ILASSA STUDENT CONFERENCE PAPER BY ITZA A. CARBAJAL On March 24, 2015, Soad Nicole Ham Bustillos, age 13, and three other young Hondurans, all high school students, were murdered in Tegucigalpa. Less than 24 hours earlier, video footage had shown them publicly protesting against recent changes … [Read more...] about Digital Keepers: The Ethics of Saving Online Data about Latin American Social Movements
Benson Collection
Anzaldúa across Borders: A Traveling Thought Gallery
BY SUSANNA SHARPE An image is a bridge between evoked emotion and conscious knowledge; words are cables that hold up the bridge. —Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987 When Chicana author, cultural theorist, and feminist Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa died in 2004, she … [Read more...] about Anzaldúa across Borders: A Traveling Thought Gallery
Establishing History: The Black Diaspora Archive and the Texas Domestic Slave Trade Project
BY RACHEL E. WINSTON The vision for the Black Diaspora Archive at The University of Texas at Austin came into focus in 2013 as a collaborative project between Black Studies, LLILAS Benson, and the University of Texas Libraries. After years of continued successful collaboration, Black Studies … [Read more...] about Establishing History: The Black Diaspora Archive and the Texas Domestic Slave Trade Project
Cardenal in Hard Times
BY LUIS E. CÁRCAMO-HUECHANTE Leer en español It was the winter of 1979. I was already in my fourth year of high school in Valdivia, in southern Chile, when my literature teacher surprised my class by bringing in a record player. As she turned it on, a singular voice came out, with an accent … [Read more...] about Cardenal in Hard Times
Reading the First Books: Colonial Mexican Documents in the Digital Age
BY HANNAH ALPERT-ABRAMS AND MARIA VICTORIA FERNANDEZ In 1595, in Mexico City, the Jesuit priest Antonio del Rincón (1555–1601) published a grammatical description of the Nahuatl language. Though other grammars of Nahuatl existed, Rincón’s Arte mexicana was the first to describe the indigenous … [Read more...] about Reading the First Books: Colonial Mexican Documents in the Digital Age
Love, Cacao, and Chocolate’s Mesoamerican Origins
By PILAR ZAZUETA No other Western holiday is more closely identified with chocolate than Valentine’s Day. The seasonal aisles in stores and supermarkets are filled with chocolate, and food companies spend vast sums of advertising dollars trying to persuade us to celebrate by consuming it in large … [Read more...] about Love, Cacao, and Chocolate’s Mesoamerican Origins
Interview with Ernesto Cardenal
In spring 2016, José Montelongo, librarian at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, visited the home of Father Ernesto Cardenal in Managua, Nicaragua. The occasion was the recent acquisition of Father Cardenal's personal papers, an archive that now resides at the Benson. In these excerpts … [Read more...] about Interview with Ernesto Cardenal
Archiving Human Rights Documentation: The Promise of the Post-Custodial Approach in Latin America
BY THERESA E. POLK Guatemala’s internal armed conflict was brutal by all accounts, and justice for human rights violations has been notoriously difficult to attain in its wake. Yet there have also been some critical milestones, including convictions in 2010 for the forced disappearance of labor … [Read more...] about Archiving Human Rights Documentation: The Promise of the Post-Custodial Approach in Latin America
LLILAS Benson and the Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Patrimony of Mexico
BY KELLY McDONOUGH One of the main attractions among the rare books and manuscripts at the Benson Latin American Collection is a group of late-sixteenth-century manuscripts and maps known as the Relaciones Geográficas (or RGs for short). As described in the Benson’s web portal to the RGs, these … [Read more...] about LLILAS Benson and the Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Patrimony of Mexico
García Márquez’s Pentimenti
BY JOSÉ MONTELONGO On the morning of November 24, 2014, The New York Times published the news that The University of Texas at Austin had acquired the papers of Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. A few months earlier, Stephen Enniss, director of the university’s Harry Ransom Center, and … [Read more...] about García Márquez’s Pentimenti
