Research Guides: *Primary Sources: A Guide: Latin America & Caribbean

Colonial Latin America

Colonial Caribbean This link opens in a new window
Colonial Caribbean makes available materials from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives, UK. Covering the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.
These records include not only the British concerns for their own colonial claims, but also provide commentary and correspondence of other Caribbean places and events.
Abbreviation: ccarib
Vendor: Adam Matthew Digital Ltd
Coverage: 1624–1832
Subjects: History, Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Type: Government Publications, Historical / Primary Sources, Images, Indexes / Catalogs, Maps

Colonial Latin American Manuscripts and Transcripts in the Obadiah Rich Collection
Microfilm of manuscript copies of Spanish and Portuguese documents related to the discovery and conquest of America and Parts of Asia held at New York Public Library.
STROZIER LIBRARY -- Micromaterials -- Film 9174 - In-Library Use Only
See the Accompanying Guide:
STROZIER LIBRARY -- Micromaterials -- Micr Z 1601.C65 1986

Caribbean Digital Collections

Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
A cooperative of partners within the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean that provides users with access to Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials held in archives, libraries, and private collections. Types of collections include but are not limited to: newspapers, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official documents, documentation and numeric data for ecosystems, scientific scholarship, historic and contemporary maps, oral and popular histories, travel accounts, literature and poetry, musical expressions, and artifacts.
Early Caribbean Digital Archive
An open access collection of pre-twentieth-century Caribbean texts, maps, and images. Texts include travel narratives, novels, poetry, natural histories, and diaries that have not been brought together before as a single collection focused on the Caribbean.
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A project of Northeastern University's NULab: for Texts, Maps, and Networks and supported by the Digital Scholarship Group.
Le marronnage dans le monde atlantique: sources et trajectoires de vie
Digitized runaway slave advertisements from Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Jamaica, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Lower Canada (Québec).
As described by the project authors: "Advertisements for runaway slaves are the main source of any story of marronage. Racist and demeaning sources who speak of slaves as if they were mere lost objects or stray animals, they are nonetheless essential to retrace the life trajectories of the thousands of enslaved men and women who refused, to one or more moments of their life, to bow to the violence of racial slavery.
Caribbean Sea Migration
Materials from (or related to) the migration by sea of Cubans, Dominicans, and Haitians, including the refugee camp for Cuban and Haitian rafters that existed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, largely dating from 1991-1996. Collection includes camp newspapers and artwork created by refugees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; materials from the U.S. Coast Guard and other military sources, such as newspapers written in Haitian Creole, photocopies of camp rules and refugee intake procedures, and a transcript from an introductory video shown to refugees arriving at the camps.
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Duke University Libraries
Castro Speech Database
"Castro Speech" is a database containing the full-text translations of speeches, interviews, and press conferences by Fidel Castro, based upon the records of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), a U.S. government agency responsible for monitoring broadcast and print media in countries throughout the world.
Remember Haiti
A site showcasing a selection of books from the John Carter Brown Library that are available online through the Internet Archive.

Mexico

Bracero History Archive
Collects and makes available the oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in more than half of the states in America.
Biblioteca Digital de México
Website in Spanish.
The documents range from pre-hispanic codices such as the Mixtec Codice Colombino from the 12th century, to the original manuscript of the Plan de Ayala written in 1911 by Emiliano Zapata and Otilio Montano, one of the most important documents of the Mexican Revolution.

Foreign Relations records

Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833–1969 This link opens in a new window
Complete runs of all British Government Confidential Print volumes relating to the nations of South and Central America. This collection begins in the aftermath of independence for the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America, addressing the politics of state-building and the Latin American nations' establishment of their place in the fast-expanding global economy.
Abbreviation: cpla
Vendor: Adam Matthew Digital Ltd
Coverage: 1833–1969
Subjects: History, Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Type: Government Publications, Historical / Primary Sources, Indexes / Catalogs, Maps

Foreign Relations of the United States Series
The Office of the Historian offers ebook editions of a growing number of volumes from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series.