One of my favorite parts of being a librarian is the opportunity to participate in community engagement projects. So when the opportunity to work with Albert A. Palacios on a traveling exhibit as one of my rotations, I immediately said yes. The exhibit was a collaboration with the University of Texas at El Paso’s C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department, which was especially exciting as a UTEP alumnus. This is part of a long standing partnership made possible by a U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center grant. Our exhibit brought together holdings from the Benson Latin American Collection, the C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections, and the Municipal Archive of Saltillo in a joint physical and digital exhibit about the Mexican Revolution.

Albert and I traveled to El Paso in May 2025 to finally see the fruits of our labor. When we got to the library’s third floor, Claudia Rivers (Director of the C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections) was hard at work putting the finishing touches on her exhibit. The U.S.-Mexico border played a big role in the Mexican Revolution, which means that UTEP has a lot of special objects in their archives. One of these objects is a commemorative cigar from when Porfirio Díaz and William Howard Taft met at the border in 1909. It was an incredible experience to see these first hand, and to have people from the community view these as well.

The next day was dedicated to digital scholarship workshops to local scholars. We had participants from all over the El Paso-Juárez region, and an archivist even drove three hours from Alpine to attend! Elisabet Takehana, Director of UTEP’s Center of the Digital Humanities, taught stylometry using the stylo package in R. Sergio Morales, LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Graduate Research Assistant and Latin American Studies Master’s student, taught ArcGIS’s Online and StoryMap tools for presenting spatial research using the official photographs from Mexico’s 1910 independence centennial celebration. And finally, I taught how to use Voyant Tools and UDPipe for text analysis using telegrams between Francisco Villa and Lázaro de la Garza. By the end of the day, participants had gotten hands-on experience with all of these different digital humanities tools and processes.

After the workshops, we headed upstairs to the third floor once again for the exhibit opening. The exhibit curated by Claudia Rivers was incredible – showcasing a silk print of Porfirio Díaz, a camera from the early 1900s, and portraits of Francisco I. Madero and his wife which were taken by an El Paso photographer. Though our exhibit didn’t get there on time for the opening (Albert and I learned how to roll with the punches) we were able to direct people to the digital version of the exhibit. All in all, it was a day full of learning and celebration, as well as making connections to scholars in the area.

Finally, on the third day, our exhibit arrived and we put it up for students, faculty, and the public to enjoy! It was a joy to share the Benson Latin American Collection with a wider audience. The exhibit, A Fight for Democracy: The First Years of the Mexican Revolution, will be displayed at UTEP for the summer and then travel to the El Paso Border Heritage Center in the fall. A second copy will circulate through the Austin Public Library later this year.

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Acknowledgements
This initiative would not have been possible without the support of the following individuals and sponsorships:

C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department, The University of Texas at El Paso
● Claudia Rivers, Head
● Susannah Holliday, Assistant Head
● Gina Stevenson, Photo and Processing Archivist

Center of the Digital Humanities, The University of Texas at El Paso
● Elisabet Takehana, Director

Municipal Archive of Saltillo
● Olivia Strozzi, Director
● Iván Vartan Muñoz Cotera, Head of Outreach

LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections
● Melissa Guy, Director, Benson Latin American Collection
● Ryan Lynch, Head of Special Collections
● Jennifer Mailloux, Graphic Designer (special thanks)
● Adela Pineda Franco, LLILAS Director & Lozano Long Endowed Professor
● Theresa Polk, Head of Digital Initiatives
● Ramya Iyer, Grants and Contracts Specialist
● Susanna Sharpe, Communications Coordinator (special thanks)
● Cindy Garza, Accountant
● Leah Long, Administrative Manager

Sponsors
● U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center Title VI Grant
● LLILAS Benson Collaborative Funds