Latin American History

Cuba in Primary Sources

This is a guide to getting started in research in Latin American history at Boston College.

What's on This Page

This page has a lot on it. You can use the following anchors (links down the page) to jump straight to a relevant box.

Broad Digital Collections

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor is a database of more than 1.3 million digital images. It covers many time periods and cultures and represent architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, etc. Users are required to create a personal account to access this database off campus.

Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean 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.
Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
Cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
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Collections:
News
Caribbean Map Collection
Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library Caribbean Haitian Law Haitian Law
Panama and the Canal
dLOC: Teaching Guides & Materials
Vodou Archive

HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Boston College's status as a partner makes it possible for members of the Boston College community to download any of the out-of-copyright items as PDFs.

Latin American Digital Initiatives Repository
The Latin American Digital Initiatives (LADI) repository is a collaborative project that preserves and provides digital access to unique archival documents from a network of Latin American partners with an emphasis on collections documenting human rights issues and underrepresented communities. Strongest in the 20th century but includes some material back to the 16th, particularly for Mexico.
Latin American Network Information Center: Digital Initiatives
From 1992-2015, the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin has been the institutional home of the Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC).

World Digital Library This link opens in a new window
The World Digital Library is a Library of Congress project sponsored by UNESCO. Items in this digital library, including books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and sound recordings, are individually described and searchable in seven languages. Most countries and regions around the world are represented.

Digital Latin American Collections

Latin American Travelogues (Brown)
The goal of this project is to create a digital collection of Latin American travel accounts written in the 16th-19th centuries.
Latin American Poster Collection (Princeton)
Interface in English. Content in Spanish or Castilian.
The collection consists of posters from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, regarding political, economic, cultural, and educational affairs.
Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection [Harvard]
Scarce and unique pamphlets, primarily from Chile, Cuba, Bolivia and Mexico, published during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Cuban Digital Collections

Che Guevara Internet Archive (Marxist.org)
Interface and content in English.
Includes images, speeches, excerpts from diaries, and more.
Colecciones Digitales de Cuba
Interface and content in Spanish.
Includes posters, atlases, manuscripts, and more from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Focus on the 20th.
Cuban 27N Movement (archive.org)
Interface in English, content predominately in Spanish.
"The Cuban 27N Movement Web Archive preserves and provides access to a broad range of websites related to the Cuban 27N Movement initiated in November 2020 by protesters in Havana, Cuba, demanding freedom of expression and other civil rights."
Cuban Ephemera collection (UCLA)
Contains materials from partner organizations Instituto de Historia de Cuba and Cinemateca de Cuba as well as collections about Cuba held by UCLA Library. Materials include historical newspapers, Cuban designed movie posters, and tourism related ephemera. Focuses on 20th and 21st century.
Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) Digital Collections (U of Miami)
Digital collections developed by the Cuban Heritage Collection documenting Cuba and the Cuban diaspora from colonial times to the present. These materials include rare books and journals, as well as archival materials including documents, correspondence, photographs, maps, scrapbooks, audio, video, and oral histories.
The Cuban Historical and Literary Manuscript Collection (U of Miami)
Interface in English, content predominately in Spanish and English.
"Comprised of original manuscripts from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Acquired as individual pieces or in small groups, this collection includes manuscript books, slavery sales and property documents, wills, and correspondence."
Cuba Speech Database (UTexas)
Interface and content predominately in English.
Includes speeches, interviews, etc., by Fidel Castro from 1959 to 1996. All texts are in English.
Digital Photographic Archive of Historic Havana (Five College)
Interface in English.
Digital archive containing over 8,000 images of the 1,055 most significant buildings in the Historic Center of Havana, Cuba, known as Habana Vieja. Taken in the 1980s.

Gov. Docs. and the Law

HeinOnline World Constitutions Illustrated
Hein Online collection of country constitutions, constitutional hierarchies , and texts and journals on consitutional law. Includes translations of Cuba's fundamental laws and commentary.

Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC) This link opens in a new window
Includes federal legislative, administrative and judicial materials from the collections of government and academic law libraries. With new materials added regularly, this on-going digitalization project will eventually include full-text of materials in many areas. Includes multiple Latin American countries' (including Cuba) documents predominantly in Spanish.

