Americas Collections Blog

Literatura de Cordel

 

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress is currently sponsoring a two day symposium on the Brazilian popular literature known as ‘cordel.’

I was pleased to be able to contribute some bibliographic citations and information to a project that has resulted in an impressive and interesting resource for researchers of Brazilian cordel literature and Brazilian popular culture.

Cordel literature began circulating in the Northeastern states of Bahia, Ceará, and Pernambuco in the late 19th century. Often written as a poem, the subject of cordel literature can range from the fantastical to religious to topical. Cordel books tell their stories through words and wood cut prints. Many cordelistas gained fame as poets, others were the only source of news from afar. Cordeis were crucial to the spread of news about the Brazilian government’s war on the community of Canudos in the late 19th century, as well as the adventures of the famous ‘cangaço’ bandit of the northeast, Lampiao.

At once traditional and innovative – as most popular art is – the cordel is thriving again in contemporary Brazil. And this new energy and attention on the cordel may inspire a researcher to take a look at what is perhaps a lesser known area of our Latin American collections here at the BL. Cordel ‘classics’ such as ‘A chegada de Lampiao no inferno’ (The arrival of Lampiao in hell) as well as Brazilian ‘chapbooks’ are just waiting to be perused by an eager reader!

[E.N.C.]

Guest posts on Out of this World

My colleagues have been moonlighting on the Science Fiction exhibition blog. First, up, it's Aquiles on SF in Latin America:

The narrative of alternative, fantastic worlds is a hallmark of Latin American literature. Many novels written in Latin America, especially in the second half of the 20th century such as The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier or A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez became worldwide famous under the label 'magic realism', a narrative of alternative lives, beings and landscapes that challenge our concept of reality. What many readers do not realise is that the fantastic world as ascribed to contemporary Latin American literature can in fact be identified much earlier in the SF narratives that were published in the continent – a literary genre which has been and continues to be widely published in Latin America.

Dos Partidos en lucha: Fantasía científica by Eduardo Holmberg (Buenos Aires: El Arjentino, 1875) [Two Fighting Parties – Science Fantasy – BL holds it at shelfmark 7006.b.1] is considered to be one of the first Latin American novels written in the genre. This novel does not, in fact, make projections on how a future world would look but, instead, is based on a historic event that happened in Argentina: Charles Darwin’s visit to the country in 1872 during a scientific expedition. The novel narrates how Darwin captured some specimens from Argentina, including what he believed to be some monkeys who turned out to be human beings. The interesting aspect of this work (Holmberg wrote other SF novels dealing with space travel, aliens, etc) is that it brings forward the discussion about how science, working on a system of classification, is but a fantasy (or fiction) since it does not grasp reality as it is but rather projects the scientist’s own values and beliefs onto worlds which are completely alien to him. [read more]

Mining the collections

 
Peter Schmidtmeyer, Travels Into Chile, Over the Andes, in the Years 1820 and 1821. London: Longman, 1824 [BL 567.h.22]

We’re so used to seeing bad news on TV or in the papers that it was a real delight to watch the Chilean miners emerging slowly but safely into the arms of their families and loved ones (though I do wonder if the miner who asked both his wife and mistress to meet him might have been better off staying down there). I’m not sure that I would have wanted such a media frenzy to welcome me up but everyone seemed to cope with it pretty well, and these days the notion of privacy doesn’t carry much weight. And who can deny such a national, if not global cause for celebration, particularly after the impact of the February earthquake on the country. I also enjoyed the newspapers vying for punning headlines (my favourite has to be ‘The Freed Hot Chile Fellas,’ which is probably the only time you will ever get me quoting from The Sun).

Mining of course has a very long history in Latin America – just consider all the Inca and Aztec gold. And, as usual, I can’t help but relate events to our collections. When we were researching for our recent exhibition on Spanish American Independence, we came across images of mines in many of the travellers accounts, particularly of the silver mine in Potosí (in present day Bolivia but then in the Viceroyalty of Peru) and also in Mexico. Mining was a very lucrative enterprise for the Spanish Crown in its American colonies, but many of the mines were destroyed or abandoned in the period after the wars of independence. The new republics then revived the industry by attracting foreign investment, expertise and technology. As early as the 1820s, British entrepreneurs were starting to invest capital in the modernisation of Spanish American mines, sending machinery and specialised workforces. Copper, one of the main natural resources of Chile, was a very profitable metal at that time. Aware of the financial opportunities on offer, many British miners started to emigrate to the country and Chile now has the largest population of British descent in Latin America.

