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Speaker 1: Hi, dear listener. My name is Renaldo Leanos Junior, and

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Speaker 1: I'm a producer with Latino USA. Part of my job

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Speaker 1: is to speak with people from across the country. Some

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Speaker 1: of the places I have been to with the show

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Speaker 1: are Texas, Alaska, Mississippi, North Dakota, Iowa, just to name

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Speaker 1: a few. This is my favorite part of the job,

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Speaker 1: talking to people, learning about them and bringing you the

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Speaker 1: stories firsthand. Thank you for supporting us these past three

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Speaker 1: decades and I hope you stay with us for many

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Speaker 1: more years to come. Happy thirtieth anniversary Latino USA.

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Speaker 2: This is Latino USA, the radio journal of news and

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Speaker 2: kurtur Latino USA. La Latino USA.

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Speaker 3: I'm Maria Inojosa. We bring you stories that are underreported

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Speaker 3: but that mattered to you, overlooked by the rest of

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Speaker 3: the media, and while the country is struggling to deal

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Speaker 3: with these we listen to the stories of black and Latinos.

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Speaker 3: Studios United Latino Front, a cultural renaissance organizing at the

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Speaker 3: forefront of the movement. I'm Maria Inojsa no Bayan.

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Speaker 4: If you've been listening to Latino USA this year, you

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Speaker 4: probably know that we've been working on special episodes to

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Speaker 4: celebrate our thirtieth anniversary of being on the air. We've

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Speaker 4: been looking back at our archives and the history of

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Speaker 4: the show. As a producer at Latino USA, I've been

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Speaker 4: working closely with the archivist and librarians at the University

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Speaker 4: of Texas in Austin so we could play clips from

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Speaker 4: our earliest episodes. That's because the Latino USA archives are

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Speaker 4: at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection in ut Austin.

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Speaker 4: We've exchanged emails, chatted over the phone, been on video

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Speaker 4: calls for hours, and Ryan Lynch, the head of Special

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Speaker 4: Collections at the Benson, even visited the Putuo offices in

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Speaker 4: New York this year. When Ryan was there talking about

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Speaker 4: the work they do at the library, he mentioned something

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Speaker 4: in passing that they were putting audio recordings in an oven.

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Speaker 4: It was so strange that I just had to come

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Speaker 4: to Austin to see it with my own eyes.

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Speaker 5: Guess he's here, Hi, Hi, Katie.

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Speaker 4: It's been three months since Ryan visited New York too.

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Speaker 6: That's like old projectors and.

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Speaker 4: I'm in a large room in the basement of the

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Speaker 4: main library of the UT campus.

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Speaker 6: This is a portable DVD player.

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Speaker 4: I remember those h It's built with all sorts of

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Speaker 4: equipment that's not in use. Computers, cassettes, tape players line

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Speaker 4: the walls and shelves, and towards the back of the

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Speaker 4: room there's a metal box with a thermometer sticking out

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Speaker 4: on top.

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Speaker 7: So this is our little lab oven.

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Speaker 4: That's Katie Thornton. She works at ut Live Berries as

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Speaker 4: a digital acid delivery coordinator. So it's not that hot.

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Speaker 8: No, it is only about one hundred and thirty degrees inside.

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Speaker 6: That's the optimal temperature for baking tape.

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Speaker 4: Yes, Katie is baking reels of tape. She needs to

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Speaker 4: do this because, after being stored for so long, the

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Speaker 4: magnetic audio tapes can absorb moisture from the air. It's

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Speaker 4: a process called binder hydrolysis, which makes them sticky. Luckily,

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Speaker 4: baking them fixes that. And how long do you know

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Speaker 4: to bake it?

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Speaker 5: Bye trying.

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Speaker 4: So for months. Every time we ask the Benson for

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Speaker 4: one of Latino USA's early shows, Katie would go into

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Speaker 4: the basement, put a tape in the oven for at

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Speaker 4: least three days, take it out and let it cool.

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Speaker 4: Then Katie would mount it on the tape player, copy

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Speaker 4: it to the computer and prepare the file to be

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Speaker 4: sent to us. If it weren't for Katie, maybe those

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Speaker 4: recordings would have been lost and we wouldn't have been

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Speaker 4: able to look at ourselves in the mirror as a show.

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Speaker 4: Seeing just this tiny bit of what goes on at

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Speaker 4: the library, I realized that even if their work might

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Speaker 4: go unseen, archivists and librarians at the Benson and other

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Speaker 4: institutions like it hold a lot of power and responsibility

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Speaker 4: in keeping our history and narratives alive.

