A Guide to Latin American Special Collections at the GRI

This section presents the oldest materials that are part of the GRI’s Latin American Collection, including the second letter from Hernán Cortés to Charles V published in Latin in 1524 (part of the Gutiérrez Collection of Books) and six parts of Les Grands Voyages, the impressive collections of travel accounts accompanied by printed illustrations published by Theodor de Bry between 1591 and 1609. Along with a large collection of early maps and images depicting scenes of daily life, landscapes, flora and fauna, and allegorical and iconographic figures, boosted by the contents of the Tonatiúh and Electra Gutiérrez collection of maps and images, the notable strength of this section is in Accounts and Chronicles, which include descriptions of parts of North and South America and the Caribbean, particularly of Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the Caribbean islands, and Peru (which at times includes parts of modern-day Bolivia). In addition, materials related to Religious and Civic Culture are also prominent in this section, including Catholic prayer books and ceremonial rites and rituals, biographies of important religious leaders, and documents about patronal festivals.

The section is divided into seven subsections. The materials in Accounts and Chronicles are organized by the century in which they were published. The materials in the subsections Allegorical Figures and Maps, Monographs and Essays, and Natural Histories and Sciences are listed in alphabetical order. Finally, the subsections Religious and Civic Culture and Miscellaneous References Materials are divided into thematic groups. Rather than a list of materials, the subsection Gutiérrez Collection of Maps and Images includes a description of the collection and additional information on browsing the related collection of books. Uniform and variant titles have been used when they provide additional clarity.

This section includes representations, including many illustrations, of extreme violence, particularly that which was inflicted on Indigenous and enslaved people by European settlers.

Many materials that are out of copyright are digitized and publicly accessible through the GRI’s library catalog. If a resource is not digitized at the time this guide is published, it may be in the future. Additionally, searches on the internet or on aggregator platforms such as the Getty Research Portal, the Internet Archive, or Hathi Trust, might yield results for a digital copy made available by another institution.