Newspapers and Other Periodicals

Politica cómica (U of Miami)
Interface in English, content in Spanish.
Satirical political paper from the early 1900s.

Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
Covers U.S. ethnic and minority newspapers and other periodicals, many not in library print collections, from the late 1950s to the present. The full text of the article is available from the citation list produced by keyword searches. English and Spanish searching available.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) This link opens in a new window
1941-1996. Transcribed and translated foreign broadcasts and news. The original mission was to monitor, record, transcribe, and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. Now offers the opportunity for students to expand their research into primary sources that originated in languages they do not have.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni includes thousands of U.S. and non-U.S. news sources; legal materials: case law, statutes and law reviews; and company/business information. Strength from 1990 to the present. Nexis Uni replaces Lexis-Nexis Academic.

Cuban Periodicals: Cultural Magazines Published by Casa de las Américas, 1960–2009
Interface in English; Material in Spanish
This primary source collection gives access to the archives (1960–2009) of four cultural magazines published by Casa de las Américas in Havana, Cuba. It includes the highly influential journal Casa, the theater journal Conjunto, the music journal Boletín de Música, and, finally, Anales del Caribe, a journal about the rich artistic and literary production in the Caribbean.
BC Institutional login necessary.
Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals
Interface in English; Material predominately in Spanish.
This collection contains the periodicals that have been accumulated by the Austrian anarchist, historian and collector Max Nettlau (1865-1944), together with a number of later additions, held at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. The collection provides a richness of documentation pertaining explicitly to the formative anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist episode (1890-1920) in the history of Latin American labor movements.
BC Institutional login required.

For historical newspapers and television, visit BC Libraries' Historical News page.

Photographs and other Images

Ramiro Fernández Collection (LLMC)
Interface in English.
126 photos of places in Cuba (ca. 1858 through the early 1960s).

U.S. Foreign Policy

Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
Declassified documents on the most critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post World War II through the 21st century

National Security Archive
This web site at George Washington University collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Includes documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Iran Contra controversy.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Provides access to hearings, published and unpublished from 1824 to the present, congressional committee reports, bills, public laws, selected committee prints, congressional documents, the Congressional Record from the 99th Congress forward, Federal Register from 1980 forward, the current Code of Federal Regulations, and the current US Code.

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963 Volume X: Cuba, January 1961-September 1962 (Dept. of State)

For more resources on U.S. Foreign Policy, see the associated Research Guide.

Topics: Human Rights

Amnesty International Library
Interface and content in English (and other languages).
Access to AI's more recent country and research reports beginning in 1961 and moving to the present.
Open Access.
Human Rights Watch Reports
Interface and content in English (and other languages).
HRW's reports from 1987 forward. Can search by country, year, keyword, and topic.
Open Access.

Human Rights Studies Online This link opens in a new window
Human Rights Studies Online provides documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide. The collection includes text and video that give voice to the countless victims of human rights crimes in the 20th and early 21st centuries committed during the Holocaust, and in Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and other locations.
BC login necessary.

For additional suggestions, visit BC Libraries' Human Rights History research guide.

International Organizations

OECD iLibrary
Includes key OECD publications such as: Financial Market Trends, Higher Education Management and Policy, Nuclear Law Bulletin, OECD Economic Outlook, OECD Economic Studies, OECD Economic Surveys, OECD Journal of Competition Law & Policy, and OECD Papers. Cover from 1990s onward.
United Nations Documents
ODS is the UN's Official Document System. You can search for UN documents by keywords, then narrow your search.

For additional international organizations' primary source sets, see the cooresponding Global History Research Guide.

O'Neill Library

Bapst Library

Burns Library

Educational Resource Center

Law Library

Social Work Library

Theology & Ministry Library

O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

Latin American History

Cuba in Primary Sources

What's on This Page

Broad Digital Collections

Digital Latin American Collections

Cuban Digital Collections

Gov. Docs. and the Law

Newspapers and Other Periodicals

Photographs and other Images

U.S. Foreign Policy

Topics: Human Rights

International Organizations