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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.

Benson Latin American Collection, Collections, Collections Highlight, Humanities & Liberal Arts

Archive of Cristina Rivera Garza, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Acquired by Benson Latin American Collection

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By LAUREN PEÑA, PhD

The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is pleased to announce the acquisition of the literary archive of distinguished Mexican author and professor Cristina Rivera Garza, a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship. This archive enhances the Benson’s extensive collection of materials that embody Latin American literary tradition, intellectual thought, and leadership, reflecting the stature of the library and the University of Texas at Austin campus as an invaluable resource for students, faculty, and researchers globally.

Cristina Rivera Garza, born in 1964 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, is one of the most influential and innovative contemporary Mexican authors. She has been the recipient of Mexico’s most prestigious literary accolades, including the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, which she won twice. Her writing defies traditional literary genres, blending historical research, speculative fiction, and linguistic experimentation to challenge dominant narratives and conventional storytelling.

Three women with dark hair sit on the ground. The mother is at the far left, smiling. The daughter in the middle has wavy dark hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and overalls. Her sister, on the right, has short, dark hair and a moody expression.
The author Cristina Rivera Garza, center, with her mother, left, and her sister Liliana Rivera Garza. Undated photo. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.

Rivera Garza’s works, including Nadie me verá llorar (1999), Dolerse: Textos desde un país herido (2011), El mal de la taiga (2012), and El invencible verano de Liliana (2023), engage deeply with themes of gender violence, loss, and memory. Through these narratives, she explores Mexico’s complex socio-political landscape, giving voice to silenced histories.

The Benson Latin American Collection presents An Evening with Cristina Rivera Garza on Monday, April 14, 2025. Find details here.

Rivera Garza grew up along the U.S.–Mexico border, a region rich in cultural traditions and marked by the fluidity of languages, identities, and experiences. This liminal space shaped her literary and academic sensibilities, fostering a transnational perspective that permeates her work. She studied urban sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a premier academic institution, and later earned a doctoral degree in Latin American history from the University of Houston. This academic background plays a crucial role in her writing, allowing her to seamlessly weave together fiction, poetry, and scholarly research.

Rivera Garza’s acclaimed novel Nadie me verá llorar (1999) exemplifies her unique ability to fuse historical research with fiction. Set in a mental health institution in early-twentieth-century Mexico, the novel tells the tragic love story of Joaquín, a photographer and addict, and Matilda, a rebellious patient whose life defies social conventions. However, the novel transcends this romantic premise. It has become a powerful meditation on how medical discourse and institutional power define sanity and madness in Mexico’s tempestuous historical past. Through her prose, Rivera Garza captures the fragility of memory while critiquing the oppressive systems that define these mental states.

English translation of a page of No One Will See Me Cry in page proofs, with handwritten query in the right-hand margin.
Page proof of English translation of No One Will See Me Cry, with query. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.

Language itself has become a central theme in Rivera Garza’s work. She experiments with form, voice, and narrative structure, often incorporating archival fragments, poetic interludes, and hybrid genres. In works like Dolerse: Textos desde un país herido, La muerte me da, and El invencible verano de Liliana, the author uses language not only as a medium of expression, but as a tool of resistance. She gives voice to the grief and trauma of gender-based violence, while simultaneously interrogating the silences imposed by official histories and institutionalized narratives.

Two young women stand outside a house. The one on the left, Liliana, is wearing white and looking down. The one on the right, Cristina, is laughing and looking at the camera, her hands in the pockets of her brown pants.
Cristina Rivera Garza, right, with her sister Liliana Rivera Garza. Undated photo. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.

El invencible verano de Liliana (2021, published in English as Liliana’s Invincible Summer in 2023) is one of her most intimate and politically charged works. This book serves as a tribute to her younger sister, Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in the summer of 1990. Written decades later, the text functions both as an act of remembrance and a form of literary justice. Through its narrative, Rivera Garza reconstructs Liliana’s life and the circumstances surrounding her death by utilizing her sister’s personal writings, diary entries, letters, and official documents. In doing so, she transcends traditional literary classifications and crafts a work that challenges the conventions of genre. In prose that encapsulates the intimacy of sisterhood, she deploys precise language that condemns the systemic impunity and gender-based violence that persists in Mexico.

