Research Guides: HST 163WI: The Latin American Experience (Dr. González): Primary Sources

CMU University Libraries Primary Sources Databases--Restricted Access

Early American Imprints, Series I (1639-1800) This link opens in a new window
Collection of digitized text and images from 17th and 18th century America.
European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750 (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Contains more than 32,000 items written in Europe about the Americas, including exploration, portrayals of Native Americans, natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, and slavery.

Links to Selected Online Primary Resources--Open Access

AHPN: Digital Archive of the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive
"A product of broad international collaboration, these digitized documents from the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive (AHPN) aim to facilitate scholarly and legal research into a vast cache of historical documentation. The discovery of the National Police Historical Archive in 2005 opened an extensive and timely resource for the study of Guatemalan history and human rights in the region."
American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
"American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later."
American Library--Biblioteca Virual Miguel de Cervantes
Comprises the largest open-access repository of digitised Spanish-language historical texts and literature from the Ibero-American world. Includes more than 22,000 open-access items.
Castro Speech Database: LANIC (Latin American Network Information Center)
""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. These records are in the public domain."
Codices
Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies Inc. (FAMSI) provides access to their definitive facsimiles of the ancient accordion fold books created hundreds of years ago by Aztec, Maya and Mixtec scribes.
Digital History
"This digital collection, supported by the College of Education at the University of Houston, includes primary and secondary sources on a wide variety of topics concerning American history and culture. The collection is especially strong in its coverage of racial and ethnic minorities and other underrepresented groups within the United States. Sources include textbooks, newspapers, legal records, multimedia files, and teaching tools."
Early Americas Digital Archive
"Courtesy of Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820."
History Matters
This site serves as a gateway to web resources and offers unique teaching materials, first-person primary documents, and guides to analyzing historical evidence. Emphasis is on materials that focus on the lives of ordinary Americans, many of which deal with the Colonial Period.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: 19th Century Latin America
"The Internet History Sourcebooks Project offers a wide-ranging collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use. Primary sources are available here primarily for use in high-school and university/college courses. From the outset the site took a very broad view of the sources that should be available to students and as well as documents long associated with a "western civilization" approach to history also provides much information on Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, East Asian, and African history. You will also find many documents especially relevant to women's history and LGBT studies."
Puerto Rican Digital Library (Biblioteca Digital Puertorriqueña)
The Puerto Rican Digital Library of the University of Puerto Rico is an online repository of images and text related to Puerto Rican history and culture. It is a digital archive of valuable primary sources that includes various graphic materials: cartoons, posters, drawings, photographs, maps; manuscripts, books and other publications. Includes photographs from the invaluable Photo Collection of the El Mundo newspaper. These resources are freely available to scholars, researchers, students and others interested in the history, politics, economy, social and cultural affairs of Puerto Rico from the 19th century to the present.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: 20th Century Latin America
"The Internet History Sourcebooks Project offers a wide-ranging collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use. Primary sources are available here primarily for use in high-school and university/college courses. From the outset the site took a very broad view of the sources that should be available to students and as well as documents long associated with a "western civilization" approach to history also provides much information on Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, East Asian, and African history. You will also find many documents especially relevant to women's history and LGBT studies."
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Colonial Latin America
"The Internet History Sourcebooks Project offers a wide-ranging collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use. Primary sources are available here primarily for use in high-school and university/college courses. From the outset the site took a very broad view of the sources that should be available to students and as well as documents long associated with a "western civilization" approach to history also provides much information on Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, East Asian, and African history. You will also find many documents especially relevant to women's history and LGBT studies."