LLILAS Benson mourns the passing of friend, scholar, and former colleague David Block III, on June 15, 2021. Block was head of the Benson Latin American Collection from 2009 until his retirement in 2014.
Born in San Diego, California, in 1945, Block grew up in Arkansas, where he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas. He served for three years in the Peace Corps in Bolivia, igniting his lifelong interest in Latin America. He earned his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with historian Nettie Lee Benson. During his thirty-year career as a Latin American librarian, Block worked at Cornell University and at UT’s Benson Collection. He also served as president of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM). Read Block’s obituary.
David Block, undated. Courtesy of Peggy Robinson.
Block was a sought-after expert on the Andean region and the author of the book Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon (1994), which won the Conference of Latin American History’s Howard Cline Memorial Prize and was included in Obras de la biblioteca del bicentenario de Bolivia. He also penned the introduction to A Library for the Americas (2018), a contributed volume that showcases the Benson’s history with essays and rich illustrations.
On Taquile Island, Lake Titicaca, Peru. Undated. Photo courtesy of Peggy Robinson.
Upon his retirement from the Benson in 2014, Block spoke about his time at the Benson as “the high point of my 35-year career.” One of the most significant events during his tenure was the establishment of the LLILAS Benson partnership in 2011, in which Block played a key collaborative role. “David’s accomplishments during his relatively short time at the Benson are too many to list,” says Benson director Melissa Guy. “He was a master bibliographer and scholar, and traveled throughout Latin America to secure materials for the collection. Most significantly, he was instrumental in launching and nurturing the LLILAS Benson partnership, now in its tenth year, working alongside LLILAS Benson director Charlie Hale to find new ways to link the world-class collections of the Benson to the top-tier scholarship and teaching of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. That, in and of itself, is quite a legacy.”
Prior to his colleague’s retirement, Hale reflected on Block’s personal qualities: “David cares deeply about others: he is gentle, compassionate, and kind, whether with a co-worker of many years or a stranger who happens into the Benson; he is scrupulously conscientious: holding himself to bedrock ethics and values, with no sense that this gives license to judge others; and his manner exudes an egalitarian ethos, always willing to step up to assure that collective goals are met, inspiring others by his example, and by the sheer pleasure of working at his side.”
David and wife Peggy, undated. Courtesy of Peggy Robinson.
The LLILAS Benson family extends our deepest condolences to David’s family. He left an indelible mark on many of us as both a scholar-librarian and a human being, and we are so grateful.
Honoring David Block
It is David’s family’s request that those wishing to honor him consider a donation to the Nettie Lee Benson Collection, Benson Centennial Endowment: bit.ly/Benson100. Check donations may be sent to TEXAS Development, PO Box 7458, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78713. Please make check payable to: The University of Texas at Austin and specify in memo: UT Libraries – Benson Centennial Endowment.
LLILAS Benson is thrilled to announce the return of the ¡A Viva Voz! Celebration of Latina/o Arts and Culture. The annual event, usually one of the highlights of the spring semester, was canceled in 2020 due to the recent campus closure for Covid-19.
Now that we’ve got an advanced degree in Zoom, we are pleased to announce Scene Onscreen: An Evening with JoAnn and Rupert Reyes, Founders of Teatro Vivo. This virtual event will be held on Thursday, April 1, 2021, at 7pm CDT. To register for the event and receive a link, visit Attend.com/AVV2021.
JoAnn and Rupert Reyes. Design by Jennifer Mailloux; original artwork by Monica Rodriguez
During the evening, hosted by Roxanne Schroeder-Arce of the Department of Theatre and Dance, the audience will be treated to recorded scenes from some of Rupert Reyes’s iconic achievements as a playwright, interspersed with conversation about the history of Teatro Vivo, the bilingual theater company that Rupert and JoAnn founded in 2000 and led for many years.
Scenes from Petra’s Pecado, Petra’s Cuento, and Petra’s Sueño;Crossing the Río, Cuento Navideño, Cenicienta, and the forthcoming film Vecinos will bring some levity to everyone’s evening, and it is our hope that the shared experience of laughter while enjoying these scenes will make the virtual a little more personal.
The JoAnn and Rupert Reyes Collection
The Benson Latin American Collection is the repository of the papers of JoAnn and Rupert Reyes, which contains a rich assortment of materials from their decades working with Teatro Vivo and other theater companies. According to the archival notes, “Teatro Vivo has garnered numerous nominations for acting, writing, and design from local theater award councils, including the B. Iden Payne Awards and the Austin Critics Table Awards, and the company continues to serve as an active contributor to the arts community in Austin. JoAnn and Rupert led the company as the executive director and artistic director, respectively, until they stepped down in 2016.” Both of the Reyes have received accolades for their work, including the Community Leadership Award from the University of Texas at Austin (their alma mater) in 2008 and the Partners in the Arts and Humanities award by the Austin City Council in 2011. They continue to serve as advisors to Teatro Vivo and remain significant cultural ambassadors for Latino theater in the United States.
Voluminous lists of banned or redacted books, laced with sanctimonious commentary—or, early modern Spanish “cancel culture.” The illustrated family tree of a womanizing, bald curate named Miguel Hidalgo. Op-eds fawning over every viperous protagonist of the Revolution.
Researchers will find these items and more in the Genaro García Collection. A Zacatecan politico-cum-historian, and eventual director of Mexico’s Museo Nacional de Historia, Arqueología y Etnología, García began amassing books and other items documenting the history, culture, and politics of his country at a young age—a habit he, thankfully, never broke. In 1921, a year after his death, García’s family sold his vast treasure trove of Mexicana to the University of Texas after the Mexican government had reportedly demonstrated little interest. Seven tons of manuscripts, books, periodicals, photographs, and other printed materials made their way to Austin, becoming the seeds of what would flourish into the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. It is one of the world’s premier archives for the Mexicophile.