Image from book cover. The title, El Invencible Verano de Liliana is written in green, blue, and pale lime-green. Below the title and the author's name is a photograph of a young woman with a hoop earring visible in one ear, wearing a pinkish button-down shirt. Behind her is mostly dark, although a blurry forest appears toward the top of the frame.
Cover, “El invencible verano de Liliana.”

Rivera Garza captures the essence of the women’s resistance movement against gender violence in a deeply personal yet politically charged reflection. When she writes, “These grassroots movements have attracted more and more women, younger women, women who grew up in a city, and a country, that harasses them every step of every day, never leaving them alone or offering respite. Women always about to die. Women dying and yet alive” (Liliana’s Invincible Summer, p. 9). The repetition of the word women underscores the collective suffering, while the paradox—“women dying and yet alive”—conveys the precarious existence of women living under constant threat, trapped in a liminal space between life and death.

Integrating her sister’s voice through preserved writings becomes Rivera Garza’s ultimate act of resistance—one that not only prevents the erasure of victims, but also critiques the sanitized language of legal and forensic reports, exposing the dehumanizing bureaucracy that often surrounds cases of femicide. By capturing the complexity of mourning and the struggle for justice, Rivera Garza denounces a broader social epidemic while issuing a powerful call to remember, fight, and resist.

Through her bold and experimental body of work, Cristina Rivera Garza has redefined the boundaries of Latin American literature. Her writing follows in the footsteps of a constellation of authors such as María Luisa Puga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Alicia Gaspar de Alba, whose archives are also held at the Benson, offering readers a powerful lens through which to examine the intersections of personal and collective memory, violence, and resistance.

Cover of a literary magazine with the title in yellow and red. A thin line drawing adorns most of it.
Student literary publication from UNAM. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.
Poetry by Cristina Rivera Garza printed on the yellowing pages of a student literary magazine.
Poem published during her time at UNAM. Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, Benson Latin American Collection.

The Cristina Rivera Garza Papers, now part of the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, contains poetry, photographs, essays, correspondence, and manuscripts. Among the highlights of the collection are letters between the author and her sister, Liliana Rivera Garza. This rich archive offers scholars and students an unprecedented opportunity to engage with Rivera Garza’s creative process from conception to completion. Her literary contributions will undoubtedly continue to shape contemporary literature for generations to come.

Lauren Peña, PhD, is head of collection development at the Benson Latin American Collection.

Benson Latin American Collection, Events, LLILAS Benson

An Evening with Gioconda Belli

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Renowned Nicaraguan writer and political figure, Gioconda Belli, spoke to a captivated crowd of over 120 attendees at a March 20 event hosted by the Benson Latin American Collection. The occasion served not only as a platform for Belli to share her remarkable journey but also to celebrate the acquisition of her archive by the Benson Latin American Collection.

Born in Managua, Belli grew up amidst the political upheaval of the Somoza dictatorship. Educated both in Nicaragua and abroad, she studied in Europe and the United States before initially pursuing a career in advertising, later shifting her focus to revolutionary politics.

In 1970, Belli joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a leftist guerrilla organization opposing the Somoza regime, where she served as a clandestine courier, transported weapons, and travelled around Europe and Latin America obtaining resources and raising awareness of the Sandinista struggle.

Belli’s literary works artfully merge fiction and autobiography, drawing from her experiences as a revolutionary and a woman. Themes of love, desire, politics, and social change permeate her writing, notably exemplified in her renowned novel “The Inhabited Woman” (La mujer habitada, 1988).

Belli’s talk at the Benson delved into her experiences as a Sandinista and how these pivotal moments, intertwined with her personal life, have shaped her identity as a writer. The event provided Belli an opportunity to reflect on the preservation of her legacy at the Benson, and the importance of maintaining a historical accounting.

Attendees were treated to a recital of her poetry during her talk, and her compelling narrative resonated deeply with the audience, sparking thoughtful questions during the Q&A session that followed with director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) Adela Pineda.

Despite being exiled by the government of Daniel Ortega in 2022, Belli remains actively engaged in social and political advocacy, championing women’s rights and democratic reforms in Nicaragua and beyond. Continuously writing and participating in public discourse, she uses her platform to amplify marginalized voices and advocate for social justice.

The event not only served as a tribute to Gioconda Belli’s contributions to literature and politics but also highlighted the importance of preserving her legacy through the acquisition of her archive by the Benson Latin American Collection.

