Mexican Studies: UCSD Special Collections and Archives and Digital Collections

Digitization has made many of UCSD’s special collections more widely accessible through UCSD Digital Collections.

Digital Collections with Mexican or Mexican-American content include:

• American Friends Service Committee – U.S.-Mexico Border Program Records: Selections (Redacted abuse and complaint files from the records of the American Friends Service Committee – U.S.-Mexico Border Program, 1977-2001)

• Armed Revolutionary Organizations in Mexico (Printed and manuscript materials created between 1965 and 1998 by 23 distinct revolutionary groups in Mexico. The collection is particularly strong in ephemeral communiques and revolutionary periodicals such as "13 de junio," "Madera" and "Militante." Images were digitized from originals held by the UC San Diego Library). See also the Colegio de Mexico's complementary collection Movimientos Armados en Mexico.
• Baja California (Images of Baja California digitized from original photographs by Harry Crosby, Howard Gulick, and Marquis McDonald)
• Farmworker Movement Documentation Project (Primary Source Accounts by the UFW Volunteers who built the movement (many of whom were of Latin American Descent)
• Harry Crosby Photographs (Includes photographs of Baja California, 1967-1962 and Sonora, Mexico, 1958-1986).
• Herman Baca (A selection of documents illustrating the work and activities of Chicano activist Herman Baca and the Committee on Chicano Rights, 1964-2006)
• The Insite Archive (Materials documenting the inSite organization and the projects of its artists (1992-2006).  Created as a network of contemporary art programs and commissioned projects among non-profit and public institutions, inSite explored public or contextual art practice in the specific context of the San Diego-Tijuana border region. In 1980, Installation Gallery was opened in San Diego with a goal to present local and regional artists. In 1992, inSite was formed, replacing Installation Gallery. InSite has had five major versions: inSITE92, inSITE94, inSITE97, inSITE2000, and inSite_05)
• Latin American Political Campaign Ephemera Collection (Pamphlets, posters, other campaign materials from various Latin American countries, 1990s-2009)
• Marquis McDonald Photographs (Photographs by Marquis McDonald during a 1949-1950 overland trip down the Baja California Peninsula)
• The Mexican Broadsides (Broadsides (single and double-sided, one-sheet documents) produced in Mexico between the early 1600s and 1899. They include religious and government documents on a wide range of topics. The government documents include correspondence between representatives from a range of state and federal agencies, gubernatorial and presidential administrations, and state and national legislatures.
• Pueblos Yucatecos (Audio interviews, transcriptions, and photographs related to life in 5 rural Maya communities in the state of Mexico between the early 20th and early 21st centuries).  See also the related Pueblos Yucatecos Digital Humanities Project/Website on the Omeka Platform
• The Spanish Civil War Collection and the Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Encompassing UC San Diego's Mandeville Special Collections and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, UCSD's Special Collections & Archives houses a wide range of rare books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, artworks, recordings, and archives. These primary source materials support UCSD's instructional and research programs, and distinguish UCSD's library collections from all other research universities.  These special collections include significant holdings related to Mexico.  See especially the:

• list of Mexican Manuscript Collections
• The Baja California Collection
• The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages (Early voyages of exploration and discovery to the Pacific prior to 1850)
• California and the History of the West
• American Institute of Wine & Food Culinary Collection

Mexican content can also be found in:

• The inSite Archive.  InSite produced collaborative contemporary public art projects in the San Diego-Tijuana region. The archive includes publications, administrative files, audio and video materials, and digital materials which document the numerous projects created by inSite artists, as well as the daily functions of the organization between 1992 and 2006.
• The Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection which includes information on Spanish Civil War refugees and exiles in Mexico
• Among the many Artist's Books in Special Collections: To identify, do an advanced search in the UCSD Catalog, limiting the location to Special Collections and searching with the term artist's book and keywords such as Border, Mexico or by the artist's name

Notable Collection Items:

Violetas del Anahuac [Mexican Weekly feminist and literary magazine, written entirely by women, 1888-1889, Edited by Laureana Wright de Kleinhans]

The Internet Archive has a Way-Back Machine that preserves old websites so that they can be consulted even after they are no longer live on the internet.  The Archive contains a Collection of UCSD Materials, which has the following Mexican content:

The Mexican Presidential Election 2012 Archive, which preserves various iterations of the webpages of seven Mexican political parties leading up to and immediately following inauguration of president Enrique Peña Nieto, on Dec. 1, 2012.

UCSD's Latin American Election Statistics: A Guide to Resources

Electronic resource created by Karen Lindvall-Larson, now retired Latin American Studies Librarian at UC San Diego. Consists of a series of volumes on selected Latin American countries that provide chronologies of elections since independence at the municipal, state, and federal levels and list sources of statistics for each election as identified.