Monthly Archives: April 2025

Acquisitions/Foreign Travel, Benson Latin American Collection, Events, Uncategorized

Memory, Archives, and the Power of Storytelling with Cristina Rivera Garza

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On April 14, the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection welcomed acclaimed author Cristina Rivera Garza for an evening of reflection, conversation, and celebration marking the acquisition of her literary archive. Rivera Garza – Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Liliana’s Invincible Summer” and a MacArthur Genius Fellow.

The event drew a full house to honor the arrival of Rivera Garza’s papers and the stories they preserve. Attendees had an opportunity to view a curated selection from Rivera Garza’s archive, which includes manuscripts, letters and documents related to her writing and the life of her sister, Liliana, whose murder and legacy are the focus of “Liliana’s Invincible Summer,” Rivera Garza’s prize-winning memoir.

Rivera Garza opened the evening with a brief talk about the process that led to the placement of her papers at the Benson. She recalled the moment, following the completion of her memoir Liliana’s Invincible Summer, when she realized she lacked the tools to properly preserve Liliana’s letters, notes, books and other ephemera. Conversations with Benson staff helped her transition from caring for the materials privately to entrusting them to an institutional home.

She dedicated her remarks to her late father, Antonio Rivera, who recently passed away. Tracing his extraordinary life – from his Indigenous roots and refugee migration during a historic drought to earning a PhD in agricultural sciences in Sweden – she honored his devotion to memory and preservation. Antonio, like Liliana, saved everything: letters, photographs, telegrams and even short stories. Rivera Garza credited him with instilling the values of legacy and documentation that ultimately inspired her literary work.

Rivera Garza described archives as sacred, transformative spaces where “the living and the dead interact,” likening them to cemeteries that enable spiritual communion and emotional resurrection. She recounted the profound experience of opening the boxes of Liliana’s belongings, which included handwritten notes, origami-folded letters and scribbles in book margins – tangible remnants that allowed her to reconstruct her sister’s story and, in doing so, become a writer.

She closed her remarks with a call to action, framing archives as instruments of “restorative justice.” Though they may not always bring perpetrators to court, archives preserve truth, resist forgetting and bear witness to gender violence and femicide. In an era of disinformation, she argued, archives remain steadfast between oblivion and collective memory. Her parting wish: “Let archives do their breathing, and allow them to revive ourselves.”

The evening continued with a dialogue between the author and Dr. Celeste González de Bustamante, director of the Center for Global Media at the Moody College of Communications. The conversation explored the author’s writing process, the decision to withhold Liliana’s image from the English-language cover and the role of feminist mobilizations in shaping a new vocabulary for justice. Rivera Garza shared that much of “Liliana’s Invincible Summer” was informed by telephone conversations – intimate, unrecorded calls during the pandemic – with Liliana’s friends, whose memories form the emotional scaffolding of the book.

The discussion touched on broader issues of gender violence and femicide in Mexico and beyond. With an impunity rate for femicide exceeding 95% in Mexico, Rivera Garza described her writing as a way to confront silence, institutional erasure and the bureaucratic labyrinth faced by those seeking justice. She discussed the language born of feminist movements that made her book possible and necessary – a language that gives voice to victims rather than perpetrators.

With themes spanning grief, justice, family history and the evolving role of archives in a digital age, the evening served as a powerful reminder of the significance of preserving stories – especially those often left untold. Rivera Garza’s archive joins the Benson’s vast literary collections, ensuring that her words, and Liliana’s, will continue to inspire, provoke and bear witness for generations to come.

Watch video from the event.

Collections, Global Studies, Zines

Libraries Celebrate Comics at BIPOC PoP

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This March, five University of Texas Libraries staff members joined the vibrant and growing community of creators and scholars at the annual BIPOC PoP Symposium, an event that brings together writers, artists, gamers, students and academics to celebrate and build community around popular culture.

Sponsored by UT’s College of Liberal Arts and organized by staff from the campus’s own Latinx Pop Lab, BIPOC PoP offers UT Libraries a valuable opportunity to engage with creators and audiences whose work reflects the diversity of voices in contemporary storytelling. This year marked the second consecutive invitation for the Libraries to host a table in the exhibition hall.

Librarians Tina Tran, Gina Bastone, Adriana Cásarez, Yi Shan and Ana Rico shared a selection of graphic novels and comics from the Libraries’ collections – including paperback comics, zines, large-format art books, and young adult titles. These materials showcased the depth and variety of the Libraries’ long-standing commitment to collecting comics and graphic novels, particularly in the Perry-Castañeda Library’s popular and well-used collection.