Read an interview with Gioconda Belli by Benson Director Melissa Guy, which appeared in a recent edition of Portal.

Area Studies, Benson Latin American Collection, Collaborations, Digital Humanities, Digital Scholarship, Global Studies, Humanities & Liberal Arts, LLILAS Benson, Read Hot and Digitized

Read, Hot & Digitized: Land and Belonging

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BY DANIEL ARBINO

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT Libraries Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of, and future creative contributions to, the growing fields of digital scholarship.

At a recent talk I gave, an audience member asked me, “What are the strengths of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection?”

It’s a question I receive often, though I don’t know if I’ve ever given a satisfactory answer. I often point to our historical Mexican archival collections, our collections of women writers and artists, and our US Latinx collections pertaining to civil rights. The truth is that I think the Benson does everything well. We have outstanding Brazilian collections, unique and important Caribbean materials, and strong representation in the Southern Cone. We know we can’t collect everything, but we sure try to anyway.

Some of our most recognizable materials are the Relaciones Geográficas, late-sixteenth-century surveys with maps that came with the Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta purchase in 1937. The aim was for the Spanish crown to have a deeper understanding of the provinces surrounding what is today Mexico City. Were there waterways to transport goods? Mines to excavate precious gold and silver? The Relaciones have been the subject of books and digital projects, confirming their relevance for posterity.

Relación de Cuzcatlán (1580), located in present-day Tlaxcala. Benson Latin American Collection.

I mention the RGs, as we affectionately call them, because they came to mind when I recently viewed a 1614 painting of a Bogotá savanna in Colombia titled La Pintura de las tierras pantanos y anegadizos del pueblo de Bogotá. Like the Relaciones Geográficas, art and cartography combine in this stunning piece, which was used as evidence in a trial to determine if landowner Francisco Maldonado y Mendoza had defrauded the Spanish crown on his way to accruing vast tracts of land at cheap prices.

La Pintura de las tierras pantanos y anegadizos del pueblo de Bogotá (1614) blends cartography and art to help settle a legal dispute.

This map became the focus of a digital project called Colonial Landscapes: Redrawing Andean Territories in the Seventeenth Century, in which Dr. Santiago Muñoz Arbelaez led a team from across the Americas, including the University of Connecticut, la Universidad de los Andes, Neogranadina, and la Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, to explore the social and political environment of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Colombia while considering land rights and Indigeneity. The project, which is available in Spanish and English, goes well beyond the digitization of one piece. In the “tour” section of the site, context is provided with the use of stunning rare materials. A portrait of Maldonado y Mendoza allows us to visualize the land baron. Other primary sources, both 2D and 3D, such as early textual and cartographic descriptions of cities and towns provided by Colombia’s national archive, are utilized to delve deeper. In the “Explore” section of the site, users can engage with different aspects of the main map in question.

1758 Map of Sopó, Colombia

However, the highlight of this project is taking a map that discusses landownership between two European entities (Maldonado y Mendoza and the Spanish crown) and inserting Indigenous rights and notions of belonging into the matter. The Muisca are considered at length in this project as the rightful inheritors of the land. The Muisca Confederation was a group of loosely affiliated sovereign regions that made up nearly 10,000 square miles in Colombia when the Spaniards arrived.in 1499.  They had the knowledge to cultivate crops in the savanna and to understand the region’s flora and fauna as well as extensive knowledge of metalworking and salt-mining. Images of Muisca ceramic figures demonstrate a rich culture whose trajectory was upended with the arrival of European colonizers. To that end, the exhibit also shows how Europeans created negative representations of the Muisca to justify the violent imposition of a new order. As land acknowledgements are negotiated and spoken in conversations emanating from sites of power, it is precisely this portion of the project that makes it so timely and necessary. Projects like Colonial Landscapes propose interesting pathways toward digital repatriation while contextualizing our understanding of the past and present. 

Muisca votive figure (600-1600), currently housed in Colombia’s Museo del Oro

Feature image: Relación de Atengo y Misquiahuala, 1579. Benson Latin American Collection.

Daniel Arbino is head of collection development at the Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin.

Collections Highlight, Digital Humanities, Libraries History, Open Access, Read Hot and Digitized, Uncategorized

Red, Hot and Digitized: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

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Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the Libraries’ Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship to encourage and inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.

