Primary Sources: Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal: Archival Collections at Cornell

This collection contains files from a traveling exhibit, “Coming Up On the Season: Migrant Farmworkers in the Northeast.” The exhibit was coordinated by Herb Engman and Kay Embrey of the Cornell Migrant Program and Riverhill consulting and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1999. The exhibit explicitly addressed the post 1980s Latin American origins of most migrant workers in the Northeast. Most of the photographs from the exhibit show Latin American migrant workers or their home towns in Mexico and elsewhere. The collection contains exhibit planning documents and the exhibit manual including the crate list, photographs of migrant farm work, transcriptions and tapes of oral histories, reports, grant proposals, articles, contracts and agreements, programs, flyers, research files on migrants in specific regions, scripts, photographs by Drew Harty, and other materials.

Diary entries concern Kenyon's activities aboard the U.S.S. Dacotah and the U.S.S. Wasp and shore visits to Valparaiso, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and other South American ports. Includes account of visit by President of Paraguay on the ship, 1871

The aim of the Cornell Peru Project was to conduct an experiment in applied anthropology dealing with social and cultural change among the Indian serfs of the Andean hacienda (an agricultural manor) of Vicos, located in the Callejon de Huaylas of Peru. It also was to give training to social scientists in applied field work in anthropology. The Peruvian Indian Institute, a semi-autonomous agency attached to the Ministry of Labor and Indian Affairs, collaborated in this project. Cornell University, under Professor Holmberg's direction, leased the Vicos hacienda for a five year period. During that five year period from 1951-1956, the Vicos community changed from one of serfdom under the rule of a "patron," to that of an autonomous, self-governing and economically viable community. After the five year period, Cornell continued as advisor to the Vicos community and to the Peruvian Ministry of Labor and Indian Affairs until 1965. Another division of the collection, the Cross-Cultural Methodology Project, was composed of the records of a group of social scientists at Cornell University who obtained funds from the Carnegie Foundation of New York to carry out a comparative study of social science methods in different areas of the world. A Peruvian phase of this study was carried out by Professor Rose Goldsen at Vicos, Peru in 1952-1953. Dr. Max Ralis was involved with this study in Thailand and India.

The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) Collection documents the history of the ACTWU and its predecessors, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA or Amalgamated) and the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA). This finding aid highlights the areas of the collection that relate directly to the Farah Strike. Based in El Paso, Texas, the strike was organized out of the New York office. Around 85% of the striking garment workers were Mexican and Chicana. The Farah documents include publications, dues cards, legal documents, information on the nationwide boycott, clippings, minutes from meetings throughout the country, and other administrative materials. They demonstrate how the New York office coordinated the strike and organizing efforts in Texas with union locals, student groups, religious leaders and other activists throughout the United States.

The Lafayette Collection contains materials by, to or about Lafayette and his family, with family documents extending back to 1245 and through the death of Georges Washington Lafayette in 1849. The series "Medals and Coins" covers a century and a half, up to 1931. The collection includes the oldest existing letter from Lafayette (1772), long missives he sent to his wife from America during the Revolution, other letters he wrote while imprisoned in Austria (1792-1797) and during his 1824-5 trip to the USA; texts of Lafayette's speeches, his commentary on public events, material compiled for inclusion in his memoirs, financial statements ; many letters from foreign correspondents on the progress of liberal causes in their countries, including letters from leaders of the Italian revolutionary movement; notes concerning the Belgian revolution, letters and documents on his involvement in the Italian and Polish revolutions, and documents concerning the management of family business affairs, including the management of the family estates. Some of the more remarkable documents were put on display for the exhibition "Lafayette, Citizen of Two Worlds" (October 2007-May 2008), whose electronic version is now accessible online http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/lafayette/. Particularly significant is the collection's correspondence with Jean-Pierre Boyer, the president of southern Haiti.

Carl Cleveland Taylor spent a year of research in rural sociology in Argentina with the State Department, 1942-1943. Collection includes speeches; articles; "Argentine Diary" (box 6); correspondence; "Notes on Taylor's Trip" to India and Pakistan; material on the Near (Middle) East, Japan, Haiti, and the Caribbean; rural cartoons; pamphlets; research material; reference books; index cards; glass slides; tape recordings; memorabilia; and personal and family papers.

Printed resource materials relating to Latin America collected by CUSLAR, including magazines, periodicals, newsletters, articles, and reports.

