Latin American Ephemera: Digitized Microfilm Sets

Princeton University Library is pleased to announce that an early and vast subset of its renowned Latin American Ephemera Collection that until recently was only accessible in microfilm or in Special Collections is now digitally available on its Digital PUL site.

In time, Latin American Ephemera: Digitized Microfilm Sets will include approximately 350 thematically and geographically organized sub-collections, ranging in size from a handful of items to hundreds of them, that were assembled and microfilmed between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s. Among the topics most commonly addressed by the collections are politics, human and civil rights, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, environment and ecology, education, labor, health, and socioeconomic conditions.

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SPA 307 “Ways of Reading and Writing in Spanish” students visit Latin American Ephemera Collection

On March 20, students of the advanced language course SPA 307 Ways of Reading and Writing in Spanish visited the library to examine a vibrant selection of posters and pamphlets created by protesters who took to the streets of Santiago de Chile, Bogotá, Colombia, and San Juan, Puerto Rico in recent years.

Poster. Colombia. Latin American Ephemera Collection. View full description and image.

As Instructors Mariana Bono and Catalina Méndez Vallejo explained on the website of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, the purpose of the experience was “to deepen their understanding of discourses and technologies of resistance and dissent in Latin America…The words, signs, stencils, leaflets, drawings, and posters that are now part of the Latin American Ephemera Collection tell the story of a pivotal moment in the recent history of Latin America, and afford unique access to the multiple voices and the many layers of meaning that powered the massive estallidos sociales, or social and political uprisings, of the early 2020s.”

Included in this post is a small sample of the dozens of pieces displayed during the visit. The digital reproductions are part of Princeton’s Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera, a steadily growing subset of the Latin American Ephemera Collection containing thousands of digitized ephemeral items created across the region in recent decades.

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Colección Documental sobre la violencia política en el Perú

The Central Library of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and Princeton University Library have partnered to make digitally available to researchers, students, and the general public, the Colección Documental sobre la violencia política en el Perú, an extensive collection documenting the tragic period of terrorism and political violence that plagued Peru in the late twentieth century.

The collection, compiled by Gustavo Gorriti Ellenbogen during his years as an investigative journalist during the period, consists of a vast array of documents including political brochures, flyers, reports from political organizations, periodical publications, newspaper clippings, personal documentation, books and literature of the time. It is probably the most complete and detailed documentary collection for the analysis of the terrorist phenomenon in Peru.

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Records of Resistance

Records of Resistance: Documenting Global Activism 1933 to 2021, Princeton University Library’s latest exhibition, includes images that range from sacred Passover Haggadot that embody Jews’ spiritual resistance to their oppressors during and immediately after the Holocaust, to dramatic photographs of marchers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, to vibrant posters, pamphlets and photographs created by protesters taking to the streets of Lahore, Pakistan and Santiago, Chile, only a few years ago.

The exhibition content originating in Chile relates to the nation-wide mass protests known as the Estallido Social (social outburst), a series of nation-wide mass protests that went on steadily from October 2019 to March 2020 and made painfully visible the deep social discontent of broad sectors of Chilean society.  

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Alma Concepción Collection

Princeton University Library is pleased to announce the acquisition by donation of the papers of Puerto Rican dancer, educator, choreographer, and independent scholar Alma Concepción. Concepción was first soloist of Ballets de San Juan, a member of the Carmen Amaya Company, Antonio´s Ballets de Madrid, and the Taller de Histriones mime company in Puerto Rico. She was the founder of Taller de Danza, a children’s movement and dance community organization based in Trenton, New Jersey. She was instructor of Spanish dance and ballet at the Princeton Ballet School and the Ballet Hispánico of New York, as well as Visiting Faculty at Fordham, Princeton, and Rutgers University. She has also been a long time and dedicated contributor to People & Stories / Gente y Cuentos, a grassroots literature program dedicated primarily to underserved communities.

September 2023 UPDATE: Archivo de Alma Concepción, 1939-2021 is now open for research.

Alma Concepción as Erzulí. Atibón-Ogú-Erzulí. 1979
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Brazilian ephemera just received

In recent days, we unpacked a shipment of dozens of fascinating pieces of ephemera gathered across different regions of Brazil by our colleagues at at the Library of Congress Office in Rio de Janeiro.

Items address a wide variety of timely topics including indigenous rights, women’s rights, anti-racism, and COVID-19 public education. Also included are several political campaign propaganda pieces for the 2022 general election.

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