Visitors expressed surprise and excitement upon learning about the comics collection at PCL, with many students vowing to stop by the library soon. Faculty members discussed potential class visits, underscoring the value of the collection as a teaching tool. A highlight of the event was meeting acclaimed comics creator John Jennings, who graciously signed the Libraries’ copy of After the Rain, which is now available in the collection (view in the catalog).

Libraries staff also made connections with local artists and small publishers, with an eye toward expanding the Libraries’ holdings of zines and independently produced comics in the near future.

As always, BIPOC PoP was a joyful celebration of creativity, community, and shared enthusiasm for the stories that shape our cultural landscape. TheLibraries is grateful to the Latinx Pop Lab and the Department of English for the invitation, and we look forward to returning next year.

Area Studies, Benson Latin American Collection, Humanities & Liberal Arts

Benson Collection Acquires Archive of Andrés Caicedo

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By ADRIAN JOHNSON

The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is pleased to announce the acquisition of literary and family archives of Colombian writer Andrés Caicedo. This collection joins other important regional literary collections of writers such as César Vallejo, Augusto Roa Bastos, and Julio Cortázar, increasing the importance of the Benson as a destination for students, faculty, and researchers from the United States, Latin America, and beyond.

Front page of an open book. On the right, inside a black border, a drawing in black ink of a young man with 1970s-style hair, a large chin and pursed lips, and clothing, dark sunglasses, a chain brandished in one hand and a large, bloody knife in the other. He stands in front of a graffitied wall that has a large area of its outer coating missing. His thin legs, in jeans, are in a wide stance. The title of the book, El Atravesado, is written vertically bottom to top along the left-hand side of the border in rough, handwritten all capitals; the name of the author, Andrés Caicedo, is written in the same style along the right-hand side.
Title page of “El Atravesado.” Benson Latin American Collection.

Within a decade of the publication of 100 Years of Solitude, which propelled Gabriel García Márquez and Colombia to the forefront of the Latin American literary scene, a 21-year-old Caicedo was self-publishing his first novela. El Atravesado (1975) was printed with a stamp opposite the title page reading Pirata Ediciones de Calidad (Pirata Quality Editions). Adorning the cover is a Ramones-esque sketch that the author had copied and enhanced from a bootlegged Rolling Stones album cover: a sunglasses-clad rebellious youth in front of a deteriorating and graffitied wall, a chain in one hand and a bloody knife in the other, ready for a fight. The story is one of youth in street gangs who have lost all faith in adulthood, living in the chaos of urban disorder, brawls, and parties, who yearn for a better world.

Inside cover of a book, with author's name, title, and publisher's seal. There is messy handwriting all over the page. On the left, you can see the dark illustration of a man, similar to that of the cover, from the previous page bleeding through.
Inside cover of “El Atravesado,” with handwritten dedication and Ediciones Pirata seal. Benson Latin American Collection.

An intellectually curious lover of movies and letters, Caicedo began writing at the age of 10 and never stopped. He wrote plays, published stories in newspapers, and published Ojo al Cine, a film magazine that ran from 1974 to 1976. On March 4, 1977, at the age of 25, just after receiving the editor’s copy of his first published full-length novel, Que viva la música, Caicedo died by suicide. Que viva la música went on to become his best-known work, and would give voice to a generation of Colombia’s youth, offering a socially realistic alternative to the magical realism of García Márquez and other writers of the Latin American Boom.

A magazine cover features a very faded and large image of a woman's eyes, nose, and mouth—close-up of a face, in pale grays. The title of the magazine, "Ojo al Cine" is printed in bold black type, all lower-case, along the bottom, in addition to the number 5 in a circle. Along the borders of the cover are names of authors and other writing, including the magazine's subtitle, "La crítica cinematográfica en Cuba y América Latina."
Cover of issue 5 of the film criticism magazine “Ojo al Cine.” Benson Latin American Collection.

Caicedo already had a loyal following by the time of his death, but most of his writing was never published, or was limited to local and serial publications. His father, with whom he had fraught relations, discovered many of his manuscripts several years after his death. He led the creation of a family foundation dedicated to preparing and publishing the entire corpus of Caicedo’s writing. Caicedo’s renown has continued growing as publications are translated and published until today.

