LAL01. Latin American Library - Manuscript Collections

Scope and Contents

Autographed letter of Adela Breton, Bath, England, to Thomas William Francis Gann, in which she, an artist of Maya antiquities, expresses concern for Alfred Maudslay's casts of Mayan sculpture lying neglected at South Kensington. 1 piece.

Scope and Contents 1930-1947. This collection consists of correspondence, notarial acts, clippings, photos, reports and other items that detail the personal and business affairs of Adolfo Díaz, a three time President of Nicaragua. Most items describe Díaz's involvement with the La Luz & Los Angeles Mining Co., and Nicaraguan gold mining. Other items deal with the Nicaraguan political situation after 1940. Most notable are several letters from Emiliano Chamorro. The majority of the collection consists of a...

Scope and Contents

May 15, 1888. Legal document on sealed paper issued in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in which Rómulo E. Durón seeks to reverse a previous ruling which granted rights to the abandoned mine Monserrat in Yuscarán prejudicial to his clients. D.S. 6 leaves, quarto.

Scope and Contents

1907. Writing from New Orleans to Jesús Ulloa in Puerto Cortes, Honduras, the future president of Honduras, Alberto Membreño, mentions the suspension of mail service to the interior and the unstable government of Honduras. 1 leaf.

Scope and Contents

1913-1966. A collection of copied and pasted clippings of published poetry by select Latin American poets organized in a 78-page scrapbook. The authors include Blanco-Belmonte, Darío, Villaespesa, Heredia, among others. Included as well are 7 loose pieces of poetry published and unpublished.

Scope and Contents

[1920s?]. Corrected typescript of lecture entitled "¿De dónde procede el Indio? No es evidente que el Indio haya existido desde largo tiempo en el Nuevo Mundo," given by Dr. Aleš Hrdlička of the Smithsonian Institution.

Scope and Contents

1910-1950 Photocopies of an incomplete typescript manuscript based on the Motul Dictionary of Yucatecan Maya of Antonio de Ciudad Real. It was probably typed under the direction of Walter Lehmann in order to preserve the manuscript of Carl Hermann Berendt's 1870s version of the dictionary. An explanatory note by Munro S. Edmonson is in each box. 1 piece; 1017 pages.

Scope and Contents

1524-1558 Six photocopies of manuscripts held in the Archivo General de la Nacion, Guatemala. Most are in the handwriting of Brasseur de Bourborg and some have passages of Quiché with Spanish translations. The documents concern early land titles of the Indians in Chiapas and the Quiché Indians of Guatemala, including Quezaltenango, Momostenango, and Verapaz. 6 pieces total.

Scope and Contents

1946 Book of love poems, typewritten and signed in San salvador by the Salvadoran writer, Juan Felipe Toruño. No. 25 of 37. 20 pages.

Scope and Contents 1937-1938. Collection of materials related to a 2-year travel survey of libraries in Central America and the Caribbean. The materials consist of field letters with descriptions of libraries and their countries, photographs of libraries and other places, preliminary layout pages of photographs for publication, and clippings. 1,051 photographs; 187 other pieces.During Arthur Gropp's tenure as librarian at the Middle American Research Institute, he conducted an extensive study of...

Scope and Contents

1933.  Draft typescript manuscript for Volume 5 of the Middle American Research Institute publication series, containing many handwritten notes, questions, and revisions by Gropp. 1 piece

Published in Studies in Middle America (1934). Please click the link below to see the catalog record. http://voyager.tcs.tulane.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=190690

Scope and Contents

1991. Historical, political, economic, and social analysis of Central American liberal political power from 1870 to 1929; written as Volume IV of a larger study of Central American history. 1 piece.

Scope and Contents

1827-1828.  A collection of six letters and two diplomatic memoranda related to the Asamblea de Tacubaya, the successor to the 1826 Inter-American Congress in Panama. The majority of the documents deals with an attempt by the Ministers for Gran Colombia, Mexican and the Central American Federation to settle a dispute in Central America. The state of Inter-American Relations is the other major subject touched upon by the correspondence. 8 pieces.

Scope and Contents

A pen sketch of a person reading a book used as a holiday greeting by the artist to the staff of the Latin American Library.

Scope and Contents

1977.  A woodcut, 14 1/2" x 10", entitled, Osamento: Serie de la isla, a gift of the artist to the Latin American Library.

Scope and Contents

1790. Letter from Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañon, Archbishop-elect of Santa Fe (de Bogatá) in Colombia to the Conde de Tepa telling of his arrival in Cartagena de Indias en route to his new post, after a hazardous journey from Trujillo, Peru which took 56 days. 2 leaves 8°.

Scope and Contents

1971-1972. 51 transcriptions of taped conversations in Spanish and Quechua between Barbara Bode and survivors of the 1970 earthquake in Huaraz, Peru. 

Scope and Contents

1980.  Photocopies of essays written by Longino Becerra. These works include: "El Partido Comunista de Honduras y el Maoismo ante el proceso reformista-burgués" (77 pages), regarding activities in the 1970s of the two Honduran Communist parties, the Partido Comunista de Honduras and the Partido Comunista Marxista Leninista de Honduras; and "La Comunidad primitiva en Honduras" (46 pages), a Marxian analysis of Mayan society before the Conquest. 2 pieces

Scope and Contents

ca. 1905. 75 sheets of tracings of illustrations from Sahagun's Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, the Codex Florentino, Book 12. Drawn in black ink on tracing paper; made from photographs of the original manuscript, Mss. Med. Palatino 220 (Book 10-12) in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, Italy, for the Francisco del Paso y Troncoso edition of 1905-1907. 78 pieces.

Scope and Contents

February 8, 1931. Three-page biography of General Jorge Ubico sent to Tulane University as a press release upon his election as president of Guatemala. Cover letter is included.

Scope and Contents

1783. Letter from Esteban Lorenzo, Bishop of Nicaragua, in León, thanking el Conde de Tepa for the use of his influence in procuring his appointment as Bishop of Durango, Mexico. 1 sheet

Scope and Contents

1983. Illustrated indigenous calendar of Bolivia showing historical heroes and events in Aymara and Kechua languages.

Scope and Contents Jan. 11, 1848 - Nov. 1, 1849.  Copies of 3 dossiers of records for two cases brought before the Grand Court in Belize, settlement of British Honduras.  The first case deals with opposition to the Chief Justice Robert Temple by jurors and the subsequent arrest of William Henry Coffin for contempt of court.  The second case concerns irregularities in the inquest made after a drowning.  The collection also includes sample forms for various court procedures. The records help paint a portrait of...

Scope and Contents

1866 Notes by an administrator in a calendar journal, of daily life on a plantation upriver from Belize. Weather is noted, workers present or sick and their jobs, rations, punishments are mentioned, also flooding, trips to Belize for trading, crops including plantains, rice, pineapples, and corn, such animals as cows, pigs, and chickens, going to the Bar, and a Mr. Hamilton, who may be the owner.

Scope and Contents

n.d. Photograph of a page of a Cakchiquel-Spanish word list for the letter B. It is identified as coming from the Archival Collection of Guatemala.

Scope and Contents

1990-2010.  Illustrated calendars from or about Latin America. Some of the themes include the following: reproductions of antique maps, illustrations relating to indigenous culture, reproductions of items in the Library of Congress in commemoration of the quincentennial of the European discovery of the Americas, paintings of Frida Kahlo, Mexican architecture during the Porfiriato, folk art of Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Venezuela, and Cine Mexicano. 39 pieces.