Genaro García (center) with museum staff, Museo Nacional de Historia, Arqueología y Etnología, Aug. 15, 1913. Photo: Ramos. Genaro García Collection, Benson Latin American Collection.
Unlike many aspiring young historians, I was never a devotee of archives. I never revered the yellowed, brittle sheets of paper and the “stories” they harbored. Nothing was less appealing to me than spending the better part of a workday in some record office, wearily attempting to distill something relevant from a sea of irrelevancies, surrounded by researchers whose social ineptitude rivaled my own. I had ventured into multiple repositories and each time failed to become a convert. Perhaps this is why I gravitated toward intellectual history when it came time to find my niche. I am a believer in the book and the essay—heresy to the ears of some in the historical profession.
Then I began my position as the Castañeda Graduate Research Assistant at the Benson Latin American Collection. The job entailed creating metadata for digitized selections from the García Collection. I considered it a simple way to add some much-needed lines to my curriculum vitae, not to mention supplement my miserly graduate student salary. Yet it ended up washing away much of the aversion I felt toward archives, and introduced me to another career possibility.
Letter dated Jan. 28, 1536, signed by Juana la Loca (1457–1555), queen of Castilla and later of Aragón. The letter seeks justice after the “confiscation” of Indians (presumably laboring on her behalf) by one Juan Altamirano. Genaro García Collection, Benson Latin American Collection.
After the initial new-job jitters, there was something serenely satisfying about delving into this collection. I was not a visiting researcher working against the clock to find useful bits of evidence for my own studies. I was there to calmly soak it all in, and then produce data, without any personal motive. Moreover, examining these raw materials of Mexican history proved to be a first-rate course in the subject—far more enlightening than any three-month-long seminar could ever be.
Writing metadata is, essentially, an element of the historian’s craft. One has to sit with and scrutinize an item in order to correctly interpret it. Often, this requires a healthy dose of research. Because I was not trained as a historian of colonial Latin America, documents created before the 19th century required additional research to properly contextualize them, as well as a resolute eye to decipher early-modern script. Then there is the authorial question, which occasionally demands another mini investigative journey. The end products are detailed, bilingual descriptions, and other data that, ideally, facilitate the researcher’s job.
Digitization, after all, serves to democratize research and pedagogy by making rare and remote materials easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
I began working mostly with documents dating from about 1810 to 1920. The Imprints and Images section of the García archive consists of graphic materials, such as maps, lithographs, and posters. The Broadsides and Circulars portion, on the other hand, is more textual and consists of widely distributed papers relating to Mexico’s War of Independence (1810–1821) and the Revolution (1910–1920), but is no less captivating. These approximately 1,200 items are now viewable on the collections portal, and materials from the photographs, archives and manuscripts, and rare books parts of the collection are continually being uploaded.
Circular de Los Inquisidores Apostólicos Bernardo de Prado y Obejero, Isidoro Sainz de Alfaro y Beaumont, y Manuel de Flores, December 1803. A list of prohibited books from the Inquisition era in New Spain, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. Genaro García Broadsides and Circulars, Benson Latin American Collection.
Currently on my docket are digitized selections from Archives and Manuscripts. This section contains individual historical manuscripts from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Those from the 1500s have proven to be the most challenging, not only due to my lack of paleography skills but also my unfamiliarity with early-modern Spanish grammar. But a fair share of focus and tenacity goes a long way. The “Archives” portion holds the papers of several prominent 19th-century characters, such as Lucas Alamán, the conservative statesman and intellectual, and Antonio López de Santa Anna, the peg-legged vendor of national territory. It will be a welcome break from my travails through the colonial era.
Desastroza Derrota de Francisco Villa – Viva el heroico general Victoriano Huerta, March 1914. Anti-Villa, pro-Huerta propaganda from revolution-era Mexico. Genaro García Broadsides and Circulars, Benson Latin American Collection.
I am glad to play a pivotal role in the Benson’s initiatives to develop its digital collections. Digitization, after all, serves to democratize research and pedagogy by making rare and remote materials easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Now, scholars unable to jet off to Austin from, say, Genaro García’s home country of Mexico, can consult his collection from their laptops. Digital content also allows for innovative exhibition practices, like online showcases with interactive features. And perhaps most importantly, digitization safeguards our cultural heritage by producing a virtual “backup.”
Arbol Genealógico del Ilustre don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (Genealogical Tree of the Illustrious Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla). An extensive family tree of Miguel Hidalgo. Created by Concepción Ochoa de Castro and M. Martínez e Hidalgo, May 16, 1910. Genaro García Imprints and Images, Benson Latin American Collection.
The digitization and metadata creation for the Images and Imprints and Broadsides and Circulars materials were generously funded by the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project (LARRP), Center for Research Libraries, with additional funds provided in honor of Consuelo Castañeda Artaza and her sons. Of course, none of this could have been accomplished without the dedication of several Benson employees. David Bliss, Itza Carbajal, Robert Esparza, Mirko Hanke, Dylan Joy, Ryan Lynch, Madeleine Olson, and Theresa Polk all made indispensable contributions to the digitization and publication of these items.
It has been over two years since I began this position. I am still a devout fan of books and other easily available, published sources. But I am no longer agnostic about the pleasures of archives, at least not the one described here.
Diego A. Godoy is a PhD candidate in Latin American history at The University of Texas at Austin and Castañeda Graduate Research Assistant at the Benson Latin American Collection. Before coming to Texas, he earned an MA in history from Claremont Graduate University. He is broadly interested in the intellectual and cultural history of the region. His particular focus is on the history of criminology, detection, and crime writing. He is author, most recently, of the article “Inside the Agrasánchez Collection of Mexican Cinema,” which appeared in the fall 2020 issue of Portal magazine.
