Research Guides: HIST 004: Latin American History (SC): Finding Primary Sources

Finding Primary Sources Online

Primary sources can be such a wide range of document types, from newspaper articles to letters. There is no comprehensive website for finding them. Here are some suggested starting points.

Empire Online
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Offers images of original documents taken from libraries and archives around the world including correspondence, diaries, literature and illustrations. Includes essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. Covers a range of topics and includes Africa, the Americans, Australasia, Oceania and South Asia. Includes documents published between 1492-1969.

Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies
Makes available over 300, 000 documents from Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Spanish Florida. The largest number date from the 18th and 19th centuries, but there is material from earlier periods as well. Note, as an example, a transcription of baptismal records from Havana, 1590-1600 which documents family and social networks for individuals who are frequently categorized with a racial term.

World News Connection
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Contains hundreds of international news for the period 1995-2013. Material is obtained from non-U.S. open-source political speeches, television programs, radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, periodicals, and books. Content focuses primarily on military, political, environmental, scientific, technical, and socioeconomic issues and events.
Digital National Security Archive (DNSA)
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Contains full text declassified government documents owned by the National Security Archive covering world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions. Includes collections of indexed documents (with new collections added yearly), glossaries, chronologies, bibliographies, overviews, and photographs. Coverage from post-World War II to present.

Primary Sources in Tripod

Primary sources like letters, diaries, government reports, and other documents can sometimes be found published in books. Sometimes, documents included in published collections are translated, which can be helpful if you don't read the language spoken in the area you're hoping to study. To find sources from a particular country, search for the country in Tripod then limit Books & More results to the genre "Sources."

Specialized Collections of Primary Sources (Online)

There are many websites offering digitized versions of primary source documents pertaining to Latin America. Here are just a few options. Talk with a libraran to find others.

Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino Art: Digital Archive
Provides access to primary sources and critical documents tracing the development of twentieth-century art in Latin America and among Latino populations in the United States.
Latin American Posters Collection (Princeton University Library)
The posters included in this collection were created by a wide variety of social activists, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, political parties, and other types of organizations across Latin America, in order to publicize their views, positions, agendas, policies, events, and services. Even though posters produced in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Venezuela are the most abundant among the more than two thousand currently available in the site, almost every country in the region is represented. (Site description)
Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection
Digital collection of (scanned) Latin American pamphlets published during the 19th and the early 20th centuries.
Modern History Sourcebook: 19th Century Latin America
Links to transcribed primary source documents, mostly in English.
Modern History Sourcebook: 20th Century Latin America
Links to transcribed primary source documents, mostly in English.
Bolivian Digital Pamphlets Collection
This is a collection of 715 digitized pamphlets documenting a century of Bolivian culture from 1848-1948.
Latin American Travelogues
This project is a digital collection of Latin American travel accounts written in the 16th-19th centuries. (Note that the introductory essays are written by undergraduate students.)