The Cornell Migrant Program (CMP) was established in 1971 in response to widespread outrage on the Cornell campus over the living and working conditions of migrant workers on a farm that the university owned in Wayne County, New York. This collection consists of correspondence, grant applications, reports, theses, clippings, memoranda, slides, and other materials created and collected by the office. There is also a collection of tapes and transcripts from forty oral histories conducted with former CMP staff members and affiliates in 2006 and files from program director, Herb Engman’s, office on the Cornell University campus. The Cornell Migrant Program campus collection is a rich source of information on migrant workers and advocacy organizations in upstate New York, particularly the central and western regions of the state. It also traces part of the history of Latinos in upstate New York as they arrived in the state’s agricultural zones.

The Cornell Migrant Program (CMP) was established in 1971 in response to widespread outrage on the Cornell campus over the living and working conditions of migrant workers on a farm that the university owned in Wayne County, New York. This collection contains the administrative files from the Wayne County office of CMP and consists of correspondence, grant applications, reports, theses, clippings, CMP publications, memoranda, and other materials created and collected by the office. It is a rich source of information on migrant workers and advocacy organizations in upstate New York, particularly the central and western regions of the state. It also traces part of the history of Latinos in upstate New York as they arrived in the state’s agricultural zones.

Dr. Henry Dobyns joined the Cornell Peru Project as its Research Coordinator in 1960, after receiving his Ph.D. from Cornell. In 1962, he returned to campus to participate in training Peace Corps volunteers to work in Peru. The Peace Corps also contracted with Cornell to have the CPP advise Peace Corps officials in Lima and to evaluate their impact on the communities. He was the Coordinator of the Comparative Studies of Cultural Change program and the Associate Director of the Cornell Peru Project from 1963-1966. In 1966 he became the Director of the project following the death of Allan R. Holmberg, the previous director.

Includes documentation of the Beagle Channel arbitration between Argentina and Chile

Country files include correspondence and notes, printed material, and newspaper clippings on countries in which the ILGWU had a special interest, especially the Dominican Republic and Honduras. Company files include correspondence, memoranda, notes, and press material on companies with which the ILGWU dealt; especially well-documented is the strike against and negotiations with Leslie Fay. Subject files include correspondence with and collected printed material on labor leaders and politicians, as well as on subjects relating to the garment industry and trade.

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) Local 105, the Snowsuits, Ski Wear, Leggings, Infants, and Novelty Sportswear Union, was established in 1941 to cover a group of miscellaneous industries that had previously been under the umbrella of several other locals. The records cover the years 1939-1970 (bulk, 1950-1970) and document the local's fight for higher wages, paid holidays for piece workers, pensions, and severance pay. It also advocated civil rights by picketing companies that maintained segregated lunch counters and spearheading voter registration drives among its Black and Puerto Rican members. In response to rising numbers of Puerto Rican and immigrant rank-and-file members, Local 105 offered materials in multiple languages, sponsored English classes for all members, and required staff members to study Spanish. The records consist of general correspondence, printed material, administrative materials from the office of manager-secretary, records of donations, and other administrative documents.

The records of the Education Department of Local 22 Dressmakers’ Union of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) are made up of correspondence, newspaper clippings, newsletters, programs, photographs, and speeches documenting the activities of the Department from the 1930s to the 1970s. These include social events; field trips; voter education classes; English classes; and tours of Europe, the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Series II includes the correspondence files of Saby Nehama, the union’s longtime liaison to Spanish-speaking garment workers and Education Director in the late 1960s.

The Local 22 Dressmakers Union of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was established in 1920 after a reorganization of the Ladies Waist and Dressmakers’ Local 25. Local 22’s meeting minutes consist of those of the Executive Board and various committee minutes including those of the Grievance and Membership Committees. Of particular interest are the Executive Board Minutes in Series 1 that contain early reports from monthly section meetings in the Bronx, Williamsburg, English-speaking Harlem, Spanish Harlem, and other areas.

Local 22 Dressmakers Union of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was established in 1920 after a reorganization of the Ladies Waist and Dressmakers’ Local 25. This collection contains records collected between 1920 and 1933. While bulk of the files contain correspondence, the series also contains meeting minutes, financial statements, advertisements, press releases, and work permits. The series documents a particularly tumultuous period in the history of the ILGWU and Local 22 including reorganization after the 1926 strike; severe financial difficulties in the late 1920s and early 1930s; and growing pains as new immigrant groups and migrant groups including African Americans, Latinos, and Greeks entered the garment industry. It also contains some documentation of the ILGWU’s attempts to expand into Canada and Puerto Rico in the early 1930s.