“How does one become a writer, and how does she go about building a body of creative work?”* These are questions that author Irma López seeks to answer in her latest publication, a biography of the late Mexican writer María Luisa Puga (1944–2004) titled Extraño no-amor el tuyo: María Luisa Puga, historia de una pasión.
Author Irma López with her new biography of Puga
This is the second book on Puga by López, a professor of Spanish and interim dean at Western Michigan University. For this volume, López relied heavily on a collection of 327 diaries kept by the award-winning writer between 1972 and 2004. The diaries make up the bulk of the María Luisa Puga Papers at the Benson Latin American Collection. They are “an existential logbook of body and identity” writes former Benson librarian José Montelongo in a Spanish-language essay about Puga’s diaries. It was López who originally brought the collection of diaries to the attention of the Benson; the writer’s sister, Patricia Puga, donated them to the collection in 2017.
Biography of María Luisa Puga, by Irma López
In Extraño no-amor, López builds on her previous work on Puga and, with the aid of the diaries, probes deeply into the writer’s life in order to better understand her work. The resulting biography is a portrait of Puga that lays bare her strengths and weaknesses, her artistic and existential struggles, similar to the way in which Puga relentlessly examined herself on the pages of her diary.
For almost three hundred years, the Spanish monarchs ruled over an expansive empire stretching from the Caribbean to the southernmost tip of South America. World history narratives situate Spain within a centuries-long clash between major powers over territory, resources, and authority in the Americas that ended with the wars of independence. However, these histories tend to devote less attention to the day-to-day processes that sustained imperial rule. My dissertation explores this question through an analysis of the underlying mechanisms that bound the people to their faraway king. A LLILAS Benson Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship helped me to create an online exhibition that demonstrates what the bureaucracy of empire looked like on the ground. (Visit the Spanish version of the exhibition.)
This interactive website serves as an interface with a section of the vast holdings of the Benson Latin American Collection: the Genaro García Collection. Through the exhibition, teachers, students, and community members can explore the events that unfolded when the king ordered a visita—or royal inspection—for New Spain (roughly, modern Mexico) in 1765. The inspection allowed the monarch to keep up to date on local happenings while also identifying areas that could be reorganized. This visita involved approximately seven years of examinations and reforms carried out through a cooperation between the monarch’s appointed visitador—or inspector—and local government workers.
Cover page for this collection of visita documents. G206-01.
The website offers high-resolution images of the thirty documents from the Genaro García Collection that pertain to this procedure, in addition to brief content descriptions, full transcriptions, information on the individuals involved, and maps of prominent regions mentioned in the sources. All of this information appears in an interactive timeline so that users can experience the process of bureaucracy at work.
The TimelineJS chronology features high-resolution images of the documents included for each date.
This project benefited from the use of several digital humanities tools, including TimelineJS, FromthePage, and Transkribus. TimelineJS allowed for the creation of an interactive chronology containing the step-by-step process that the visitador followed as he inspected and reorganized the government of New Spain. For users looking to examine the documents beyond the site’s overviews, FromthePage and Transkribus generated full transcriptions of the sources.
This screen shot illustrates the transcription process in Transkribus.
These texts provide opportunities for further exploration, such as data analysis. For example, by feeding the transcriptions into the Voyant Tools website, I was able to generate a word cloud of the most commonly appearing words and phrases in the documents.
Voyant Tools allows for the creation of word clouds, like the one featured above.
The Benson Latin American Collection holds documents covering many regions of the Spanish world across the sixteenth through the twenty-first centuries. During this time, Spain’s hold over its American territories required the constant interaction between royal officials and local populations, and that crossover was often messy. The 1765 visita of New Spain sheds light on the complexities of this process. My hope is that this online exhibition will expand the ways in which people can interact with these sources without having to visit the University of Texas campus in person, and learn from them about the day-to-day experience of imperial management.
Brittany Erwin is a PhD candidate in history. She was a LLILAS Benson Digital Humanities Summer Fellow in 2020.
Game-changing innovations that use artificial intelligence (AI) tools will improve access to Indigenous and Spanish colonial archives. “Unlocking the Colonial Archive: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Indigenous and Spanish American Historical Collections” is a collaborative project led by LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections at The University of Texas at Austin, the Digital Humanities Hub at Lancaster University, and Liverpool John Moores University. The project will transform “unreadable” digitized Indigenous and Spanish colonial archives into data that will be accessible to a broad spectrum of researchers and the public.
The project will be funded by a $150,000 collaborative grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as well as €250,000 (approx. US$304,000) from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the joint New Directions for Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions program. Kelly McDonough, associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Albert A. Palacios, digital scholarship coordinator at LLILAS Benson, will manage the project at UT Austin.
The Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas at Austin possesses one of the world’s foremost collections of colonial documents in Spanish and Indigenous languages of Latin America. Yet even when digitized, such documents are often neither searchable nor readable because of calligraphy, orthography, and the written language of the document itself. In tackling this problem, the collaborators propose to employ and develop interdisciplinary data science methods with three goals in mind: to expedite the transcription of documents using cutting-edge Handwritten Text Recognition technology; to automate the identification and linking of information through standardized vocabulary ontologies using Linked Open Data and Natural Language Processing techniques; and to facilitate the automated search and analysis of pictorial elements through Image Processing approaches.
The research will be based on three digital collections under the aegis of LLILAS Benson and one from the National Archive of Mexico. The LLILAS Benson collections are digitized Benson Collection colonial holdings, including the Relaciones Geográficas, 16th-century painted written and pictorial documents describing the geography and peoples of New Spain; the Royal Archive of Cholula at the Archivo Judicial del Estado de Puebla (Mexico), which was digitized through a Mellon-funded post-custodial grant; and the Primeros Libros de las Américas, a digitized collection of books published in the Americas before 1601.