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Speaker 3: From Fudro Media and PRX, It's Latino USA, I'm Maria

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Speaker 3: in no Josa today. The archivists a special look at

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Speaker 3: the people and one particular place that's devoted to preserving

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Speaker 3: Latino history. Earlier this year, Latino USA producer Victoria Estrada,

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Speaker 3: who you just heard at the top of the show,

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Speaker 3: traveled to Austin. She was there to visit the Nettie

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Speaker 3: Lee Benson Latin American Collection, one of the most important

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Speaker 3: institutions collecting the history and stories of Latin America and

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Speaker 3: of US Latinas and Latinos. The Benson Library is located

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Speaker 3: on the main campus of the University of Texas at

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Speaker 3: Austin It's in a building on top of a small

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Speaker 3: hill in the far east section of the campus, next

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Speaker 3: to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and anyone can

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Speaker 3: actually visit the library. In fact, I was there just

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Speaker 3: last spring looking at the Latino USA Archives, which the

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Speaker 3: library holds. This is a whole cart that's dedicated to

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Speaker 3: Latino USA.

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Speaker 7: Oh yes, oh okay.

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Speaker 3: In academic circles, the Benson is known as the Library

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Speaker 3: of the Americas. So Victoria, our producer, wanted to know

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Speaker 3: if it could live up to that title, and she

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Speaker 3: brings us the story.

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Speaker 7: Now, my name is Maggie Rivas Rodriguez.

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Speaker 1: I'm interviewing Petrita Alanis Sanchez for the Bosses Oral History Center.

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Speaker 4: What you're hearing is a video recording of an interview

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Speaker 4: from one of the archival collections at the Benson. In

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Speaker 4: the middle of the screen, there's an older woman with

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Speaker 4: short light hair and the interviewer is off screen.

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Speaker 5: You didn't finish high school, right?

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Speaker 7: Why was that?

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Speaker 8: My dad had a grocery store and he had his

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Speaker 8: other businesses, garage and none of that, and they started

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Speaker 8: taking my brothers to the war Second World War.

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Speaker 4: This projects was started in nineteen ninety nine to document

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Speaker 4: and preserve the story of Latinos and Latinas of the

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Speaker 4: World War two generation. It's hard to know how many

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Speaker 4: Latinos served in the military during the war. There were

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Speaker 4: as many as two hundred and fifty to seven hundred

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Speaker 4: and fifty thousand Latino soldiers that fought, but their contributions

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Speaker 4: and those of their families have often been overlooked.

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Speaker 3: Do you remember if they were drafted or if they enlisted.

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Speaker 8: No, they were drafted. All of them were drafted.

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Speaker 4: More than fifty years after the end of World War Two,

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Speaker 4: the archive was started to collect the stories of hundreds

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Speaker 4: of men and women like Petrita, and later was expanded

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Speaker 4: to also include veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

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Speaker 3: How did your family feel about your parents feel about

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Speaker 3: them going into the military.

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Speaker 8: There were no choice, honey, no choice. There's a war

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Speaker 8: going on and they had to take them. They had

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Speaker 8: no choice, so they all went to the army.

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Speaker 4: The Nattalie Benson Latin American Collection is home to more

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Speaker 4: than a million materials. Between books, documents, magazines, recordings, maps, posters,

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Speaker 4: and a long etc. It holds an untold number of

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Speaker 4: stories just like Patrita's. It's something that has always fascinated

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Speaker 4: me about libraries. I was a literature major, so I

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Speaker 4: would spend hours in the library stacks looking for something

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Speaker 4: in particular, or just picking out books at random to

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Speaker 4: see what I could find. And I was in college

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Speaker 4: back in Mexico, where I'm from when I first heard

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Speaker 4: about the Benson. When I was finishing my bachelor's I

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Speaker 4: was trying to read everything that Maria Luisa Puga, the

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Speaker 4: Mexican writer I did my thesis on, had published. Whenever

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Speaker 4: I couldn't find a book in my university's life, I

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Speaker 4: would look on an online catalog of libraries across the world.

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Speaker 4: I would see that almost always there was a copy

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Speaker 4: of the book in Austin, Texas at the Benson. It

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Speaker 4: made me jealous to think about this library that seemed

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Speaker 4: to have everything, but it also made me happy to

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Speaker 4: think that such a place existed anywhere in the world.

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Speaker 4: At their best, libraries have always seemed to me like

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Speaker 4: an ideal version of what the world can be. They're

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Speaker 4: more organized than almost any other place, and the people

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Speaker 4: you find there always seem to be nicer and more helpful. Also,

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Speaker 4: they're free, but there are also places with their own histories,

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Speaker 4: a product of their time and the people who build them,

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Speaker 4: and that can come with some baggage. I knew that

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Speaker 4: the Benson had an important collection about Mexico in Latin America,

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Speaker 4: but when researching for this story, it surprised me to

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Speaker 4: find that in its early history it focused on collecting

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Speaker 4: materials from those countries and left out a very important

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Speaker 4: community Latinos and Latinas like Petrita, who lived in the US.

