles."

Subject Guide

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Janette Núñez
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