McDonough and Palacios say that the project will further colonial Latin American studies not only at UT, but beyond, significantly facilitating the discoverability and interpretation of these materials. “While the work will begin with collections at the Benson and its Latin American partners, the technology developed will be accessible to libraries and archives worldwide, who can use it to automatically transcribe their digitized manuscripts,” Palacios said. In addition, “through the public workshops that are part of this project, we will train humanists on new innovative approaches that leverage the potential of machine learning to facilitate research,” McDonough added.
The geographical diversity among the project’s leadership and collaborators reenforce its global reach. The PIs are McDonough and Palacios of UT Austin, Patricia Murrieta-Flores of Lancaster University (UK), and Javier Pereda Campillo of Liverpool John Moores University (UK). Other collaborators hail from Germany, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland. Among the numerous participants from Mexico is Lidia García Gómez, history professor at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, who was involved with the digitization of the Royal Archive of Cholula.
For more information: Susanna Sharpe, Communications Coordinator, LLILAS Benson, The University of Texas at Austin
LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections is pleased to announce the publication of Portal magazine’s Benson Centennial edition, available online at llilasbensonmagazine.org.
In anticipation of the centennial of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection in 2021, this issue features articles by faculty, students, scholars, and staff that highlight a wide array of collections in areas as diverse as art history, feminist theory, Black diaspora, Indigenous studies, Mexican film, and more. A special selection of Staff Picks surveys items in the collection chosen and written about by staff in short feature pieces. Truly, this issue has something for everyone, including information on how to support the Benson Centennial Endowment.
Annotated contents of Portal‘s Benson Centennial issue follow below.
Diego Godoy, Inside the Agrasánchez Collection of Mexican Cinema—An entertaining and engaging look at a collection of historical Mexican cinema materials that will make you want to watch a bunch of these movies.
Still from the Agrasánchez Collection of Mexican Cinema, Benson Latin American Collection
Matthew Butler and John Erard, The Hijuelas Books: Digitizing Indigenous Archives in Mexico—A history professor and a first-year student teamed up to write this article on what is being learned by digitizing important historical records in Michoacán, Mexico.
Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Decolonial Feminists Unite! Dorothy Schons and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—Award-winning Chicana feminist author Alicia Gaspar de Alba explores the fascinating yet tragic story of UT scholar Dorothy Schons (1890–1961), whose groundbreaking research on the Mexican poet, intellectual, and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695) was dismissed by her colleagues at the time.
Miguel Cabrera, Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, c. 1750
Voices of Black Brazilian Feminism: Conversations with Rosana Paulino and Sueli Carneiro—Rosana Paulino is a visual artist and Black Brazilian feminist; Sueli Carneiro is an author and one of the foremost feminist intellectuals in Brazil. Both were keynote speakers at the February 2020 Lozano Long Conference on Black women’s intellectual contributions to the Americas. Interviewed here by UT faculty members Christen A. Smith (Anthropology, AADS, LLILAS, dir. of Center for Women’s and Gender Studies) and Lorraine Leu (LLILAS / Spanish & Portuguese).
Daniel Arbino, (Self)Love in the Time of COVID—Reflections from Benson head of special collections on themes of self-care and solitude in the Benson’s Latino zine collection.
David A. Bliss, Selections from the LADI Repository—Bliss, digital processing archivist at the Benson, highlights collections in the Latin American Digital Initiatives repository. These are vulnerable archival collections that are now available online due to Mellon grant–funded collaborations between LLILAS Benson and Latin American archival partners.
STAFF PICKS: FAVORITES FROM THE BENSON COLLECTION
Brooke Womack, Catalina de Erauso o sea la monja de alferes, a 19th-century text on a 16th-century nun who was born a woman and obtained permission to dress as a man in the Spanish army.
Arbol cronologico geografico del descubrimiento de las Americas, 1864
Albert A. Palacios, Student Activism in the Archives, 1969, 1970. Items from Texas and Uruguay are but two of the many examples of student activism in the Benson’s archives.
Dylan Joy, Ernesto Cardenal in Solentiname, 1970s, explores the spiritual artists’ community of Solentiname founded by the lateNicaraguan poet, priest, and politician Ernesto Cardenal (1925–2020), whose archive is at the Benson.
Zaria El-Fil, Black Freedom Struggle and the University, 1977, focused on the John L. Warfield Papers and written by fourth-year student Zaria El-Fil, the 2019–20 AKA Scholars Black Diaspora Archive intern.
Blackprint, Monthly Black Culture and Feature Supplement to The Daily Texan, March 30, 1977. John L. Warfield Papers
Ryan Lynch, Manifesto ao povo nordestino, 1982, discusses a Brazilian political archive and showcases how political themes are discussed in cordel literature, cheap chapbooks popular in Brazil.
Susanna Sharpe, Camas para Sueños by Carmen Lomas Garza, 1985. The Benson is the repository for the archive of artist Carmen Lomas Garza, a native of Kingsville, Texas, whose highly popular and well-known artworks evoke many aspects of Chicano life and culture in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere.
It was the Summer of Zoom. Anyone whose job quickly morphed from being in-person to being entirely online can relate to (a) isolation, (b) feeling overwhelmed, (c) video-conference overload, or (d) some or all of the above. Yet the ability to engage with other people on platforms such as Zoom has allowed some important work to move forward. Such was the case with the recent workshop series conducted with archival partners in Latin America by the LLILAS Benson Digital Initiatives team (LBDI).