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Speaker 9: The fact is that we don't know what's lost. In

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Speaker 9: some cases, people talk about the gaps in the archive

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Speaker 9: because it wasn't documented, it was lost.

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Speaker 4: This is Carla Alvarez. She is the Latino Studies archivist

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Speaker 4: at the Benson. She has her hair slicked back in

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Speaker 4: a tight pointy tail, glasses and an excitement is showing

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Speaker 4: me some of the things in the Benson collection that

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Speaker 4: can barely be contained.

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Speaker 9: So these said on this book truck, I have a

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Speaker 9: bunch of boxes. I don't know if you have seen

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Speaker 9: arkable boxes before, Like this is how we keep the

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Speaker 9: archable material.

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Speaker 4: As an archivist, Cadla spends her days sorting materials, describing

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Speaker 4: them and putting them in categories. It's meticulous work that

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Speaker 4: can be repetitive, but Carla knows that it's connected to

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Speaker 4: a broader purpose.

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Speaker 9: I'm not thinking about next month or next year. The

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Speaker 9: work that I do is part of that of extending

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Speaker 9: the life of the item, and then I like to

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Speaker 9: think that they're going to be here hundreds of years

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Speaker 9: after I'm gone. Earlier, I was telling you about the

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Speaker 9: activism that happened here at ut Too.

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Speaker 4: Today we're on the second floor of the Benson, next

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Speaker 4: to stacks and stacks of books, and Carla has pulled

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Speaker 4: materials from the archives that document the fight that had

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Speaker 4: to happen for US Latino history to be included in

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Speaker 4: the Benson.

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Speaker 9: And what I have here are the some folders from

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Speaker 9: the America Bardades Archive.

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Speaker 4: Doctor Americo Parredes was a renowned scholar, as our host

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Speaker 4: Marienno Josa put it on the nineteen ninety nine episode

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Speaker 4: dedicated to him after his passing.

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Speaker 2: For more than forty years, Badas wrote about the culture

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Speaker 2: and folklore of the lower Rio Grande Valley, about the music, folks, saying,

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Speaker 2: and oral traditions of the people living along the Texas

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Speaker 2: border with Mexico.

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Speaker 4: But it is was the founding director of the Center

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Speaker 4: for Mexican American Studies or SEAMAS. SEMAS was established in

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Speaker 4: ut in the year nineteen seventy as a result of

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Speaker 4: demands by the student Chicano movement to have a place

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Speaker 4: to study Chicano history. But the center had a very

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Speaker 4: rocky start in those early years. But it has tried

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Speaker 4: to resign several times as director, he felt that the

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Speaker 4: administration had only created the center as a public relations

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Speaker 4: move and he wanted real change. After his third resignation,

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Speaker 4: but it is wrote a letter publicly announcing his reasons

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Speaker 4: for leaving.

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Speaker 9: In what we have here, this is an actual draft

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Speaker 9: in his handwriting. The letter is dated February first, nineteen

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Speaker 9: seventy two. In the beginning of the message says, many

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Speaker 9: persons have been involved in our Mexican American Studies program.

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Speaker 4: In the letter that calls out the ut administration, saying

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Speaker 4: it was trying to lump Mexican American studies with a

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Speaker 4: more generic ethnic studies label. There was also no effort

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Speaker 4: to acquire the necessary materials to support the research done

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Speaker 4: at the center. It took two more years, but finally

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Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy four, the Mexican American Library program was

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Speaker 4: created at the Benson, and with it came the resources

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Speaker 4: and instructions to start collecting materials about Latino communities in

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Speaker 4: the US. It's the reason the Benson holds the Latino

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Speaker 4: USA Archives, as well as countless other important collections like

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Speaker 4: voses with Petrita's oral history, or the personal papers of philosopher,

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Speaker 4: writer and scholar Gloria Anzaldua, who shaped contemporary lesbian and

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Speaker 4: Chicano cultural theory for Carla. Having these materials at the

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Speaker 4: Benson is an essential part of the archives.

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Speaker 9: There's no effort to document a community. That history is lost,

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Speaker 9: and that's terrible because those lives that lived here, and

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Speaker 9: you can't really tell the history of a place, of

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Speaker 9: a country. If you don't have that, you're not documenting

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Speaker 9: everyone who's part of that community. Because if we don't

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Speaker 9: study and we don't have a center or a library

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Speaker 9: dedicated to Latinos, then it's like you don't exist, and

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Speaker 9: obviously we exist.

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Speaker 6: We are here.

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Speaker 3: Coming up on Latino USA. We look at some of

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Speaker 3: the objects that connect the Benson to the distant past,

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Speaker 3: explore its complicated history, and look at possibilities for how

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Speaker 3: the library can move into the future, stay with.

