Latin American History

Primary sources are first-hand testimonies from sources who witnessed or experienced an event firsthand (examples can include a letter, newspaper article, a photograph, a diary, etc). Primary sources are an attempt to get as close to the events being studied as possible. While certain primary sources may be recorded after the fact, such as oral histories, they still capture someone’s first-hand experiences from the past, and are therefore primary sources.

If you can access an original primary source in person, great! If you can’t, primary source materials of all kinds are available in reproduction. Primary sources are characterized by their content, regardless of whether they are available in the original format, in digital format, or published on paper. You can find them in books, journals, and magazines, as well as in online databases. 

• Latin American & Caribbean Digital Primary Resources (SALALM)
  The Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) has published an extensive listing of open access digitized collections of primary sources that relate to Latin America and the Caribbean. Currently, the listings may be searched by country, genre/format, hosting institution, and collection title.

• Biblioteca Americana
  The American Library of the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library aims to make known the most representative authors and works of Latin American literature of all time. On this portal, you can consult a wide catalog of works, an important collection of magazines, manuscripts, videos, audios, images, author libraries, historical figures, and thematic projects as well as the main Latin American institutions with which we have developed projects.

• Digital Archive of Latin American and Carribean Ephemera
  The Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera is a steadily growing repository containing a previously unavailable subset of Princeton’s Latin American Ephemera Collection as well as newly acquired materials being digitized and added on an ongoing basis.

• Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers
  Digital archive of nearly 1,000 newspapers from Mexico’s pre-independence, independence and revolutionary periods (1807-1929). Part of the Global Press Archive.

• John Carter Brown Library
  View digitized rare books from their collections.

• Biblioteca Digital del Patroimonio Iberoamericano
  Portal to digital collections of many Latin American national libraries.

• Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
  Citizen-driven, the MUPI is in charge of saving important and valuable audiovisual archives, which were inside and outside of El Salvador, in addition to the recordings of the daily programs of Radio Venceremos, the clandestine radio station that during 11 years of civil war transmitted from the mountains of Morazán. The photo archive is of particular note. CW: war, death. In Spanish and English. --Website

• Digital Library of the Caribbean Map Collection
  Maps collected here date from 1564 through the present.

• LANIC Map Page
  The Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) is the best source for finding freely available web sites on any subject. They have a page devoted to maps that is organized by region and country.

• Library of Congress Map Collections
  The LOC digital collection contains maps from Latin America and the Caribbean as well as the U.S.

• Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection - U. Texas
  A digital site for locating current, historical, thematic and regional maps of the Americas and other world regions.

• Relics & Selves: Iconographies of the National in Argentina, Brazil & Chile, 1880-1890
  The Gallery contains more than 3,000 images, including many maps.

• Rumsey Historical Map Collection
  An historical map collection with over 42,000 maps and images, primarily containing rare 18th and 19th century North American and South American maps and other cartographic materials.

• West Point Military Atlases
  Includes military maps of the Mexican-American War; Spanish-Cuban-American War and other post-1958 hemispheric wars.

An anthology can contain original poems, photographs, and source documents that count as primary sources for historical or topic analysis.