  • screen capture of forutnoff website

Together with diaries and memoirs in print, audio-visual testimonies are primary sources that shed light on the lived experience of people who experienced the Holocaust.  There are a few institutions around the world that produce, curate, and publish such testimonies;[1] one of them is the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale university. The mission of the Fortunoff archive is to “record and project the stories of those who were there.” Established in 1981, and based on a donation of testimonies previously videotaped since 1979 by The Holocaust Survivors Film Project, the archive works to record, collect, and preserve Holocaust witness testimonies, and to make its collection available to researchers, educators, and the general public.[2]

Fred Alford, professor emeritus of the university of Maryland, researches the way trauma becomes embedded in nations, societies, and groups[3]; upon his research in the Fortunoff archive, he asserted that “testimonies are important [because they] make a historical abstraction real.”[4] Witnesses remind us that the Holocaust was made of people, victims, and executioners. He argues that a proper psychoanalytic interpretation can help us understand not merely the suffering of survivors, but can remind us of an equally important fact: “…. that for every torment there was a tormenter, for every degradation a degrader, for every humiliation one who inflicted it. For every death a murderer……”

He goes on to say that “We listen to witnesses in order to understand their suffering, and we seek to understand their suffering in order to understand better regimes of organized terror and the role they play in our lives……We listen to witnesses in order to remember better that their suffering comes at the hands of regimes that are made of people.”[5]

The Fortunoff archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies, which are comprised of over 12,000 recorded hours. Testimonies were produced in cooperation with 36 affiliated projects across North America, South America, Europe, and Israel. The archive and its affiliates recorded the testimonies of willing individuals with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including those who were in hiding, survivors, bystanders, resistants, and liberators. Testimonies were recorded in whatever language the witness preferred, and range in length from 30 minutes to over 40 hours (recorded over several sessions).

While the database allows for various searching, sorting, and limiting options – using the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) as a form of a common controlled vocabulary – it also has more advanced Digital Humanities tools which were developed together with the Yale DHLab.

Let them speak (LTS) is a digital anthology of testimonies from three different collections – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California (USC VA), and the Fortunoff archive. The anthology includes a search tool that employs corpus query language which allows for more sophisticated searches like Lemma searches. The goal is to demonstrate the value of these linguistics tools for exploring large numbers of audiovisual materials, as well as make a first attempt to bring collections of testimonies into the same digital space. The LTS tool is slated to go live by December 2020.

The Collection metadata dashboard is a visual representation of the collection descriptions, as it allows filtering by various parameters, such as date (birth year and recording year), birth place, subject, gender, language of testimony, and affiliate programs from which testimonies were received. One could access each testimony directly from the dashboard. A useful functionality is the ability to search for subject headings in the dashboard and limit the results further by additional parameters. For example, a search for the term “childbirth” would reveal five subject headings related to the term; clicking on “childbirth in concentration camps” would bring up 98 testimonies.

The Testimony citation database shows data on cited testimonies, publications that cited them, and the authors of those publications. Some authors’ names are linked to the author’s website, their page on the OCLC WorldCat Identities database, or their authority file on the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) database. Searching for Fred Alford, the scholar cited above, one would realize that he has made 60 citations to 26 testimonies in 5 publications. These testimonies and publications are linked from the results page.

The Fortunoff archive is open to any student or researcher either on site, or online through an ‘access site.’ Currently there are 84 access sites around the world in academic libraries, museums, and research centers. The University of Texas Libraries has joined the project as an access site in summer 2019. The archive is accessible to UT affiliates both on and off campus, as well as to non-UT walk-in visitors on campus. All users would need to create an account with Yale’s Aviary, the archive’s digital access system. Searching and browsing is done through that personal account. There is no cost involved. UT affiliates could also access their Aviary account, and the archive, through a proxy connection to UT and/or a VPN.

The UT Libraries holds 390 items (in print and online) that deal with personal narratives and testimonies of holocaust survivors. Most of these items are autobiographies or diaries, while others are audiovisual materials, research and analysis of personal narratives, and collections of individual testimonies. The Fortunoff database itself is also accessible through the library catalog.

[1] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), The Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, The British Library (London), and The University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation.