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Speaker 7: Us, not the US.

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Speaker 10: Hi, Maria, this is MirOS Vargas. I love all your

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Speaker 10: documental everything that you do in there. You have a

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Speaker 10: fabulous boys, and you really intrigued me to listen to

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Speaker 10: your program. I really love your show. Congratulations on your

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Speaker 10: thirty years and aim for another thirty or forty.

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Speaker 6: Why not?

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Speaker 3: Hey, we're back. Before the break, we learned about the

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Speaker 3: efforts in the nineteen seventies to start recording and preserving

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Speaker 3: the stories and the history of Latino communities in the

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Speaker 3: United States. That fight resulted in the creation of the

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Speaker 3: Mexican American Library program at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin

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Speaker 3: American Collector in Austin. But the Benson has been around

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Speaker 3: for over one hundred years, and for most of its

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Speaker 3: early history its focus was in collecting materials from outside

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Speaker 3: of the United States. So we wondered, what does it

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Speaker 3: mean that a US institution has so many pieces of

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Speaker 3: valuable history from other countries in Latin America. Here's Victoria

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Speaker 3: with the rest of the story.

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Speaker 4: Towards the end of my day at the Benson, Ryan

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Speaker 4: Lynch is giving me a tour of the building. Is

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Speaker 4: it okay that we're talking here. It feels a little

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Speaker 4: weird to be talking in the library.

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Speaker 7: I saw a patron Suh, another patron earlier today, but

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Speaker 7: this is not a quiet study room there.

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Speaker 4: Ryan is the head of Special Collections and librarian for

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Speaker 4: Brazilian Studies at the Benson. He has short blonde hair,

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Speaker 4: thick framed glasses, and is wearing a colorful and down shirt.

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Speaker 4: Ryan has an air of efficiency to him, but he's

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Speaker 4: also quick to make jokes. He's been working on and

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Speaker 4: off in archives for over twenty years.

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Speaker 7: I think it plays into something that has been a

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Speaker 7: personality trait of mine since I was a small child.

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Speaker 4: There's something about him that seems to make him perfect.

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Speaker 9: For this job.

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Speaker 7: There's part of me that is very drawn to the

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Speaker 7: processing part of archives. My mother says when I was

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Speaker 7: like a little kid, right like a toddler, to entertain me,

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Speaker 7: she would just give me a bunch of different kinds

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Speaker 7: of dried beans, like kidney beans and lentils and black beans,

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Speaker 7: and I would just sit there and sort them.

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Speaker 4: Ryan was my main point of contact with the Benson

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Speaker 4: during all the months we were working on the thirtieth

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Speaker 4: anniversary pieces for Latino USA, and he was one of

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Speaker 4: the main reasons we wanted to do this story. He

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Speaker 4: was knowledgeable and extremely helpful. I was cure is to

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Speaker 4: know what moved him to do this work.

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Speaker 7: What drives me in archives is serving the people that

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Speaker 7: created the collections and giving voice to those people and

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Speaker 7: their family members, and allowing people in the future to

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Speaker 7: connect with people from the past. That's what keeps me in.

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Speaker 4: This When I asked Ryan to show me some of

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Speaker 4: the most significant objects in the archives for him, he

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Speaker 4: immediately remembered a particular map.

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Speaker 7: A few years ago, we had this woman contact us

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Speaker 7: to say that her father in law was going to

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Speaker 7: be visiting her in April and they wanted to get

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Speaker 7: a fac simile of this pintura of this map for

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Speaker 7: the historical society in her father's town.

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Speaker 4: The man wanted a copy of a sixteen century map.

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Speaker 4: It's part of one of the Benson's most unique collections,

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Speaker 4: what are called relationist hiogorafcas. There are letters that describe

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Speaker 4: for the Spanish king what he could find in his

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Speaker 4: empire after the conquest. Ryan and one of the other

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Speaker 4: archivists pulled the map and examined it, but couldn't find

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Speaker 4: the specific town the man was looking for Still, they

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Speaker 4: ordered the copy for him and prepared for his visit.

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Speaker 7: This older gentleman walks in and he walks up to

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Speaker 7: this and he points at the glyph that's won in

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Speaker 7: from the top left corner.

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Speaker 4: The map is not a typical Western style map. It

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Speaker 4: has a large pencil drawing of a church at the

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Speaker 4: center and paths that Chris crossed the sheet. A series

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Speaker 4: of symbols lined the edges of the paper what Ryan

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Speaker 4: called glyphs, and each of them is the name of

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Speaker 4: a town. The one the man points it out, has

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Speaker 4: a big red dot in the middle.

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Speaker 7: He points right here and he says, that's my town.

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Speaker 7: We still use that as a symbol of my town.