The workshops were originally planned to occur in person during a week-long retreat in Antigua, Guatemala, with a group of Latin American partner archives. As an essential activity of the two-year Mellon Foundation grant titled Cultivating a Latin American Post-Custodial Archiving Community, the week would provide an opportunity for partners from Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, and Brazil to come together for training, share resources and knowledge, exchange ideas, and discuss challenges they face in their work.
The Mellon grant, covering work between January 2020 and June 2022, provides funding to support post-custodial* archival work with five partner archives, some of whom are already represented in the Latin American Digital Initiatives repository, which emphasizes collections documenting human rights issues and underrepresented communities.
Embroidery from the Bordados collection, Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (MUPI, San Salvador, El Salvador). This embroidery from Comunidad de Santa Marta, Honduras, depicts refugee life, including different kinds of labor. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/en/mupi03
The Covid-19 pandemic demanded that the digital initiatives team quickly pivot in order to keep the project moving forward on the grant timeline. For the resulting workshop series, offered via Zoom, members of the LBDI team prepared extensive training videos, designed Q&A sessions, and arranged for sessions with guest experts. Topics included grant writing, budgeting, archival processing, metadata, equipment selection, digital preservation, and digital scholarship, among others.
Over the course of five weeks this past summer, workshop participants met twice a week with LBDI staff members Theresa Polk, David Bliss, Itza Carbajal, Albert Palacios, and Karla Roig, as well as LLILAS Benson grants manager Megan Scarborough. All sessions were conducted in Spanish with closed-caption translations into Portuguese (or vice versa) provided by Susanna Sharpe, the LLILAS Benson communications coordinator. Additional presenters included Carla Alvarez, the U.S. Latinx archivist at the Benson Latin American Collection, and photo preservation experts Diana Díaz (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and María Estibaliz Guzmán (Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía, ENCRyM, Mexico).
Cover, MOAB: A Saga de um Povo, by Maria Aparecida Mendes Pinto. The book is an account of the 25-year history of the movement against hydroelectric dams in the Vale do Ribeira region of São Paulo and Paraná states in Brazil. EACCONE, Quilombos do Vale do Ribeira SP/PR collection. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/en/eaacone01
Partner archives who were able to participate in the online workshop series included Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (San Salvador, El Salvador), Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG, Guatemala City, Guatemala), Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Buenaventura, Colombia), and Equipe de Articulação e Assessoria às Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira (EAACONE, Vale do Ribeira, Brazil).
Despite the physical distance, workshop participants clearly valued the opportunity to come together and learn from one another, especially during the pandemic, which has had such profound effects on daily life as well as work. The increased isolation, repression, and attacks against communities that have accompanied the pandemic also underscored for partners the urgency of preserving their communities’ documentation to support current struggles for recognition and respect of basic human rights, and to prevent future efforts to erase or deny ongoing violence and injustice. This shared commitment fostered a sense of solidarity and mutual support among participants.
Photographs, Colección Dinámicas Organizativas del Pueblo Negro en Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Buenaventura, Colombia). This photograph was taken at a meeting of the Yurumangí River community advisory general assembly. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/en/pcn01
“For our team, it was an enriching experience that allowed us to reflect, as part of a multinational group, on the achievements and expectations of the LLILAS Benson Mellon project,” reported Carlos Henríquez Consalvi (aka Santiago) of MUPI, who also remarked on the opportunity to get to know the work of partner archives, “and to learn of their challenges with conservation and diffusion of their respective collections.”
Carolina Rendón, one of two participants from ODHAG’s Centro de la Memoria Monseñor Juan Gerardi, expressed how the day-to-day burdens of the pandemic were lightened by the opportunity to meet with others: “It was very good to be in spaces with others who work in different archives across Latin America. The pandemic has been heavy. During the course of the workshops, we passed through several stages—lockdown, fear, horror at the deaths, . . . . I appreciate getting to know, even virtually, people who work in archives in other countries.”
For the LLILAS Benson team, the positive comments, and the general feeling of gratitude for the solidarity of online gatherings, offset the heavy lifting of preparing multiple training videos per week in Spanish, with texts quickly and expertly translated to Portuguese by collaborator Tereza Braga. In words of David A. Bliss, digital processing archivist, “The biggest challenge was distilling a huge amount of technical information down to its most important elements and communicating these as clearly as possible in Spanish.”
PCN digitization project coordinator Marta and Latin American Metadata Librarian Itza work together during a 2018 visit to refolder and inventory PCN collection materials (Photo: Anthony Dest)
Bliss also alluded to the fact that the partners themselves are a diverse group with different backgrounds, needs, and types of archives: “Some of our partners have been running digitization programs for years, but for others the information was all new, so I worked hard to strike a balance between the two using visual aids and clear definitions for technical terms.”
One of the most rewarding aspects of the workshop series was knowing that archivists and activists who work to preserve important records of memory in the area of human rights were able to come together, albeit virtually, to share their work and their perspectives with one another. As Bliss put it, “Ordinarily, we work individually with each partner organization to help them manage their digitization project, with the goal of gathering all of their collections together in LADI. But many of our partners don’t just hold collections of historical documents; they’re engaged in ongoing struggles for their communities. They’re far more equipped to help one another strategize and succeed in that work than we are, so giving them the space to form those direct connections with one another is really important. It’s also very validating for us, because it’s been one of our goals for years now: we want to be just one part of a network of partners, not at the center of it.”
* Post-custodial archiving is a process whereby sometimes vulnerable archives are preserved digitally and the digital versions made accessible worldwide, thus increasing access to the materials while ensuring they remain in the custody and care of their community of origin. LLILAS Benson is a pioneer in this practice.
