A&M-SA Research Guides: Latin America History Research Guide: Digital Primary Source Collections

Latin American -Digital Collections

Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection Series 1 and Series 2 (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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This collection covers U.S. Latino and Hispanic history, literature, political commentary, civil rights, religious thought, culture, and women writers. Formats include pamphlets and broadsides, newspapers, monographs, etc. Most content is in Spanish.

Latin American Network Information Center
This site provides a list of Latin American and Caribbean Collections as well as links to additional country resources.
Mexican Revolution, ca. 1910-1917
Hundreds of commercial and amateur photographers recorded imagery during the tumultuous Mexican Revolution (Revolución Mexicana), which began in 1910 with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero (1873-1913) against Porfirio Díaz (1830-1915), the President of Mexico. Many of the photographs were printed on postcard stock and marketed by commercial photographers to soldiers and civilians on either side of the international border between Mexico and the United States. Other photographic postcards in this collection created by amateur photographers document their personal experience in the conflict.
Mexico: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints
Mexico: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints provides a sample of the photographs, images, albums, books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and more, relating to Mexico held by SMU's DeGolyer Library.
Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection
Harvard's collections of more than 5,000 scarce and unique 19th century Latin American pamphlets contain political and social commentary.
World Digital Library--Latin America & the Caribbean
The World Digital Library (WDL) by Library of Congress makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world. More than 100 sources for Peru.
Hispanic Division Collections
"Luso-Hispanic" encompasses Latin America, the Caribbean, Hispanics and Portuguese in the United States, the Iberian Peninsula, and other places where Iberian culture dominated and has survived. This page links to digitized collections of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress.
The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection
"The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s."
PARES: Portal de Archivos Españoles - Portal of Spanish Archives
A portal and database created by Spain's Ministerio de Cultura containing more than twenty million documents and digital images from the principal Spanish archives, including the Archive of the Indies and Archive of the Spanish Civil War.
(Medieval to 20th century; facsimiles, transcriptions and commentaries) Website is in Spanish.

Slavery and Slave Trade

Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice (Adam Matthew) This link opens in a new window
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Primary source material, such as original manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, maps and images, pertaining to the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today are included in this collection.

Note: When trying to access this resource, you may encounter a warning "Your connection is not private". Simply click the "Advanced" button at the bottom left of that page, then click "Proceed to slavery.amdigital.co.uk (unsafe)" to access this resource. You are seeing this warning because this resource currently does not use Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS).

Declassified U.S. National Security Documents

National Security Archive--Latin America Projects
The National Security Archive at George Washington University provides access to hundreds of collections of declassified government documents on world affairs. Latin American collections from: Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala.

Primary versus Secondary

Primary Sources

Primary sources are records of events as they are first described, usually by witnesses or people who were involved in the event. Many primary sources were created at the time of the event but can also include memoirs, oral interviews, or accounts that were recorded later.

Visual materials, such as photos, original artwork, posters, and films are important primary sources, not only for the factual information they contain, but also for the insight they may provide into how people view their world. Primary sources may also include sets of data, such as census statistics, which have been tabulated but not interpreted. However, in the sciences or social sciences, primary sources report the results of an experiment.

Why are primary sources important?

Primary sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research.

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Secondary sources offer an analysis or a restatement of primary sources. They often attempt to describe or explain primary sources. Some secondary sources not only analyze primary sources, but also use them to argue a contention or persuade the reader to hold a certain opinion. Examples of secondary sources include dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, books, and articles.