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Speaker 4: That glyph had never been identified before. That's why the

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Speaker 4: archivist couldn't find it. But now they knew that it

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Speaker 4: named Teco Matlan, a very small town in central Mexico

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Speaker 4: where just over twenty four hundred people live.

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Speaker 7: It was so emotional, and it was emotional for him.

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Speaker 7: I mean, I was probably very close to tears.

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Speaker 10: Right.

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Speaker 7: We might show this and talk about the history and

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Speaker 7: what the relacionis contain and who created them or whatever,

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Speaker 7: but we don't often think about them as living documents

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Speaker 7: or documents that still tell us about these places today.

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Speaker 7: But in that moment, it was a reminder that this

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Speaker 7: is living history.

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Speaker 4: To me, there's a bittersweet feeling that comes with hearing

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Speaker 4: this story. It's amazing that this piece of history has

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Speaker 4: been preserved for almost five hundred years and that it

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Speaker 4: can be seen here at the Benson. But it's also

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Speaker 4: true that this man had to travel from Mexico and

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Speaker 4: cross a border to be able to see it. How

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Speaker 4: is it possible that documents like this connected to the

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Speaker 4: history of Mexico are being held at the Benson. It

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Speaker 4: turns out that the Bensons started as an archive about Mexico.

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Speaker 4: In nineteen twenty one, Yuti Austin purchased a private collection

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Speaker 4: of a man named Henado Garcia. He was a nineteenth

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Speaker 4: century Mexican writer, lawyer, and director of the National Museum

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Speaker 4: of Archaeology, History and in Mexico, and he was an

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Speaker 4: avid collector. During his lifetime, Garcia acquired over twenty thousand

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Speaker 4: books and more than three hundred thousand pages of manuscripts

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Speaker 4: related to the history of Mexico, and after he died,

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Speaker 4: his widow looked to sell his collection. She offered it

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Speaker 4: to the Mexican government. But this was right as the

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Speaker 4: Mexican Revolution was ending. The Mexican government was trying to

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Speaker 4: rebuild a country after a long war, and Garcia had

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Speaker 4: been a sympathizer of the recently overthrown dictatorship, so the

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Speaker 4: government refused to purchase the collection for the National Archives. Instead.

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Speaker 4: U T Austin paid one hundred thousand dollars, which is

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Speaker 4: around one point six million dollars now for the entire collection,

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Speaker 4: and they brought it by train to Austin. The books

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Speaker 4: and papers weighed seventeen tons and built an entire box card.

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Speaker 4: Charles Hackett, a historian at UT, had made the case

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Speaker 4: to the university that it was important for the collection

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Speaker 4: to be in Austin because Texas had once and not

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Speaker 4: too long ago at the time, been part of Mexico

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Speaker 4: and before that part of the Spanish Empire. Texans needed

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Speaker 4: to be reminded of that history. Here's Ryan again.

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Speaker 7: Texas has a strong identity, and it tells one story

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Speaker 7: about itself, and that story often doesn't talk about its

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Speaker 7: history before the Anglos show up.

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Speaker 4: That intentional erasure enabled the discrimination and violence against Mexican

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Speaker 4: Americans who in many cases were from border families who

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Speaker 4: had been in the region for generations.

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Speaker 7: Texas history needed to have its Mexican history reinserted into it,

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Speaker 7: and at.

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Speaker 4: Least now there were materials in Texas available at a

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Speaker 4: public institution to start connecting to that essential history. The

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Speaker 4: foundational Hinnardo Garcia collection was followed by other significant purchases

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Speaker 4: of Mexican documents, like the collection of Joaquin garziai is Cavalcetta,

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Speaker 4: which actually contained the map of the relations that Ryan

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Speaker 4: showed me. Then in the nineteen forties, a historian and

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Speaker 4: librarian named Nettie Lee Benson was hired to work in

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Speaker 4: the archives, and you can probably guess the importance of

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Speaker 4: doctor Benson for the collection, since it's now named after her.

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Speaker 4: Doctor Benson's ambition was to expand the library to include

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Speaker 4: materials from all of Latin America and to achieve that.

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Speaker 4: She would travel all over the continent to buy directly

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Speaker 4: from publishers so they would send their books and magazines

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Speaker 4: to Texas. With the Benson's regional scope and the money

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Speaker 4: of a US institution to support it, it became a

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Speaker 4: repository for the entire continent. The Benson has been described

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Speaker 4: as the national libraries of thirty different countries in Latin

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Speaker 4: America put together.

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Speaker 7: Grace. So you go open that and then hold the

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Speaker 7: door open.

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Speaker 4: And when I was there, Ryan showed me some of

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Speaker 4: the unique materials in the collection.

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Speaker 7: So right now we're looking at the rare book collection.