Esse foi o Verão do Zoom nos Estados Unidos. Qualquer pessoa cujo emprego tenha passado de presencial para quase totalmente virtual nesse curto espaço de tempo já sabe como é (a) o isolamento, (b) a sensação constante de que não vai dar conta das coisas, (c) a overdose de videoconferências, ou (d) pelo menos uma das opções acima, senão todas ao mesmo tempo. Mesmo assim, a possibilidade de interagir com outras pessoas em plataformas tipo Zoom acabou nos permitindo avançar em certas áreas bem importantes. Esse foi o caso da recente série de oficinas conduzidas pela equipe de Iniciativas Digitais da LLILAS Benson (LBDI) com suas entidades arquivísticas parceiras na América Latina.
As oficinas foram originalmente concebidas para acontecer presencialmente durante um retiro de uma semana para todo o grupo de arquivos latino-americanos parceiros. O local escolhido foi Antigua, na Guatemala. Como atividade essencial da grant de dois anos da Fundação Mellon, intitulada Cultivating a Latin American Post-Custodial Archiving Community (Criação de uma Comunidade Arquivística Pós-Custodial Latino-Americana), a ideia era usar essa semana para criar uma oportunidade especial para essas entidades, cujas sedes são a Guatemala, El Salvador, Colômbia e Brasil. O retiro proporcionaria várias sessões de treinamento, intercâmbio de recursos e conhecimentos, troca de ideias e discussões sobre desafios que elas enfrentam em seus trabalhos.
Coleção Bordados, Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (MUPI, San Salvador, El Salvador). Este bordado da Comunidad de Santa Marta, Honduras, descreve a vida no refúgio, incluindo vários tipos de trabalho. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/pt-br/mupi03
A grant da Mellon é para o período de janeiro de 2020 a junho de 2022 e subsidia os trabalhos arquivísticos pós-custodiais* executados em parceria com cinco arquivos selecionados, alguns dos quais já se encontram representados no repositório da Latin American Digital Initiatives. Esse repositório enfatiza coleções que documentem temas de direitos humanos e comunidades subrepresentadas.
A pandemia do Covid-19 exigiu que a equipe de iniciativas digitais começasse a se articular e tomasse decisões rápidas para manter o ritmo do projeto no âmbito do cronograma da grant. O resultado foi essa série de oficinas oferecidas via Zoom, que exigiu dos membros da equipe LBDI a produção de vídeos completos de treinamento, concepção de sessões Q&A e agendamento de sessões com especialistas convidados. Os tópicos eram a montagem e redação de grants, preparo de orçamentos, processamento arquivístico, metadados, seleção de equipamentos, preservação digital e formação em tecnologia digital, entre outros.
Durante cinco semanas desse último verão americano, os participantes da oficina se reuniram duas vezes com Theresa Polk, David Bliss, Itza Carbajal, Albert Palacios e Karla Roig, todos membros da equipe da LBDI, com a presença adicional de Megan Scarborough, administradora de grants da LLILAS Benson. Todas as sessões foram conduzidas em espanhol com tradução legendada para o português (ou vice-versa) a cargo de Susanna Sharpe, coordenadora de comunicações da LLILAS Benson. Outros apresentadores foram Carla Alvarez, arquivista U.S. Latinx da Benson Latin American Collection, e duas especialistas em preservação de fotografias, Diana Díaz (Metropolitan Museum of Art) e María Estibaliz Guzmán (Escola Nacional de Conservação, Restauração e Museografia, ou ENCRyM, no México).
Capa, MOAB: A Saga de um Povo, por Maria Aparecida Mendes Pinto. Livro sobre os 25 anos do MOAB, ou Movimento dos Ameaçados por Barragens na região do Vale do Ribeira (SP, PR). EACCONE, Coleção Quilombos do Vale do Ribeira SP/PR. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/pt-br/eaacone01
Outros arquivos parceiros que conseguiram participar da série de oficinas online foram o Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (San Salvador, em El Salvador), Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG, na Cidade de Guatemala), Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, em Buenaventura, na Colômbia), e Equipe de Articulação e Assessoria às Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira (EAACONE, Vale do Ribeira, no Brasil).
Apesar da distância física, ficou claro o alto valor atribuído pelos participantes a essa oportunidade de se reunir e aprender uns com os outros, especialmente durante uma pandemia que tem tido efeitos tão profundos na vida de tantos e no trabalho diário de todos nós. A pandemia ainda veio acompanhada de um forte isolamento, de ações de repressão e de crescentes ataques a certas comunidades. Esses fatores enfatizaram mais ainda, para as entidades parceiras, a urgência de preservar as documentações de suas comunidades não só para apoiar as lutas atuais por reconhecimento e respeito a direitos humanos básicos mas, também, para impedir iniciativas futuras que visem eliminar a memória ou negar a existência de violências e injustiças que sabemos vêm sendo cometidas. Esse compromisso compartilhado trouxe um grande senso de solidariedade para os participantes e um desejo de apoio mútuo.
Fotografias, Colección Dinámicas Organizativas del Pueblo Negro en Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Colombia). Esta foto foi tomada numa reunião da assambleia geral do conselho comunitário do Rio Yurumangí. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/pt-br/pcn01
“Para o nosso time, foi uma experiência enriquecedora que nos permitiu refletir, como parte de um grupo multinacional, sobre as conquistas e expectativas do projeto LLILAS Benson Mellon”, relatou Carlos Henríquez Consalvi (conhecido como “Santiago”), do MUPI, que também ressaltou como positiva a oportunidade de conhecer de perto o trabalho dos arquivos parceiros “e entender os desafios que eles enfrentam com a conservação e difusão de suas respectivas coleções”.
Carolina Rendón, um dos dois participantes do Centro de la Memoria Monseñor Juan Gerardi, do ODHAG, disse que os fardos diários da pandemia ficaram mais leves com a oportunidade de interagir com outras pessoas: “Foi muito bom estar no mesmo espaço, junto com gente que trabalha em diferentes arquivos espalhados pela América Latina. A pandemia tem sido muito dura. Durante as oficinas nós passamos por vários estágios, primeiro o lockdown, depois o medo, depois o horror diante de tantas mortes… Eu valorizo muito esse travar conhecimento, mesmo que virtualmente, com gente que trabalha em arquivos de outros países”.
