Latin American History (HIST 395/495): Home

Relaciones geográficas de Indias

Dating from the colonial period in Spanish America (sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries).

Responses to the questionnaire provide detailed information about native populations in Spanish America, especially in the colonial centers of Mexico and Peru. They include information on indigenous labor, tribute records, history of disease, native customs, religious practices, herbal medicines, municipal offices held, farm earnings, indigenous justice and law, native towns, class distinctions, and commentaries on caciques and indigenous elites. They also provide information for studies of natural history and the History of Science, maps and cartography, enslaved populations, food history, history of the Church, festive culture, religious celebrations, and many other topics.

• The instructions and questions of the Relaciones geográficas are available in published form through I-Share

• Maps from the Relaciones geográficas are available in some of the published texts, but also via the World Digital Library

• Copies of the Relaciones and Diccionario geográfico de España are available through the Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano. Note: the diccionarios deal with Spain and Spanish America

• Hathi Trust has the greatest number of published responses to the questionnaire outside of the Archivo General de Indias

Bernardino de Sahagún’s sixteenth-century General History of Things in the New World

Sahagún's twelve-volume study of Nahua (or Aztec) culture and history covers many of the same topics addressed in the Relaciones geográficas. A Franciscan friar and missionary, Sahagún worked with native graduates of the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco to compile an encyclopedic study of Nahua history, traditions, customs, religious practices and beliefs, military training, rhetorical oratory, and many other topics of importance to Nahua communities in central Mexico.

• The complete Historia general de las cosas de nueva España is available in Spanish and English at NIU’s library and through I-Share

• The World Digital Library has the original images, made available from the Medicea Laurenziana Library in Florence

Bernardino de Sahagún’s Catholic Instruction for Nahuas

• The Newberry Library’s Resources on Christianizing the Nahua

• Psalmodia Christiana y Sermonario, in Spanish and Nahuatl, and his La aparición de Ntra. Señora de Guadalupe de México are available in manuscript form through the Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano 

• Siguense veynte y seis addiciones desta postilla, focused on American Indian Histories and Cultures, is available at the Newberry Library

• Find published editions of Sahagún’s works through Hathi Trust

• Manuscript copies of Sahagún’s Christian instruction can also be found on the World Digital Library.  See especially, his Exercises in Nahuatl Taken from the Holy Gospel, available in Latin, Spanish, and Nahuatl and A Sequence of Sermons for Sundays and Saints’ Days, in Spanish and Nahuatl

Anales de Mexico e Tlatelolco

• Indian Annals of Tlatelolco and Mexico from 1473 to 1521.  Held at the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

Anonymous Manuscript of Tlatelolco, 1528

• Preserved at the National Library of Paris

Diego Duran, Historia de las Indias de la Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme (Atlas or Codice de Duran)

• NIU Rare Books and Special Collections & Online

Chimalpain Quauhtlehuanitzin, Codex Chimalpain, Norman: University of Okalahoma Press, 1997

• NIU Main Collection—Founders Memorial Library

Codice Aubin (or Codex 1576): Manuscrito Azteca de la Biblioteca Real de Berlin

• Available at the Newberry Library

Codice Ramírez. Relación del origen de los indios que habitan esta Nueva España segun sus historias. Editial Leyenda, Mexico, 1944

• NIU Main Collection—Founders Memorial Library

Fernando de Alva, Ixtlilxochitl, Obras historicas.  2 vols. National University of Mexico, 1975-1977

• NIU Database Access

Lienzo de Tlaxcala, Antiguedades mexicanas. Published by Junta Colombina de Mexico. 2 vols. Oficina de la Secretaria de Fomento, Mexico, 1892

• Available in print via I-Share and online through Smithsonian Libraries

Diego Muñoz Camargo, Historia de Tlaxcala, Editorial Chavero, Mexico, 1892

• Available in print via I-Share

Alvarado F. Tezozomoc, Cronica Mexicana, Ediorial de Vigil, Mexico, 1944

• Available in print via I-Share and at the Newberry Library

Cronica mexicayotl. Translated into Spanish by Adrian Leon, Imprenta Universitaria, Mexico, 1975

• Available in print via I-Share 

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)

Foreign Relations of the United States is a collection of declassified records from the State Department, CIA, National Security Council, US AID, and other collections of government records on U.S. foreign policy. For a study of U.S. invention in Latin America, it is imperative to consult the FRUCS.

• NIU Government Publications Collection—Founders Memorial Library
• These documents can also be found at the State Department's Office of the Historian

Salvador Allende and the Pinochet Coup in Chile

• National Security Archive / The Chile Documentation Project
• Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. New York: New Press, 2004
  • NIU Main Collection—Founders Memorial Library (Online) (Print) 
• Foreign Relations of the United States 
• National Security Archive: Southern Cone Documentation Project

U.S. Intervention in Latin America (Argentina)

• National Security Archive: Southern Cone Documentation Project
• Report of Conadep (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) - 1984 (online): 
  • English-language version
  • Spanish-language version
• Foreign Relations of the United States
• Digital National Security Archive (DNSA): Argentina, 1975-1980  
• Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo
• The Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera (Princeton University)

Operation Condor

• National Security Archive: Operation Condor: Officials of Amnesty International Targeted for 'Liquidation'

• Documentos Revelados 

  • Created with the aim of facilitating access to military dictatorship archives and resistance publications

Cuba

• Castro Speech Data Base, Latin American Network Information Center (University of Texas)
• Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera (Princeton University)
• Latin American Posters Collection (Princeton University) 
• Digital Library of the Caribbean
• Celebrating Cuba! Collaborative Digital Collections of Cuban Patrimony
• William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh's Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
  • NIU--Main Collection--Founders Library (Print)

See also National Security Archive and Foreign Relations of the United States

Mexico

Human Rights in Mexico

• National Security Archives’ Mexico Project
• Zapatistas! Documents of the New Mexican Revolution, Latin American Network Information Center (University of Texas)

Mexican Nation-building

• Dupee Mexican History Collection Broadsides (Brown University Libraries)
• Presidential Messages Database—digital full-text presidential messages of Argentina and Mexico from the early 19th century to the present
• Digital Collection of Mexican and Argentine Presidential Messages (Latin Americanist Research Resources Project)
• Cámara de Disputadas Leyes Estales
• Legislación Mexicana
• Constitución Política de los estados unidos de México
• The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico 1821 - 1876
• Mexican Political Pamphlets 1808-1832 (University of Toronto Libraries Digital Collections)
• Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut 

Library of Congress Hispanic Reading Room

• Exhibits and Digital Collections

Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera

• Preserved through Princeton University Library