[2] https://fortunoff.library.yale.edu/about-us/our-story/

[3] https://gvpt.umd.edu/facultyprofile/alford/c-fred

[4] Alford, C. Why Holocaust Testimony is Important, and how Psychoanalytic Interpretation can Help…but only to a Point. Psychoanal Cult Soc 13, 221–239 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2008.16

[5] Ibid.

Alumni, Archives, Benson Latin American Collection, Digital Humanities, Digital Scholarship, LLILAS Benson, News, Open Access, Preservation, Social Sciences

Seminar Commemorates Collaboration with Guatemala on Archives and Human Rights

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Documents at the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (AHPN, Guatemalan National Police Historic Archive). Photo: AHPN.
Documents at the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (AHPN, Guatemalan National Police Historic Archive). Photo: AHPN.

BY HANNAH ALPERT-ABRAMS

Lea en español.

Editor’s note: From the National Security Archive at George Washington University: “Guatemala’s renowned Historical Archive of the National Police (AHPN) is in crisis after its director, Gustavo Meoño Brenner, was abruptly removed in one of a series of recent actions orchestrated by the Guatemalan government and a United Nations office. The actions also placed the AHPN’s remaining staff of more than fifty people on temporary contract, and transferred oversight for the repository from the country’s national archives, where it had functioned since 2009, to the Ministry of Culture and Sports.” (See Guatemala Police Archive Under Threat.)

These actions took place on August 3, a week after LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections joined UT’s Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice in Guatemala City to host “Archives and Human Rights: A History of Collaboration between the University of Texas and the Historic Archive of the National Police.” The one-day seminar was an opportunity to reflect on seven years of partnership between the University of Texas and the AHPN, which preserves records documenting over one hundred years of police activity in Guatemala.

Given the recent alarming developments at AHPN, Virginia Garrard, director of LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections at The University of Texas at Austin, stated, “LLILAS Benson affirms its commitment to supporting the preservation of this historic collection, which is so fundamental to the pursuit of justice, the recovery of historical memory in Guatemala, and to the preservation of Guatemala’s national history dating back all the way to the nineteenth century.”

___________________________________________________

Representatives from LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections and the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice visited Guatemala City on July 27 for a seminar on archival partnerships between the University of Texas and Guatemalan institutions.

The event, “Archives and Human Rights: A History of Collaboration between the AHPN and the University of Texas” was held at the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (Guatemala National Police Archive, or AHPN). The AHPN is located in the unfinished hospital building where over 80 million pages of archival materials were found, in various states of preservation, in 2005. For over ten years, Guatemalan archivists have been working to preserve, organize, and provide access to this vulnerable collection.

Gustavo Meoño, director of the AHPN, addresses the seminar. Seated (l-r) are Virginia Garrard, Daniel Brinks, and Theresa Polk. Photo: Hannah Alpert-Abrams.
Gustavo Meoño, director of the AHPN, addresses the seminar. Seated (l-r) are Virginia Garrard, Daniel Brinks, and Theresa Polk. Photo: Hannah Alpert-Abrams.

During the seminar, speakers reflected on the seven-year partnership between the AHPN and the University of Texas, which has featured scholarly, pedagogical, and digital collaborations, including the 2011 launch of the UT-hosted digital portal to the AHPN.

The one-day event was hosted by the director of the AHPN, Gustavo Meoño, and by Anna Carla Ericastilla, the director of the Archivo General de Centroamérica. Virginia Garrard, director of LLILAS Benson; Dan Brinks, co-director of the Rapoport Center; and Theresa Polk, director of digital initiatives for LLILAS Benson, spoke about the history of the partnership and its importance for reconstructing historical memory and the pursuit of democracy and transitional justice in Central America.

Daniel Brinks (l), co-director of the Rapoport Center; Virginia Garrard, director of LLILAS Benson; and Gustavo Meoño, director of AHPN. Photo: Hannah Alpert-Abrams.
Daniel Brinks (l), co-director of the Rapoport Center; Virginia Garrard, director of LLILAS Benson; and Gustavo Meoño, director of AHPN. Photo: Hannah Alpert-Abrams.

LLILAS Benson alumni Giovanni Batz, Brenda Xum, María Aguilar, and Hannah Alpert-Abrams discussed the impact of teaching and learning with the archive on their professional careers and their personal understanding of Guatemalan history. Especially moving were personal stories from former UT students whose understanding of their cultural heritage was shaped by studying the AHPN. As Brenda Xum remarked: “los archivos cuentan una historia humana” (“the archives tell a human story”).