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Speaker 7: The rest are archival collections, including the Latino USA collection.

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Speaker 4: He pulled out an archival box with a few hundred

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Speaker 4: typed and corrected pages.

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Speaker 7: You know, we've got to cover with his name and

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Speaker 7: the title, and then we will have these pages with things.

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Speaker 4: It was a draft of Raduela or Hopscotch, the most

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Speaker 4: important novel by Argentine writer Julio Cortas.

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Speaker 7: Touching this item that Cortasa himself touched, that he wrote

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Speaker 7: on seeing his process, seeing what orders might have changed,

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Speaker 7: gives you a different appreciation of the writer's process.

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Speaker 4: And the list of unique items goes on. It has

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Speaker 4: a book signed in blood more than three hundred years

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Speaker 4: ago by one of Mexico's most famous poets, so Juana

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Speaker 4: Ineze la Cruz. And when I was there, Ryan also

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Speaker 4: showed me one of the archives most important pieces, Alienzo

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Speaker 4: de Tlascala.

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Speaker 7: The original is actually lost, so this is the oldest

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Speaker 7: known fragment of the LIONSO. So you'll see the man

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Speaker 7: in black is Cortes.

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Speaker 4: Alienzo is a painting done in Amate. It's one page

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Speaker 4: of a history depicting the meeting between ernand Cortez and

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Speaker 4: the DLAs Galas. It was painted just a few decades

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Speaker 4: after the meeting took place, So.

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Speaker 7: That makes this the earliest existing image of Malince. And

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Speaker 7: you know, it's possible that the person that did this

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Speaker 7: could have even seen the real Malince.

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Speaker 4: Malinch or Malinzin was the indigenous woman who was enslaved

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Speaker 4: and given to Cortez to work as his interpreter.

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Speaker 7: Even people who don't have backgrounds in Latin American studies

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Speaker 7: have really emotional responses to our personal connections. People will cry,

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Speaker 7: it's very emotional.

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Speaker 4: These are unique and invaluable documents related to Mexican and

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Speaker 4: Latin American culture and history. Even with the argument that

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Speaker 4: Texas used to be part of Mexico and the Spanish Empire,

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Speaker 4: seeing them here in Austin feels wrong. I asked Ryan

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Speaker 4: what he thought about the Benson holding these materials that

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Speaker 4: come from other countries.

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Speaker 7: That's one of the most complicated things about the legacy

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Speaker 7: of the Benson is taking that foundational collection, the Henardo

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Speaker 7: Garcia collection. In our modern ethics, we would not consider

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Speaker 7: it something that should leave Mexico. It would be illegal.

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Speaker 4: It follows a certain logic that used to permeate the

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Speaker 4: archivist profession.

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Speaker 7: In the past. There was a lot of paternalistic ideas

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Speaker 7: of archiving, and one of those paternalistic ideas was this

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Speaker 7: what museums were doing too, the sort of land grab mentality.

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Speaker 7: We can take care of it better than the people

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Speaker 7: in the country of creation. Oh things, it stolen outathers right,

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Speaker 7: like all this racist cramp that you hear all the time.

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Speaker 5: Lopez so is studiente doctor do historian and college in Mexico.

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Speaker 4: This is Javier Raminez. He's a Mexican historian who is

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Speaker 4: studying how sixteenth century Mexican documents and books are collected

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Speaker 4: in the US. I asked Javier about what issues he

441
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,680
Speaker 4: saw with those artifacts being held in U s institutions.

442
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 5: And competition American siyas risin the Perro.

443
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 4: Xavier recognized that these objects were bought and sold legally,

444
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 4: but for him, the proper one was that they were

445
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 4: allowed to be commercialized at all. These are objects with

446
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 4: cultural value that provide an identity to a specific people

447
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 4: in region, and the Benson is not the only library

448
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 4: in the US that has unique documents of Latin America.

449
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 4: You can find them at the Newberry Library in Chicago,

450
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:22,400
Speaker 4: the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, and even in the New

451
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:26,360
Speaker 4: York Public Library. Javier told me that countless documents are

452
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 4: also with private collectors, and there's no way to even

453
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 4: know what those collectors have. It wasn't until twenty eighteen

454
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:42,040
Speaker 4: that a law was enacted in Mexico to make it

455
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 4: illegal for these types of objects to leave the country.

456
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 5: That's Convicquez corrects Lestoria.

457
00:30:56,800 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 4: Javier's focus is on stopping any more unique documents and

458
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:05,400
Speaker 4: objects from leaving Mexico illegally, but as holders of the materials,

459
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 4: for Javier, the Benson and other institutions like it have

460
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 4: a responsibility.

461
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 5: Luisia la Majori, the l Manus, Glitos, Studios, grier Vekas, Mexicanos.

