Resources for Research: Latin American History

Recommended by Dr. Seth Meisel, History Department, UW-Whitewater

The Conquest of Mexico
This is an exceptional website that allows students to contrast primary documents from Spanish conquistadores with indigenous accounts in order to explore how historians have understood this event.  It also offers lesson plans, maps, a timeline and important visual material.

Retratos
On-line art exhibition of Latin American portraits from the colonial era to contemporary art.  Organized by historical time period.  Reproductions and discussion.

Castas
Website presents the Mexican colonial art genre of “Casta” paintings which depicted the various mixed-race peoples of Mexico and how, ideally, race determined an individual’s  place in the social hierarchy.   Reproductions and discussion.

Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820
Website with representative art from distinct periods in pre-Colombian and colonial Spanish American history.  Organized by time periods and themes, with discussions for each work of art.

Mexico: From Empire to Revolution
This website was organized by the Getty Museum and presents Mexican history from the mid-19th century to the Revolution (1910-1920) through photographs from the museum’s collection. Valuable images as well as a very interesting commentary on the relationship between photography and history.  Contains mps, interpretative chronology.

Oxford Latin American Economic History Database
This database contains economic, financial and demographic data for 20th century Latin America.  It is searchable by category, time period, and by nation (i.e. one can compare primary school enrollments from 1900-1940 in Cuba and Chile).