LLILAS alumna Brenda Xum. Photo: Hannah Alpert-Abrams.
LLILAS alumna Brenda Xum. Photo: Hannah Alpert-Abrams.

Longtime AHPN affiliates Enmy Morán and Tamy Guberek offered visions of the future of research with the AHPN, including new approaches to archival practice and new quantitative methods for uncovering archival histories.

About seventy-five scholars, archivists, students, and community members attended the conference, which was open to the public. Among the topics addressed in audience questions were the challenges of digital preservation, the difficulties of accessing archival information, and the ethics of publishing sensitive information online.

Throughout the very warm afternoon, participants commented on the ways that the conference had reinvigorated their interest in archival research and Guatemalan history. At the end of the day, one audience member stood to congratulate the panelists on a successful event. “Before this event I didn’t really know about this archive,” she said, “and I didn’t know about its importance to my country’s history.”

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The seminar “Archivos y derechos humanos: experiencia de colaboración entre AHPN y UT Austin” was co-sponsored by Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (AHPN), LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, and the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.

Hannah Alpert-Abrams, PhD, is the CLIR postdoctoral fellow in data curation at LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections.

Benson Latin American Collection, Collections

Collections Highlight: The Memoirs of Santa Anna

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Antonio López de Santa Anna. “Mis memorias, escritas de mi puño y letra sin ayuda de nadie,en mi último destierro,” 1872. Paper, 12 x 7 in. Genaro Garcìa Collection, Benson Latin American Collection.
Antonio López de Santa Anna. “Mis memorias, escritas de mi puño y letra sin ayuda de nadie,en mi último destierro,” 1872. Paper. 12 x 7 in. Genaro Garcìa Collection,
Benson Latin American Collection.

Mexican politician and general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna wrote these memoirs during his final exile in Havana in 1872.

Sometimes referred to as “the Napolean of the West,” Santa Anna — who served as president of Mexico in multiple, non-consecutive terms — is infamous for losing control of Texas and the extensive territories of the U.S. Southwest in 1836.

Archives, Books, Collections, Ephemera, Historic Musical Recordings Collection, Maps, Photography

Book Catalogs the Universe of UT Collections

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“The Collections” (UT Press, 2016).

While we’re apt to sound out the world-class general and distinctive materials maintained by the Libraries, these resources are just a single galaxy in a greater universe of extraordinary collections across UT campus.

In the first of its kind accounting, the University of Texas Press has just released a massive assemblage of the rare, unique and exceptional collections that reside on the Forty Acres in the form of The Collections, a necessarily significant tome documenting the various holdings — recognizable and not so — from around UT.

Represented in the book are Libraries mainstays such as the Benson Latin American Collection, the Alexander Architectural Archive, the PCL and Walter Geological Map Collections and the Historical Music Recordings Collection, as well as highlights from discrete collections across the branches.

The book features hundreds of items from more than 80 collections campus-wide, covering a range of subject areas: archaeology, ethnography, fine and performing arts, rare books and manuscripts, decorative arts, photography, film, music, popular and material culture, regional and political history, natural history, science and technology.

Edited by Andrée Bober with the support of more than 350 staff from across the university, The Collections features a foreword by UT Austin President Gregory L. Fenves and a historical introduction by Lewis Gould, professor emeritus of American history, whose essay traces the formation of the collections and acknowledges many people whose visions are manifest in these material resources.

The Collections is available now through UT Press, and will be in the stacks at the Fine Arts Library soon.

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Fine Arts Library, Students

Reflections on a Practicum

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Mark GoodwinMark Goodwin is a project assistant for HeadsUpGuys and student librarian in the Music, Art and Architecture Library at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He undertook a practicum with Music Librarian David Hunter of the Fine Arts Library at UT this spring. He has graciously provided the following reflections on his time in Austin.

For my two-week practicum, I was extremely fortunate to be given the opportunity to work under Music Librarian and Musicologist Dr. David Hunter at the Fine Arts Library at the University of Texas in Austin. My time there resulted in profound growth on both a professional and personal level.