Para a equipe da LLILAS Benson, os comentários positivos e a sensação geral de gratidão pela solidariedade dos encontros online foram uma compensação pelo trabalho árduo que foi preparar os diversos vídeos semanais de treinamento em espanhol, cujos roteiros iam sendo rapidamente traduzidos para o português pela nossa expert colaboradora Tereza Braga. Nas palavras de David A. Bliss, arquivista de processamento digital, “o maior desafio foi destilar uma quantidade gigantesca de dados técnicos para obter apenas os elementos mais importantes e comunicar esses elementos da maneira mais clara possível em espanhol”.
Marta, a coordenadora do projeto de digitalização do PCN (esquerda) trabalha com Itza, bibliotecária de metadados da LLILAS Benson, durante uma visita em 2018 para organizar e fazer inventário dos materiais na coleção PCN. (Foto: Anthony Dest)
David aludiu ainda ao fato de que as próprias entidades parceiras são um grupo bem diversificado, com formações, necessidades, e tipos de arquivos diferentes. “Algumas das nossas parceiras já rodam programas de digitalização há anos mas, para outras, as informações eram todas novas, então eu me dediquei muito para poder chegar a um equilíbrio entre os dois lados, usando recursos visuais e definições bem claras para os termos técnicos”, ele declarou.
Um dos aspectos mais gratificantes da série foi constatar que é possível reunir profissionais arquivísticos e líderes ativistas, todos trabalhando para preservar registros importantes de memória no campo dos direitos humanos, em um só espaço, mesmo sendo um espaço virtual, para compartilhar seu trabalho e suas perspectivas e se enriquecerem mutuamente. David explicou isso dizendo que “o normal é trabalharmos individualmente com cada organização parceira para auxiliá-la a administrar seu projeto de digitalização, com a meta de capturar todas as coleções daquela entidade e reuní-las no LADI para incentivar usuários a estabelecer conexões entre elas. Mas muitas das nossas parceiras não se restringem à guarda de coleções de documentos históricos; elas estão engajadas em tempo real na luta em prol de suas comunidades. Elas são, portanto, muito melhor equipadas para ajudar uma à outra a traçar estratégias e conseguir êxito nesse trabalho do que nós. Sendo assim, dar a elas o espaço para formar essas conexões diretas umas com as outras é realmente importante. E isso é muito validador para nós também, porque essa tem sido uma das nossas metas há anos já: queremos ser apenas um elo de uma rede de parceiras; não queremos estar no centro da rede”.
* Arquivística pós-custodial é um processo utilizado para preservar digitalmente certos arquivos, muitos deles vulneráveis, e disponibilizar essas versões digitais para o mundo inteiro aumentando, assim, o acesso aos conteúdos e assegurando, ao mesmo tempo, que eles permaneçam sob a guarda e os cuidados de suas comunidades de origem. A LLILAS Benson é uma pioneira desta prática.
Fue el verano de Zoom en Norteamérica, y quienes vieron su trabajo convertirse de repente en una actividad online, entienden lo que es sentir el aislamiento, el agobio y la sobrecarga de reuniones por video. Sin embargo, el contacto con los demás a través de plataformas como Zoom ha permitido que continúen proyectos importantes.
Tal fue el caso de la reciente serie de talleres producida por el equipo de Iniciativas Digitales LLILAS Benson con la participación de archivos colaboradores en Latinoamérica.
Originalmente, los talleres fueron programados para que se llevaran a cabo durante una semana en Antigua, Guatemala, en donde el equipo de LLILAS Benson se reuniría con los colaboradores latinoamericanos. La actividad era esencial para el proyecto titulado “Cultivando una comunidad archivística poscustodial latinoamericana”, patrocinado por la Fundación Mellon. La semana en Antigua hubiera sido una oportunidad para que los archivos colaboradores de Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia y Brasil pudieran obtener capacitación, compartir recursos, intercambiar ideas y discutir desafíos.
Fotografías, Colección Dinámicas Organizativas del Pueblo Negro en Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Colombia). Asamblea general del consejo comunitario del río Yurumangí en la vereda de Juntas. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/es/pcn01
La beca Mellon patrocina trabajo que se llevará a cabo entre enero del 2020 y junio del 2022. Los fondos apoyan el trabajo archivístico poscustodial* con cinco archivos, algunos de los cuales ya están representados en el repositorio Iniciativas Digitales de América Latina (LADI por sus señas en inglés), el cual destaca colecciones que documentan los derechos humanos y comunidades menos representadas.
La pandemia de Covid-19 exigió que el equipo de Iniciativas Digitales (LBDI) cambiara de plan súbitamente para mantener la trayectoria planeada del proyecto. Así nació la serie de talleres en línea. Para desarrollarla y llevarla a cabo, el equipo preparó videos de capacitación, programó sesiones de discusión, y organizó presentaciones por expertas en conservación de fotos y archivística. Además de estos temas, se presentaron videos y charlas sobre cómo escribir propuestas para subvenciones, crear presupuestos, elaborar metadatos, escoger equipamiento para la digitalización, preservar objetos digitales y considerar futuras investigaciones digitales.