Yellowed newspaper clippings from a film review in Spanish are arranged on a white background show the large title of a review of the Godfather Part 2 by Andrés Caicedo with the made-up onomatopoeic word "uuuuuuuuggf" in it. The title of the publication, at top, is El Pueblo Estravagario, dated Sunday, October 19, 1975.
Review of “The Godfather 2” by Andrés Caicedo, including creative use of onomatopoeia, published in El Pueblo Estravagario.

The Andrés Caicedo Collection contains materials collected by the author’s sister, Rosario Caicedo, and includes manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, rare publications, press clippings, and family photo albums. Some of the most important documents in the collection are letters to and from his parents, Carlos Alberto and Nellie Estela, and his sister, Rosario, in the last years of his life. Several folders in the collection document Caicedo’s involvement in the Cine Club de Cali, including issues of the magazine Ojo al Cine. Finally, family photo albums of his parents and grandparents document the life of his family in the first decades of the twentieth century.

A yellowed sheet of unlined paper, edges badly damaged with stains in some areas, contains a typewritten letter from the author to his father, whom he addresses are Carlos Alberto. It is signed in blue pen.
Letter from Caicedo to his father, signed ‘Tu Hijo (Que te pesa)’. Benson Latin American Collection.

This collection supplements the Archivo Andrés Caicedo, donated by the family to the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá, Colombia, and helps present a side of Caicedo that brings a wider understanding to his life and his literary corpus. View the contents of the archive at Texas Archival Resources Online.

En español: Read “El Segundo archivo de Andrés Caicedo llega a Texas” by Yefferson Ospina, UT Austin Graduate Research Assistant who worked on processing the archive.

Adrian Johnson is Head of User Services at the Benson Latin American Collection, and Librarian for the Andean Region.

Area Studies, Features, Global Studies, Libraries, Read Hot and Digitized

Read, Hot and Digitized: A Digital Survey of the Scottish Witch Trials

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The witch trials of Europe in the early modern period, from about 1400 to 1775, resulted in the prosecution, often violent, of over 100,000 people. Studying this history and understanding its causes—which were multifaceted, and incorporated elements of religious persecution of alleged heresy, superstition, and religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants—is an important way we can understand the motivations of past atrocities and learn from them to avoid similar violence and intolerance in the future. The Witches: Survey of Scottish Witchcraft project at the University of Edinburgh is one project that makes this history more broadly accessible and understandable both to scholars and the general public.

The site itself contains an excellent introduction to the history of witch trials in Scotland. It states:

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Scotland went through a series of changes to the state and church which fuelled the Scottish witch hunt. As a result of the Reformation, when Scotland broke away from the Catholic Church and moved towards Protestantism, the church went through an upheaval of religious belief and became much more interested in what ordinary people did and believed. 

This concern led to great concern from Church and state about people’s religious beliefs and practices, deviations from behavior expected by the Church and society (such as not attending Church on a Sunday), and witchcraft. More than 4,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736, and confessions were often evinced using torture. Of people accused of being witches it is estimated that around 2,500, or roughly two-thirds, were executed, with the majority of those executed (about 85%) being women.

The main map on the site’s landing page, showing locations where witches in the database lived.
The main map on the site’s landing page, showing locations where witches in the database lived.

The site’s most striking feature is a map showing accused witches’ residences and details about their case and personal lives, including their occupations. This provides an intuitive and visually appealing way to explore the dataset, and allows for free exploration of the data without digging into the spreadsheets and metadata underlying the map. Users can also search the complete dataset used to make the map, exploring the same by searching for an accused’s name. In addition to these exploratory tools, the site also features a very helpful introduction that explains many details of the dataset and provides further background information, as well as a number of additional visualizations. Particularly affecting is the Story of Isobel Young visualization, which chronicles the life and death of one woman who was accused of witchcraft and executed.

The Story of Isobel Young visualization, showing a map of places where Isobel lived and background information on the Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563.
The Story of Isobel Young visualization.

The site also provides a host of references that provide scholarly background on the history of witch trials in Scotland. There are also a number of resources, including a GitHub repository for the project’s website and the CSV files used to make the map. It also provides lists of accused witches, trials, people involved, and memorials and sites of interest within Scotland that users may wish to visit.

The Witches: Survey of Scottish Witchcraft site offers a robust but inviting introduction to this period of European history. I encourage you to explore the site for yourself and find out what it has to offer.

Related resources at the UT Libraries:

Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia

Demonology and Witch-hunting in Early Modern Europe

Witch Hunts: A history of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America