La Cuesta Rancho Santa Barbara County : 1892, from the “Hispanics on the Central Coast – 300 Years of History” Collection by the Black and Gold Cooperative Library System. Public Domain.
In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, you might be interested in checking out contemporary and historical digital archives covering art, literature, politics, and much, much more!
Here are some examples to explore, and advice for finding even more, but feel free to post other favorites in Comments:
UCSB Library, Department of Special Research Collections (on Calisphere) includes an extremely rich range of LatinX visual art archives and artists’ papers, as well as oral histories, sound recordings, and more. (Also see New York’s MoMA for a list of Archives of LatinX art).
Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (Library of Congress) Listen to recordings of readings, interviews, and older biographies of and by “writers from thirty-two countries are represented in this collection which includes readings in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Náhuatl, Zapotec, Aymara, English and Dutch.” Recordings cover 1873-present. More about the collection.
Veteranas and Rucas (on Instagram) Historical “Photo Archive/self representation archive by/for self identified Women of So.Cal” by Guadalupe Rosales.
LLILAS Benson Digital Collections (University of Texas) Rich set of archives including everything from the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive to Archive of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas to books printed in Mexico before 1601 to speeches and documents from a wide variety of countries’ political leaders, not to mention oral histories of Latinos and Latinas of the WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War generations.
Hispanic/Latino Heritage (National Archives) Arts, Entertainment, and Culture; Education and Civil Rights, Government and Politics; Diplomacy; Veterans; and more.
San Diego Lowrider Archival Project (University of San Diego) “The San Diego Lowrider Archival Project documents the history of lowriding in San Diego and the surrounding borderlands, from the 1950s through today. The project includes photographs, car club documents and memorabilia, official records, meeting minutes, dance posters and lowrider art. These materials reflect important qualities of the lowrider movement: creativity, independence, cultural pride, resistance, activism, community service, collectivism, tradition and ritual, and cultural continuity.”
Don’t forget to search Calisphere, California’s central digital archive of primary sources covering the history of our state. For example, you can find sources on the Zoot Suit Riots or the Mexican American Political Association there.
You can also look at other state archives, such as New York, that have been working on documenting LatinX history of the US.
If you want to dive further into the hundreds of digitized and physical archives available, or search for a specific topic, location, or heritage of interest to you, here are some open web searches to get you started:
[ hispanic OR latino OR latina OR chicano OR chicana OR latinx archives ]
[ “mexican OR cuban OR salvadoran OR rican OR peruvian american” archives ]