This collection contains records of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union Local 23-25, the Blouse, Skirt and Sportswear Workers Union, as well as its predecessors, Local 23 and Local 25. Records consist of bound meeting minutes and ledgers of sick benefits and general funds. These document various activities including political involvement in the Liberal Party and various civil rights organizations. They also show the unions' affiliations with various ethnic organizations including the Italian American Labor Council, the Negro Labor Committee, the Puerto Rican Labor Advisory Committee and the United Hebrew Trades. Documents are primarily in English and Yiddish with printed material in Chinese and Spanish.

Among the most significant topics are: civil rights (including materials on the 1963 March on Washington); collective bargaining agreements with other unions (custodial and clerical workers' unions); health care (including Medstore plan for prescription drug discounts to union health members); housing for garment workers in New York City; locals, regional departments, and joint boards of the ILGWU throughout the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico; relations with the AFL-CIO; retirement funds; union administrative matters; union conventions; union involvement in politics in New York City and New York State; and workers' compensation. Most Puerto Rico-related files are in boxes 14-15.

This collection contains extensive files of hearings before, proceedings of, and memoranda and briefs submitted to the Department of Labor's Wage and Hours Division between 1938 and 1942, and 1950 and 1975. Committees represented in these files include: Apparel Industry Committee, Button and Buckle Manufacturing Industry Committee, Embroideries Committee, Hosiery Industry Committee, Knitted and Men's Woven Underwear and Commercial Knitting Industry Committee, Knitted Outerwear Committee, Knitted Underwear and Commercial Knitting Industry Committee, Miscellaneous Apparel Industry Committee, Special Industry Committee for Puerto Rico, Textile Industry Committee, and the Women's Apparel Industry Committee. Also included in this collection are records of the Department of Labor's Public Contract Division and Research and Statistics Division.

This largely unprocessed/inventoried collection includes Bradley's A Manual of the Genera of Beetles, North of Mexico; manuscripts for papers; lecture notes and teaching materials; field notebooks, drawings, and typed and handwritten notes; personal and professional correspondence; bibliographies; glass slides and mounted photographs of entomological subjects and expeditions, including the First Cornell University Biological Expedition to the Okefenoke Swamp in Georgia and a later expedition through Arizona and California, as well as a few Ithaca area scenes; photograph albums; includes much material on wasps. Also, correspondence with J. Henry Comstock and others.

This collection contains the administrative and historical records of the Latino Studies Program, covering the period when university faculty, staff, and students were working to establish the program to 1993 when it sponsored the Year of Hispanic Performance. The files consist of correspondence, reports, flyers, course listings, artist files, clippings, and information about other Latino organizations and services throughout the country.

Field journals; reports; lecture notes; data; films, photographs, and photograph albums; correspondence; financial records; maps; printed materials; and bird guides regarding ornithological trips taken by Lawrence Grinnell from 1939 to 1971: St. Lawrence Gulf, Churchill (Manitoba), Alaska, Southern and Western United States, Trinidad, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, West Indies, Tobago, British Guiana, Panama, Africa, New Zealand, Australia, the Amazon region, Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, the Antarctic, India, and Nepal; also, correspondence and a pamphlet, "The 1957-1958 New Zealand-Australia Expedition of the Laboratory of Ornithology"; materials pertaining to his dissertation A Study of the Common Redpoll; and a notebook of Cornell ornithology seminars. Also, Canoeable Waterways of New York State and Vicinity. Also, films and audiotapes.

The National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees 1199 News Photographs files consist of approximately 32,500 black and white photographs in 8”x10” prints; 120/220 and 35mm contact prints; and photographic negatives collected during the publication of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employee’s periodical, known generally as 1199 News. Subjects include the early hospital strikes of the 1950s and 1960s; union activity; hospital interiors and exteriors; individuals and groups including union members and their families, political figures, celebrities, artists, and visiting dignitaries; and social, cultural, and political events sponsored or supported by Local 1199. The bulk of the photographs were taken in New York metropolitan region.

This accretion contains oral history interviews related to the Local 1199 National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees. These interviews were conducted between 1975 and 1981. The respondents in this collection of interviews include officers and staff of Local 1199; rank and file members; delegates and organizers; individuals involved with the Charlestown, SC hospital Strike (1969); administrators of various NYC hospitals; and prominent labor, civil rights and health care industry figures. Interviewees address relations with other unions, politics, attempts to organize unskilled Black and Puerto Rican workers, strikes and ethnic conflict among workers.