462
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 4: And historic He hopes that those libraries continue to digitize

463
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:37,840
Speaker 4: all of the materials they have so they can be

464
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:41,720
Speaker 4: widely accessed, and that they give out scholarships so that

465
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 4: people from outside the US can visit and continue doing research.

466
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 4: The Benson does give out scholarships for students and researchers

467
00:31:51,280 --> 00:32:01,200
Speaker 4: to come to Austin for their work. Ginteko what You're

468
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 4: hearing is part of the Archive of Indigenous Languages of

469
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 4: Latin America or ISLA, housed by the Benson. Their recordings

470
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 4: from indigenous communities in Central Mexico of what's called whistled speech.

471
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 4: It's used to communicate in open spaces across long distances.

472
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:24,200
Speaker 2: LA what.

473
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 4: It's a type of linguistic practice that is rapidly fading away.

474
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 4: There are about four hundred languages recorded in the archives,

475
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 4: which is estimated to be around seventy percent of indigenous

476
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 4: languages in Latin americao ISLA was started in the year

477
00:32:55,920 --> 00:33:00,840
Speaker 4: two thousand and ILA works as a non custode archive,

478
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 4: which means that the library doesn't keep the materials that

479
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:11,000
Speaker 4: it's digitizing. They work with the researchers or indigenous communities

480
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 4: who created the recordings to put them online, and those

481
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:20,200
Speaker 4: communities keep all of their intellectual and cultural rights. This

482
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 4: is one of the ways that Benson is working to

483
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:27,160
Speaker 4: radically expand access and move away from a logic of

484
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 4: extraction in the archives. When talking to Ryan, he also

485
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 4: mentioned the Latin American Digital Initiative, in which the Benson

486
00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:43,080
Speaker 4: partners with communities and institutions from countries in Latin America

487
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,480
Speaker 4: and they provide funding and training so they can digitize

488
00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 4: their collections.

489
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 7: They keep their collections and they keep digital copies, but

490
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:55,800
Speaker 7: they also provide digital copies to us that we provide

491
00:33:55,840 --> 00:33:57,560
Speaker 7: a platform to share them online.

492
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 4: The Benson has collaborated with ORG organizations in Brazil and

493
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 4: Colombia to digitize materials about the black communities in those countries,

494
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 4: and also other institutions in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico.

495
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 7: So that's a new model right where people are given

496
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 7: know how and supplies, boxes and folders, and they're given

497
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:27,239
Speaker 7: resources and scanners and also sometimes some training and how

498
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 7: to apply for grants themselves.

499
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:33,760
Speaker 4: I spoke with doctor Lydia Gomez Garcia. She's a historian

500
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:37,120
Speaker 4: in the University of Puebla in Mexico, and she worked

501
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:39,799
Speaker 4: with the Benson in one of those projects to digitize

502
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:40,760
Speaker 4: a local archive.

503
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 6: The ultimate goal is that it's not only for researchers,

504
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:50,880
Speaker 6: but particularly that all the community can read and do

505
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 6: have these documents from their ancestors available for them.

506
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:00,480
Speaker 4: The archive is now online. Doctor Gomez told me that

507
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 4: for her, preserving local archives that are in danger of

508
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,880
Speaker 4: being lost is more important than bringing back materials that

509
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:12,120
Speaker 4: might be out of Mexico. For her, what's essential is

510
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:16,399
Speaker 4: that archives are preserved and publicly accessible, no matter where

511
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 4: they are.

512
00:35:17,520 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 6: Is not sir, thinking that because it is in the

513
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:26,240
Speaker 6: United States, is not our memory, or that somebody else

514
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:30,800
Speaker 6: has our memory. Our memory is ours and it is

515
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:32,480
Speaker 6: still in our countries.

516
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 7: I think libraries and many archives in some ways are

517
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:49,600
Speaker 7: militant about what we do is provide people with access

518
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 7: to information. Right, and sometimes that information is a paperback

519
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:57,719
Speaker 7: novel or a children's book. Right, we are militant and

520
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:03,840
Speaker 7: that we provide that information and in making that information

521
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 7: widely accessible, which is a radical idea. It is a

522
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 7: radical idea to do this as a service.

523
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:20,600
Speaker 4: This reminded me of the short story by Argentine author

524
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 4: jrgeluis Borges, The Library of Babel. It presents the ideal

525
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 4: of what he calls a total library, infinite and eternal,

526
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:34,480
Speaker 4: that holds all of the possible knowledge in the world.

527
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 4: Its existence causes reverence in some but can also drive

528
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 4: people mad. What are humans when faced with something so perfect?

529
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,920
Speaker 4: In our world? Libraries are a reflection of who we are.