Bordado que describe la vida cotidiana del refugio, representando las diferentes labores. Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (MUPI, San Salvador, El Salvador). https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/es/mupi03
Durante cinco semanas de talleres en junio y julio, representantes de archivos colaboradores se reunieron dos veces por semana con Theresa Polk, David Bliss, Itza Carbajal, Albert A. Palacios y Karla Roig del equipo LBDI, además de Megan Scarborough, la gerente de subvenciones para LLILAS Benson. Los talleres se ofrecieron en español con traducciones al portugués (y viceversa) a través de subtítulos simultáneos, hechos por Susanna Sharpe, la coordinadora de comunicaciones. Entre los presentadores invitados estaban Carla Alvarez, archivista de materiales de Latinas y Latinos en Estados Unidos; y dos especialistas en la preservación de fotografías, Diana Díaz (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) y María Estibaliz Guzmán (Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía, ENCRyM, México).
Los archivos quienes pudieron participar en los talleres virtuales fueron el Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (San Salvador, El Salvador), la Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG, Guatemala, Guatemala), Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Buenaventura, Colombia) y Equipe de Articulação e Assessoria às Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira (EAACONE, Vale do Ribeira, Brasil).
Portada, MOAB: A Saga de um Povo, por Maria Aparecida Mendes Pinto. Este libro cuenta la historia de 25 años del MOAB, movimiento en contra de las grandes represas y proyectos hidroeléctricos en la región brasileña Vale do Ribeira (estados de São Paulo y Paraná). EACCONE, colección Quilombos do Vale do Ribeira SP/PR . https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/es/eaacone01
A pesar de la distancia, los/las participantes verdaderamente apreciaron la oportunidad para juntarse virtualmente y aprender unos/as de otros/as, especialmente durante la pandemia, que ha afectado profundamente tanto a la vida cotidiana como al trabajo. La pandemia ha sido acompañada por el aislamiento, la represión política y los ataques contra ciertas comunidades, subrayando la urgencia de preservar la documentación de estas comunidades vulnerables, para apoyar las luchas por el reconocimiento de, y el respecto por, los derechos humanos básicos, y para impedir que se borre o se niegue la existencia contínua de violencia e injusticia.
Este compromiso compartido por las y los participantes fomentó un sentido de solidaridad y apoyo mutuo entre los participantes.
“Para nuestro equipo fue una experiencia enriquecedora, que nos permitió reflexionar en el seno del grupo multinacional, sobre los alcances y expectativas sobre el nuevo proyecto Mellon con LLILAS Benson,” dijo Carlos Henríquez Consalvi, director del MUPI (también conocido como Santiago), quien también reconoció la oportunidad para “conocer más a profundidad sobre archivos socios de la iniciativa . . . y conocer las situaciones particulares de otros socios en sus retos de conservación y difusión de sus respectivos archivos.”
Para Carolina Rendón, una de las dos participantes del Centro de Memoria Monseñor Juan Gerardi (parte de ODHAG), las cargas diarias de la pandemia se hicieron un poco más leves por las reuniones: “Fue muy bueno estar en espacios donde se encontraban otras personas que trabajan en archivos en diferentes países de Latinoamérica. La pandemia ha sido algo pesado, mientras se daba el curso creo que pasamos por varias etapas, el cambio a un encierro, el miedo, el horror de los casos de muerte, los aprovechamientos políticos. . . . Valoro haber conocido, aunque sea virtualmente, a las personas que trabajan en archivos en otros países.”
Fotografías, Colección Dinámicas Organizativas del Pueblo Negro en Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Buenaventura, Colombia). Asamblea general del consejo comunitario del río Yurumangí en la vereda de Juntas.. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/es/pcn01
Para el equipo de LLILAS Benson, los comentarios positivos y la gratitud en general por la solidaridad de las reuniones online fueron compensación por el trabajo intenso de preparar múltiples videos de capacitación en español cada semana, sus textos traducidos al portugués rápidamente, y con destreza, por la colaboradora Tereza Braga. Como dijo el archivista digital David A. Bliss, “El mayor reto fue de destilar una cantidad enorme de información técnica a sus elementos más importantes, y comunicarlas en español de la manera más clara posible.”
Bliss también aludió al hecho de que los colaboradores son un grupo diverso, con contextos y necesidades diferentes, cuyos archivos no son todos parecidos: “Algunos de nuestros compañeros han manejado programas de digitalización por muchos años, pero para otros la información era toda nueva. Así que traté de mantener un equilibrio entre los dos con el uso de visuales y definiciones claras para términos técnicos.”
A pesar de ser una experiencia virtual, uno de los aspectos más gratificantes de los talleres fue el hecho de ver a este grupo de archivistas y activistas que trabajan en la preservación de la memoria y la protección de los derechos humanos compartir su trabajo y sus perspectivas.
Marta, coordenadora del proyecto de digitalización de PCN, trabaja con bibliotecaria de metadata de LLILAS Benson, Itza, durante un proyecto en 2018 para reorganizar y hacer un inventario de materiales en la colección de PCN. (Foto: Anthony Dest)
Como lo expresó Bliss, “Normalmente, trabajamos individualmente con cada organización para ayudarles a manejar su proyecto de digitalización, con la meta de juntar todas sus colecciones en el sitio de LADI. Pero muchos de nuestros colaboradores no sólo tienen colecciones de documentos históricos, sino que están envueltos en luchas actuales para sus comunidades. Tienen mucho más que ofrecerse entre ellos para formular estrategias y obtener resultados. Así que es muy importante proveerles un espacio para establecer esas conexiones directas entre si. Esto valida lo que ha sido una de nuestras metas desde hace mucho: queremos ser sólo una parte de una red de colaboradores, no queremos ser central en ella.”
* El trabajo poscustodial es un proceso en que se hacen copias digitales de los archivos, a veces archivos vulnerables, para preservarlas de manera digital y hacerlas accesibles globalmente. Esto aumenta el acceso a los archivos mientras asegura que permanezcan en el custodio y bajo el cuidado de la comunidad de origen. LLILAS Benson es pionero en esta práctica.