The Hospital Division of Local 1199 was founded during the historic hospital workers strikes of 1959. Its collection is a rich resource for the organizing activities of this largely New York City-based African-American and Hispanic union. Included are meeting minutes; financial and membership records; and files on collective bargaining, organizing, contract negotiations, grievances, arbitrations, and mediations. It also includes correspondence and a large number of broadsides, posters, leaflets, pamphlets, and other material publicizing the union and its activities and positions. About 1/8th of the material in this collection is in Spanish.

Includes subject files, conference proceedings, lecture notes, related to her career at Cornell University and her work concerning labor, women's work, gender and development, globalization, and Latin American development.

Papers concerning Maya chronology, hieroglyphs, slabs, and languages, with comparisons to archeological sites in Palestine and Mesopotamia. Collection includes holographic manuscripts, bound and loose, hand copied portions of books, extensive notes in notebooks, large collections of tracings of hieroglyphs, pencil and colored drawings of landscapes, people and artifacts, correspondence, several unpublished papers, drafts and manuscripts for Valentini's Deciphering the Palenque Slabs, Temple of the Tree, The Home and Haunts of the Tulteka, and other untitled works. Notes about jade, gold mines, Christopher Columbus, prehistoric copper and bronze tools, Maya leaders, cliff dwellers, Nahuatl language, Hittites. Drawings of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Mayan ruins, scenes from Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica. Folder of notes about a trip Valentini took to Washington D.C., includes late 19th century photograph of the Capitol building. Notes are from Valentini's research, studies and observations.

Published and unpublished stories and articles by Edgar Price and genealogical material concerning the Price family. Correspondence from between family members. Typescript field notes by David Price on Nambiquara (Satones) Indian groups in Brazil. Notes, tape recordings, memos, published and unpublished reports used to prepare book about Nambicuara Indians of Brazil; and autobiographical writing by David Price.

The Robert Garcia papers include personal papers and organizational files reflecting Garcia's personal life and involvement in lesbian and gay rights, reproductive rights, and AIDS activism in New York City. These organizations include ACT UP-New York, the national organization Men of All Colors Together (formerly Black and White Men Together), and a video collective called House of Color. The collection also contains testimony regarding his arrest for civil disobedience at an ACT UP demonstration. A collection of videocassettes includes biographical material as well as footage related to activism about AIDS, identity politics, race and sexuality, and work by House of Color.

Includes articles and information about Japanese emperors, ancestor worship, the Japanese in Brazil, historical demography and material concerning the student protests at Cornell in 1969, correspondence with David Nathan Meyerson, and scrapbooks with newspaper clippings from World War I and World War II, material concerning Smith's participation in the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program and programs from various plays from the 1940s.

Consists of Romualdi's correspondence with organizations and individuals in Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as clippings, reports, etc. concerning these countries; correspondence concerning Italian labor and politics and Italian emigration to Latin America; correspondence of Jay Lovestone, George Meany, Robert Alexander, Matthew Woll, Benjamin Stephansky, Arturo J´auregui, and Nelson A. Rockefeller regarding U.S. involvement in Latin America's politics and labor movement; correspondence relating to the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), Vice-President Richard M. Nixon's Latin American trip (1958), and a speech by Meany entitled "Inter-American Trade Unionism"; correspondence with officers of international labor organizations; clippings and manuscripts, newspaper and trade-union articles written by and about Romualdi; correspondence regarding Romualdi's post-retirement activities as a labor consultant for U.S. enterprises, the publication of his memoirs, Presidents and Peons, and lecture work; manuscripts of Romualdi's lectures (published and unpublished) on inter-American labor-management relations and politics, AFL-CIO activities, and trade-union history; manuscript copies and drafts of Romualdi's memoirs, published as Presidents and Peons by Funk and Wagnalls, 1967; correspondence of Richard M. Nixon on Latin American labor relations; itineraries and clippings concerning Nixon's Latin American tours; correspondence of Jay Lovestone, Richard J. Alexander and J´auregui on Free Trade Union Committee (1951-1954); letters regarding AFL-CIO tours to Latin America (1950, 1956, and 1958); and condolence letters to Mimi Romualdi on Romualdi's death (1967) and several portraits and photographs of Romualdi.