530
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:56,880
Speaker 4: They carry and are defined by the colonial history of

531
00:36:56,920 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 4: our countries. They are confined by national orders and limited

532
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:06,960
Speaker 4: by resources like money, space, and time. There are no

533
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 4: perfect libraries, but I do think that the people working

534
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:16,240
Speaker 4: at the Benson are striving to provide as much access

535
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:18,840
Speaker 4: as possible to what they've been tasked to take care of.

536
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:30,839
Speaker 4: I've seen it firsthand. As we were finishing the day

537
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:33,799
Speaker 4: at the Benson, Ryan wanted to show me one thing

538
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 4: that he had pulled from the archives, especially for me.

539
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:38,160
Speaker 4: I pulled for you.

540
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:40,719
Speaker 10: What is this, Ryan?

541
00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 7: This is an archival box that contains a few folders,

542
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:49,320
Speaker 7: and this is from the collection of a Mexican writer

543
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:51,280
Speaker 7: named Maria Luisa Puga.

544
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:54,960
Speaker 4: Maria Luisa Puga was the Mexican author I had researched

545
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 4: for my undergrad thesis. Puga had passed away a few

546
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:02,359
Speaker 4: years before I started doing my research. She had won

547
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:06,440
Speaker 4: one of the most important literature prizes in Mexico, but

548
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 4: at the time she was somewhat overlooked. How did you

549
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 4: know I had a personal collection?

550
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:17,360
Speaker 7: Librarians are stalkers. We do research for a living, and

551
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 7: when we're interacting with someone, the first thing we have

552
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:21,960
Speaker 7: to know is where are they coming from or what

553
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:23,399
Speaker 7: would be interesting to them.

554
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 4: My research focused on the last book she published, called

555
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:31,800
Speaker 4: Thario de lore or Diary of Pains, about her final

556
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:36,400
Speaker 4: years living with rheumatoid arthritis. I knew she kept diaries

557
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 4: because she sometimes included parts in her fiction, so I

558
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 4: tried to find them for my research, but they weren't

559
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 4: available to the public. The last thing I knew was

560
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:48,880
Speaker 4: that they were still with the family.

561
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:54,759
Speaker 7: We have hundreds of her diaries spanning decades.

562
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 4: She lost her mom when she was around twelve, and

563
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:00,920
Speaker 4: after that writing a diary became a little bit of

564
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 4: a comfort for her. So I know that perfect libraries

565
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 4: don't exist, But right then and there, I was grateful

566
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 4: that someone had kept these diaries safe, and that I

567
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:22,120
Speaker 4: was able now to go through these pages, and that

568
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 4: others could do the same. In fact, Ryan told me

569
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:30,840
Speaker 4: that just that day, coincidentally, another researcher had asked to

570
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 4: see Buga's diaries. I can't wait to see what that

571
00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 4: researcher publishes about Burga and see her book added to

572
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:41,439
Speaker 4: the library so that someone else can look it over

573
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 4: and publish something new, and that that happens over and

574
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 4: over again, and the ongoing spiral of information that is

575
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 4: a library.

576
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:23,800
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Victoria Strada. It was edited

577
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:28,000
Speaker 3: by Sarah White's Cotachek. It was mixed by Julia Caruso.

578
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 3: Fact checking for this episode by Roxana Aguire. Special thanks

579
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 3: to the staff of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American

580
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:40,760
Speaker 3: Collection and the University of Texas Libraries for retrieving historical

581
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:44,719
Speaker 3: content we used in the show. The Latino USA team

582
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 3: also includes Renaldo Leanos Junior, Andrea Lopez Grussado, Joli mar Marquez,

583
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 3: Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Nor Saudi, and Nancy Trujuigo. Benilee

584
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 3: Ramirez is our co executive producer. Our director of Engineer

585
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:04,759
Speaker 3: is Stephanie Lebau, Additional engineering support by gabriell Abias and

586
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 3: Jj Karubin. Our marketing manager is Luis Lunap. Our theme

587
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 3: music was composed by Sange Robinos. I'm your host and

588
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 3: executive producer Marian Bohosa. Join us again on our next

589
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:18,720
Speaker 3: episode and in the meantime look for us on social media.

590
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 3: I'll see you there and remember no Tebayes Bye.

591
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:28,680
Speaker 9: Latino USA is made possible in part by the Heising

592
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 9: Simons Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities more at hsfoundation

593
00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 9: dot org, The Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the

594
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 9: frontlines of social change worldwide, and Latino USA thirtieth Anniversary

595
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 9: episodes are made possible with support from our legacy sustainers,

596
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Speaker 9: the Brett Family Foundation, Alonso Comtu, Carmen Rito Wong, Vamos Enterprises,

597
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Speaker 9: the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, April Gessler, doctor Elmo Randolph,

598
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 9: Belinda de la Libertad, Angela Garcia Simms, and Priscilla Rojas