Vetted Resources: Latin American & Caribbean History

This resource was developed as part of the AHA’s Remote Teaching Resources initiative.

1930 Brazilian Revolution

Jabzy, Three Minute History 

The 1930 Brazilian Revolution video examines the end of Brazil’s first republic and “coffee-with-milk” politics. The video addresses the unexpected rise to power of Rio Grande do Sul’s Getúlio Vargas, which effectively ended coffee-producing São Paulo and dairy-producing Minas Gerais’ stranglehold on national politics. This short video can be used in an undergraduate survey, and also in IB History of the Americas or IB 20thc History classes. It may also serve as a helpful recap for a unit on the rise of authoritarianism in Brazil.

Bracero History Archive

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Brown University, and The Institute of Oral History at the University of Texas at El Paso

The Bracero History Archive collects and makes available oral histories, documents, and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. During that time, millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program. Tutorials are available on how to navigate this site, conduct oral histories, and how to use Omeka to curate images and create posters.

Curriculum@CLASP

Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP)

This site offers a collection of resources to help introduce Latin American studies to middle, secondary school and college-level instructors. It includes suggested links to curriculum, reading, and lesson plans. Much of the material, like the guide to exploring Latin American and Caribbean collections in NYC museums is interdisciplinary and spans multiple categories.

Curriculum: Latin American Studies

Latin American Studies Program, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Arizona 

Curriculum: Latin American Studies hosts more than 300 teaching documents for elementary, middle, high school, and community college instructors. One notable example is “Africa Enslaved: A Curriculum Unit on Comparative Slave Systems for Grades 9-12,” which provides a broad overview. This site offers downloadable lesson plans, activities, and worksheets, with additional features that may be useful for undergraduate survey instruction as well.

Commodity Histories

Sandip Hazareesingh, Principal Investigator 

Commodity Histories is a public forum for research postings as well as news and information about the history of commodities. The forum details the rich histories and cultures of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America via their world historical role in crop and other commodity production, past and present. An outgrowth of Commodities of Empire, this is is a community-building project. Available resources include working papers, primary sources, and a bibliography of commodities.

Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery

Thomas Jefferson Foundation 

The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery expands understanding of enslaved Africans and their descendants living in the Chesapeake, Carolinas, and Caribbean during the colonial and antebellum eras. Teachers and students can analyze and compare archaeological data from twelve Caribbean sites, including Jamaica’s Mona Estate, and 21 American sites, including Virginia’s Monticello, Montpelier, and Mount Vernon. Instructors will find particular use in the background information, object galleries, maps, and images of various excavation sites.

Haiti and the Atlantic World: Sources and Resources for Discussions about Haiti and the Haitian Revolution

Julia Gaffield, Georgia State University

Haiti and the Atlantic World encourages discussion about Haiti’s founding documents and their influences on the broader Atlantic. The resources include English and French Language primary sources, as well as secondary source readings with which they can be paired.

Haitian Odysseys

Vanessa Mongey

Haitian Odysseys is a StoryMap that can help students gain insights into patterns of mobility related to the nineteenth-century African diaspora. Students can follow the journeys of the Granville family and consider the routes and support networks that made such travel possible. This StoryMap can serve as a focal point for simulations, debate, independent research, guided discussion, or to tap into prior learning on the Black Atlantic experience. This site also serves as part of a broader unit on post-colonial migration and Afro-descended identity.

Historias Podcast

Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS). Created and hosted by Steven Hyland, Dustin Walcher, Lily Pearl Balloffet, Carlos Dimas. Also hosted by: Renata Keller, David McLaughlin, Carmen Soliz, Jaclyn Sumner. 

The Historias Podcast is a weekly program of informed discussion on the cultural, economic, political, and social life of Latin American and Caribbean societies, including their diasporas.

imagineRio

Farès el-Dahdah and Alida C. Metcalf

imagineRio is a searchable digital atlas that illustrates the social and urban evolution of Rio de Janeiro, as it existed and as it was imagined. By zooming in on geo-referenced primary source documents which are verified against a modern aerial photo, students and researchers may trace the development of the city’s built and natural environments from colonial beginnings in 1502 to the present New Republic. Historic maps, plans, and atlases help students locate convent, military, and other structures at different points in time; users may also highlight beaches, marshlands, and lagoons to track urban growth. As such, this site offers background for more specialized research into the city. More information on how to navigate the site, including a short video can be found here.

J. León Heguera Collection of Colombiana

Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University

The J. León Heguera Collection of Colombiana includes primary sources on 17th to 20th-century Colombian history and culture. The collection includes books, manuscripts, broadsides, pamphlets (including novenas), royal cedulas, programas, and newspapers. The site includes links to online exhibits and corresponding essays on topics such as Colombian independence, rebellion and nation-building, and Colombia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Digital Projects

Brown University Library 

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Digital Projects is useful to student researchers or instructors in search of primary source material on Latin America and the Caribbean. This site is especially rich in sources on Brazilian history and includes accessible, short readings penned by Brown University faculty. The site also offers links to external sources.

LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections: Curriculum

LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections and Urban Teachers Program, University of Texas at Austin

The LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections Curriculum offers rich content focused on Latin American, Latinx, and African Diaspora studies and collections in the Benson Latin American Collection. Resources include high school lesson plans, undergraduate assignments, primary sources, and digital scholarship tool guides, including a tutorial on ArcGIS. High school lesson plans include links to readings and short videos.

Mala Sangre: Religion and Race in Colonial Latin America

Stuart Schwartz, Yale University

In Mala Sangre: Religion and Race in Colonial Latin America, Stuart Schwartz traces the origin of racial and ethnic classifications. Here, Prof. Schwartz argues that such hierarchy and division may not have originated in the 19th century (with the work of Linnaes and the dissemination of Social Darwinism), but rather, much earlier and as the result of Iberian settlement and exchange in the Americas. Instructors and students of the early modern Atlantic world will find this a helpful explanation of the introduction, expansion, and navigation of the casta system.

Modern Latin America, 8th Edition: Companion Website

Developed by students at Brown University working with Professor James N. Green in the course “Modern Latin America.” 

The Modern Latin America companion website serves as support material for the 8th edition of the textbook. It also provides access to primary source documents, images, timelines, related essays, and more. World and Latin American history Instructors might assign enrichment reading from this site or use the discussion questions for synchronous instruction or remote assignments. The site also offers access to Latin American travelogues with companion essays, as well as suggestions for further reading. Instructors may refer to the recommended films on Latin America by country in planning for in-person or asynchronous instruction.

Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Walter Hawthorne, Dean Rehberger, Ethan Watrall, principal investigators; Michigan State University

Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network is a data repository of information on the identities of enslaved people in the Atlantic World. A good starting place for student research projects, it includes the names, ethnicities, skills, occupations, and illnesses of individual enslaved people. Users can access three data sets: one about enslaved people in Maranhão, Brazil, one about enslaved people in colonial Louisiana, and another about formerly enslaved people in Antebellum Louisiana. The resources section features extensive database links to a burial database, trial records, the Texas Slavery Database project, and more.

Teaching Chile’s Road to Socialism: Topics, Questions, and Assignments – Age of Revolutions

Ángela Vergara, University of California at Los Angeles

Teaching Chile’s Road to Socialism: Topics, Questions, and Assignments offers an engaging, interactive approach to teaching about Chile’s peaceful transition to socialism and the powerful domestic and international challenge to President Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity. The resource includes links to primary and secondary sources, including readings, films, and art, as well as instructions on how to teach this topic remotely and in a face-to-face setting. This resource is part of Age of Revolutions, a peer-reviewed, open access journal.