LibGuides: History of the Mexico-US Border and its Peoples : Primary Sources: Online resources and Collections

Primary Sources and Online Collections

Hispanic American Newspapers 1808-1980
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 includes several hundred titles from Latino presses of the 19th and 20th centuries. Includes titles published in Spanish, English, and bilingual papers from across 22 states.
Latin American Newspapers Series 1, 1805-1922
Provides access to more than 45 fully searchable Latin American newspapers covering people, issues and events of the region between 1805 and 1922.
Latin American Newspapers Series 2, 1822-1922
The second series of digitized Latin American Newspapers expands the number of searchable titles available from this region by more than 250 additional titles. Includes newspapers published in English, Spanish and Portuguese from 20 countries.

Ethnic NewsWatch
Included are journals, magazines, and newspapers from ethnic and minority presses, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives. The complete Ethnic NewsWatch resource, incorporating both current Ethnic NewsWatch and Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, provides a full-text collection of more than 2.5 million articles from over 330 titles, from 1959 to current. Ethnicities include: African American/Caribbean/African; Arab/Middle Eastern; Asian/Pacific Islander; European/Eastern European; Hispanic; Jewish; Native People.
Ethnic American Newspapers Balch Collection 1799-1971
Includes 130 newspapers in ten languages from 25 states, including many rare 19th Century titles. Emphasis is on Americans of Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak, and Welsh descent.
AM Explorer
Multiple digital collections including African American Communities, Age of Exploration, America in WWII, American Indian Newspapers, Everyday Life & Women in America, and more.

The Torn Apart Project Volume I
This website uses digital technologies to map the significance of US Immigration and Cutoms Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. Volume I locates all ICE detention centers on a US map, and provides additional access points to alternative views of the ICE landscape, including information such as photographs and data.
The Torn Apart Project Volume II
Volume II traces the financial context of ICE; who has funded and who has profited from this phenomenon, including the role of money, businesses, and politicians and government agencies.
Arizona-Sonora Documents Online
Arizona-Sonora Documents Online provides web access to digital images of archival collections relating to Sonora, Mexico that are located at three Arizona repositories: the University of Arizona Library Special Collections; the Arizona Historical Society-Tucson; and the Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records. The collections date from the 19th and early 20th centuries. They cover a broad range of topics, including ranching, mining, land grants, anti-Chinese movements, crime on the border, and governmental issues.
Tejano Voices
Audio oral histories and transcripts of leaders and activists in Texas interviewed by Jose Angel Gutierrez. Not all the collection is available online but transcripts are available from the University of Arlington Library Special Collections.
Mexican Heritage Project
The rich photographic collection of over 4000 images assembled by the Mexican Heritage Project has been accessible to researchers at Arizona Historical Society as individual photos since the mid 1980s.
Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings
Largest collection of Mexican & Mexican-American music. Digitized snippets from records. Hosted at UCLA.

Many libraries & archives have digitized collections of materials related to borderlands history and culture:

Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA
Border Studies Archive of UT- Rio Grande Valley
Benson Latin American Collection of UT-Austin
Borderlands collections at University of Arizona
New Mexico Digital Collections
Arte Publico Press's Digital Humanities Projects
The National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico

While not a primary source itself, Indigenous Mexico is a website that has articles based on primary sources that are linked within the article or at the bottom of the webpage.

Government/Statistics

Yearbook of Immigration Statistics
The Yearbook of Immigration Statistics is a compendium of tables that provides data on foreign nationals who, during a fiscal year, were granted lawful permanent residence (i.e., admitted as immigrants or became legal permanent residents), were admitted into the United States on a temporary basis (e.g., tourists, students, or workers), applied for asylum or refugee status, or were naturalized. The Yearbook also presents data on immigration enforcement actions, including alien apprehensions, removals, and returns.
Immigration and Migration information from California
This page contains demographic research and analysis extracted from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 Censuses, the American Community Survey, various years of the Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement, and migration (which describes movements within the same country or state) and immigration (which describes movements between countries).
EPA: U.S.-Mexico Border 2020 Program
Homeland Security Digital Library

Special Collections at Tisch Library & the SMFA

19th Century Pamphlets

Tisch has a collection of mostly 19th century pamphlets in Special Collections that include topics covering the borderlands, including questions about annexation of Texas & California, debates and speeches on slavery and abolition, U.S. military campaigns in Mexico. To see a list of titles of pamphlets, click "view full text" under Available Online.

Rare books

Tisch has some rare books that cover the borderlands region, mostly travelogues and histories. To locate books in special collections, used the Advanced Search, with any field is exact "Tufts special collections" and your keyword (e.g. Mexico, Texas, California).

A few examples are below:

A new discovery of a vast country in America, extending above four thousand miles, between New France and New Mexico... by Louis Hennepin
Publication Date: 1698
A record of travels in Arizona and California, 1775-1776 by Francisco Tomás Hermenegildo Garcés
Publication Date: 1965
Narrative of the Texan Santa Fé expedition : comprising a description of a tour through Texas... by George Wilkins Kendall
Publication Date: 1844

Contemporary Artist Books from the SMFA Collections

For more contemporary and artistic responses to the borderlands, students can visit the SMFA Library's special collections. A few sample titles are listed below:

Which side are you on? by Bonnie Thompson Norman
Publication Date: 2019
An artist book responding to the U.S. government's policy of separating children at the U.S./Mexico border.
Borderbus by Juan Felipe Herrera
Publication Date: 2019
An artist book accompanied by a recording of a poem and audio file of the book. Two women detained on a ICE bus.