The Fine Arts Library.Dr. Hunter was an outstanding mentor. He has a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge relating to the profession and was more than willing to share this wealth of experience with me. He was also exceptionally kind and constantly made sure I was getting the most out of my time, even going above an beyond my role in the library to inform me of events occurring throughout the city. In terms of my role, Dr. Hunter had me take on an assistant-type position in which I shadowed him and helped with his daily duties. This was key to making the experience an invaluable one for me, and I am extremely grateful to Dr. Hunter for giving me this role. Continue reading Reflections on a Practicum →

Benson Latin American Collection, Human Rights Documentation Initiative

Chat with a Rwandan Youth Leader

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Aegis Trust Youth Ambassador Dydine Umunyana. Photo by Christian Kelleher.
Aegis Trust Youth Ambassador Dydine Umunyana. Photo by Christian Kelleher.

For a little over two weeks in January and February, UT Libraries was the home base for a visit by Rwandan Dydine Umunyana who works with Aegis Trust, a project partner with the Libraries’ Human Rights Documentation Initiative. HRDI project manager and Benson Collection archivist Christian Kelleher sat down with Dydine to ask her about her work in the U.S.

We’re so excited to have you here, Dydine. Can you tell me what brought you to the U.S.?

I came to the U.S. to advocate for young people from my country and to bring awareness to youth internationally as a Youth Ambassador for Peace from Aegis Trust, a nonprofit organization that combats genocide around the world. Aegis is based in England where they run the National Holocaust Center and Museum, and they help manage the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda.

UT Libraries connected to Aegis Trust and the Kigali Genocide Memorial through our partnership to preserve documentation of the 1994 Genocide. How did you first get involved with Aegis Trust?

In 2009, I was selected as one of 30 influential students at my high school and they brought us to the Kigali Genocide Memorial to learn the real history of my country and to go through their peace-building education program. The goal of the peace-building education program is to learn from the past, to help to stop cycles of hatred and be able to build the future. A few years later, as a result of what I had learned from the peace-building education program, I started a nonprofit company Umbrella Cinema Promoters that educates young women in Rwanda to share their own stories through film. We had a workshop in 2013 and launched the organization then, and that’s when I reconnected with Aegis Trust and was appointed a Youth Ambassador.

Tell me more about your filmmaking work!

After my high school I wasn’t able to continue my university studies, as so many young people in Rwanda. I had experience as a singer and songwriter, and I was asked to compose a song for a short film. I had to spend a week in the studio composing the song and learning the story of the film, and I also learned how they were doing things about filming and scriptwriting and I became so much interested in how they were making the film. So I went home and began writing a script for my own short film. In Rwanda you can’t do shooting of a film without permission from the government, so I went to the Ministry of Sport and Culture for a recommendation letter but they refused because I didn’t have a company that I worked for. I got the idea that I probably wasn’t the only young person who had ideas but no organization for support, so I decided I should start my own nonprofit company for that purpose, to encourage and empower young women to tell their own stories. I met some students from USC who were in Rwanda and they asked if I had a project and I took my script and called all my friends and we shot my first short film about the problem of HIV in Rwanda.

What have you done during your time visiting the University of Texas?

I’ve done a lot! I toured UT and it was tiring because of how big it is. I’ve been here for more than two weeks and I have had so many meetings engaging and bringing awareness about what’s going on in post conflict countries. I met with students in the White Rose Society at Texas Hillel and from Amnesty International, and with professors in so many departments like Women’s and Gender Studies and Theater and more. And I’ve spent a lot of time in the library because of the partnership between you and Aegis Trust and the Rwanda Genocide Archive.

And beyond UT, what have been some of the things you’ve done in Austin?

I met with Greg Kwedar who is producer of an amazing film Rising From Ashes about the Rwanda cycling team. I’ve experienced different food like barbecue and how Texans are so proud, and with [retired Vice Provost and Director of UT Libraries] Fred and Jean Heath I visited the Capitol building and learned about La Belle and the history of Texas at the Bullock Museum with the giant star. One day in the night I watched Selma, which was a great film for me to see how you can resolve conflict without fighting and I think it should be screened everywhere in the world, and in the morning went to the LBJ Library and saw how was America at that time. I didn’t even know there were libraries for presidents and I was able to listen to his calls with Martin Luther King and others!

Learn more about Dydine on her blog http://dydineadventures.com/, and Aegis Trust at http://www.aegistrust.org/.