Latin American History

Mexico 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

JSTOR Images This link opens in a new window
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.
more...less...
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.

Document Collections and Readers

The Mexico Reader by Gilbert M. Joseph; Timothy J. Henderson (eds.)
Call Number: De Gruyter
Publication Date: 2003
The Mexico Reader is a vivid introduction to muchos Méxicos--the many Mexicos, or the many varied histories and cultures that comprise contemporary Mexico. Unparalleled in scope and written for the traveler, student, and expert alike, the collection offers a comprehensive guide to the history and culture of Mexico--including its difficult, uneven modernization; the ways the country has been profoundly shaped not only by Mexicans but also by those outside its borders; and the extraordinary economic, political, and ideological power of the Roman Catholic Church.

Government and the Law

The Mexican Intelligence Digital Archives (MIDAS)
MIDAS, the Mexican Intelligence Digital Archives (los Archivos del Autoritarismo Mexicano), is a crowd-sourced, public access digital archive of historical documents from Mexican intelligence agencies. The collection is drawn from Mexico’s two principal security services, the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) and the Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (DGIPS) and covers the period c.1940 to c.1985.
UNAM Virtual Legal Library
Since September 5, 2001, the Virtual Legal Library of the Institute of Legal Research of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México has made full text and free access materials available to law scholars, books, magazines and other materials.
HeinOnline World Constitutions Illustrated
Hein Online collection of country constitutions, constitutional hierarchies , and texts and journals on consitutional law. Includes Mexico.

Manuscripts and Books

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 Women Writers This link opens in a new window
Fully searchable collection of prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America; also includes essays by Latin American feminists and about the feminist movement, universal concerns of women, and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region.

Mexican Digital Collections

Mexicana
Interface in English or Spanish, content predominately in Spanish.
"Mexicana is an open platform that will allow you to access the available digital collections of the Ministry of Culture...The contents you can find are diverse in formats (radio programs, short films, books, magazines, photographs, digital publications, thesis, multimedia objects, paintings, sculptures, etc.) as well as in topics. "

Newspapers and Other Periodicals

Hemeroteca Nacional Digital de México
Provides access to digital reproductions of multiple Mexican newspapers. Site in Spanish.

Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals This link opens in a new window
1890-1920, digitized periodicals collection held by the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam, documenting the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist periods in the history of Latin American labor movements.

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

Pamphlets and Broadsides

Dupee Mexican History Collection Broadsides
The Dupee Collection offers nearly 200 broadsides published after the Mexican republic secured its independence in 1821. Chronicled within the broadsides are Mexican partisan politics, religious and anti-clerical debates, popular literature and drama, domestic revolutions and armed conflict with the ...
more...less...
Institution: Brown University
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.
Mexican Broadsides. (UCSD)
This collection comprises broadsides (single and double-sided, one-sheet documents) produced in Mexico between the early 1600s and 1899. They include religious and government documents on a wide range of topics. The government documents include correspondence between representatives from a range of state and federal agencies, gubernatorial and presidential administrations, and state and national legislatures.
Latin American Posters Collection (Princeton)
"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."
Sam L. Slick Collection of Latin American and Iberian Posters, ca. 1970-2000
Contains posters from all over Latin America and Iberia. Those from Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, and Spain have been digitized. Many others are not yet digitized but they are also available at UNM. They address themes such as elections, imperialism, solidarity, human rights, and revolution.

U.S. Collections about Mexico

Regional Collections with Mexican Content

Calisphere
Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and general exploration. Discover photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more. The collections on Calisphere have been digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout California.
New Mexico Digital Collections
The central search portal for digital collections about New Mexico. A service of the University of New Mexico Libraries, we provide access to digitized photographs, manuscripts, posters, oral histories, videos, maps, and books from libraries, museums, and cultural centers across the state.
The Portal to Texas History (UNT)
With over one million digital facsimiles, this is a gateway to rare, historical, and primary source materials from or about Texas as part of the United States and Mexico. Includes newspapers, photographs, and more.

Topical Collections

Armed Revolutionary Organizations in Mexico (UCSD)
Collected material, including periodicals and ephemera, created by revolutionary groups in Mexico between 1965 and 1998.
Bexar Archives Online
The Bexar Archives are the official Spanish documents that preserve the political, military, economic, and social life of the Spanish province of Texas and the Mexican state of Coahulia y Texas. Both in their volume and breadth of subject matter, the Bexar Archives are the single most important source for the history of Hispanic Texas up to 1836.
Latin American Political Campaign Ephemera Collection (UCSD)
Pamphlets, posters, and other campaign literature issued primarily by political parties in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador (1980-2009).
Mexico: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints (SMU)
More than 3,000 digital facsimiles of documents pertaining to Mexican history from the 18th through the 20th centuries. Includes photographs, letters, and more.

Revolution and Protest Online This link opens in a new window
Revolution and Protest Online explores the protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the present. This growing collection offers video, images, documents, reports and select books.

Taller de Gráfica Popular Collection, 1935-1990 (UNM)
The Taller de Grafica Popular Pictorial Collection (more than 400 facsimiles) consists of posters, fliers, prints, serials, calendars and notecards that focus on international issues of the 1940s-1960s, including fascism and national socialism, in addition to Mexican topics such as agriculture, labor issues and the nationalization of the petroleum industry.
Wilson Center Digital Archive
from the Wilson Center, includes declassified documents, images, oral history transcripts and the Database on Inter-Korean Relations

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.

Events

Revolution

Jose Guadalupe Posada papers, circa 1875-1913 (Stanford)
The collection includes broadsides, pamphlets, and prints. Subject matter includes stories, politics, religious events, and folklore. More than 150 digital facsimiles from 1875-1913.
C. L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department Image Collections (UTEP)
Includes hundreds of facsimiles of photographs taken by dozens of photographers from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. Topics include the Mexican Revolution, daily life, rural communities, and more.
Open Access

Spain in Mexico

The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico 1821 - 1876
Includes full transcriptions of over 1500 Spanish pronumciamientos. Often defined as 'revolt', the pronunciamiento was a written protest/petition, generally drafted as a list of grievances or demands, signed by a group of individuals and/or corporate body (high-ranking officers, town council officials, villagers, members of a particular garrison, Indian pueblo, etc.) that could result in an armed rebellion if the government did not attend to them.
Open Access.

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

Foreign Relations of the United States
Official historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions, declassified and edited for publication. Complete run available via Hein Online; latest volumes also available directly from the U.S. Department of State.
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.

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

Mexico in Primary Sources

What's on This Page

Broad Digital Collections

Document Collections and Readers

Government and the Law

Manuscripts and Books

Mexican Digital Collections

Newspapers and Other Periodicals

Pamphlets and Broadsides

U.S. Collections about Mexico

Regional Collections with Mexican Content

Topical Collections

Human Rights

International Organizations

Events

Revolution

Spain in Mexico

U.S. Foreign Policy