Coherent Digital

Latin American History and Culture brings unified, cross-searchable access to millions of pages from websites and archives scattered across the internet—books, magazines, photographs, maps, letters, diaries, ephemera, videos, and audio files, 16th to 21st centuries.

It preserves at-risk and rare content, often overlooked. And it indexes vetted, high-quality materials on the open web, simplifying discovery for scholars and student.

At a glance

250,000+

items—newspapers, magazines, documentaries, oral histories, ephemera—growing to 500,000 items

250+

critical collections, discoverable in one, unified search

Argentina newspaper, 1931. Américalee.

Access and preservation

Latin American History and Culture indexes at the item level—so you can discover content that’s hard to find, deeply buried, and hidden from view. Then you link to the original source.

Because web content can disappear, we make copies (with permission). If a link breaks or a website disappears, you see the Coherent copy.

To further preserve, we contribute ten percent of sales to bring additional archives online; we anticipate digitizing 50,000 pages of rare and endangered materials with these funds.

And with the support of subscribers, we make access free to libraries in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Belize, Ecuador, Paraguay, El Salvador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Mexican film, La Casa Chica directed by Robert Gavaldon, was released in 1950 (from the Efrain Barradas Mexican and Cuban Film Poster Collection, University of Florida)

Documentaries, videos, and related ephemera

Moving images range in time from old to current.

The Mexican silent film Tepeyac (1917) tells a story about the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In Prisoner Thirteen (1933), director Fernando de Fuentes transitions between silent and sound to document the Revolution.

Almost American, from Latino Public Broadcasting (2024), shows how a Salvadoran-American family with US-born children faced separation when Temporary Protected Status (TPS) changed in 2016.

Heroic Crusade is part of a collection from the Mexican Ministry of Health documenting hygiene programs, disease prevention, health campaigns and vaccination brigades that were carried out throughout the country since the 1950s.

Film posters round out the collection.

"TERRE E VIDA: Resist, do not migrate and share the land" (1984, Brazil, Landless Workers Movement)

Posters, oral histories, and ephemera

Hundreds of political posters both documented and inspired movements for change. Created by activists, governments, labor organizers, and various groups, most of these posters are ephemeral.

The collection also includes hundreds of hours of oral histories, such as interviews with members of the first generation to leave Cuba after the Revolution from the Luis J. Botifoll Oral History Project (University of Miami), and recordings from New Roots: Voices from Carolina del Norte!, a bilingual oral history archive exploring Latin American and Caribbean heritage in the U.S. South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

Examples of other ephemera include early-twentieth-century Mexican cookbooks (from University of Texas at San Antonio) and a propaganda pin with Cuban and Chinese flags, dated 1961 (from the Archive of Cuban Socialism).

From the archive of José Carlos Mariátegui, Peru

Thousands of magazines and newspapers from 20+ countries

More than 400 magazines are included. They feature art, literature, politics, pulp, fashion, culture, history, architecture, religion, Indigenous cultures, revolutions, food, and other areas.

Amauta (1926-1930) was one of the most influential magazines of the twentieth century. It gathered art, poetry, literature, and political thought from international collaborators and key cultural figures.

The database also indexes more than 650 newspapers, both colonial and postcolonial.