But mining continues to be a dangerous business - read Ariel Dorfman on the subject of mining in Chile in The Guardian

 [C.H.]

Argentinian Endangered Archives Accessions

The Endangered Archives Programme helps to preserve global cultural heritage that is at risk. It is based within the BL, and there is an informative blog: the most recent post of which includes a short report on the Museum of La Plata and three images of the preserved plate glass negatives.  The collections are now available for access.

This has also given me the excuse to spend a bit of time on the EAP website, which also includes a google map, which gives a great sense of range of the programme.  Fascinating, and important, stuff.

[M.S.]

Team America on the road

April is conference season for Team America. Phil is on his way to Cambridge for the British Association for Canadian Studies annual conference; Matthew and I will be heading to Norwich and the University of East Anglia on Thursday for the British Association of American Studies conference, and on Friday, Aquiles will be off to Bristol for the Society for Latin American Studies conference. For some reason, the Society for Caribbean Studies has its conference in July – but that’s just as well or we probably wouldn’t be able to fit it in. So, it’s a busy time, but apart from enjoying seeing old friends (and making new ones), the conferences are a great opportunity for us to do what we all love doing – telling people about our collections and pointing them in the direction of material that they might not have thought about. The range of papers on offer also provide us with a good pointer on trends in research, always invaluable when we have to anticipate what materials people might want, both now and in the future. Matthew and I are also looking forward to celebrating the official opening of the Thomas Paine Study Centre at UEA. And as usual, our Eccles Centre for American Studies will be sponsoring a lecture at both BACS and BAAS. Tomorrow, Dr Danielle Fuller will be delivering “Citizen Reader: Canadian literature, mass reading events and the promise of belonging” at BACS, and on Saturday 10th at BAAS, Professor David Reynolds will speak on “America, Empire of Liberty: the challenges of ‘popular’ history.”

[C.H.]

¡Viva La Libertad!

Cover by Rolando Estévez
José Martí, Bolívar. Matanzas (Cuba): Ediciones Vigía, 2002. 

En este momento estoy dedicando gran parte de mi tiempo en la preparación de una exposición programada para Mayo de 2010 en la galería del Folio Society de la British Library sobre la independencia de los países hispanoamericanos. Seguramente tendremos muchas festividades, tanto en la BL como en otros sítios, para celebrar el bicentenario de los movimientos independentistas que comenzaron en 1810 y siguieron hasta finales del siglo XIX.

Estos movimientos de independencia no pretendian simplemente obtener la emancipación política y económica de España. Ellos buscaron, de hecho, revolucionar y sustituir el sistema colonial que había perdurado en el continente durante más de 300 años. Las nuevas repúblicas que se formaron a partir de los movimientos de independencia abrazaban los principios iluministas de libertad, igualdad y justicia social y procuraban erradicar el retraso socioeconómico de la región a través de constituciones progresivas que defendían, entre otras cosas, la educación popular, incluyendo la educación para mujeres, la abolición de esclavitud y la mejora de las condiciones sociales y económicas de la población indígena. Estas eran las cuestiones centrales defendidas por líderes como Simón Bolívar, que comprendieron que ninguna revolución social podría ser llevada a cabo sin el cambio radical del poder oligárquico heredado del régimen colonial. Lamentablemente, el proyecto del Bolívar de una América unida y democrática se mostró imposible de implementación en una sociedad todavía dividida por conflictos regionales, intereses económicos privados y un rígido sistema de división de clases.

La exposición presentará una variedad de materiales de nuestros acervos, enfatizando el desarrollo de los movimientos de independencia y su repercusión en los varios países latinoamericanos en este período tumultuoso. El sueño de Bolívar de un continente americano libre de la opresión colonial y la explotación económica sigue vivo en el continente como lo atestan la revolución mexicana de 1910, la implementación del gobierno socialista en Cuba en 1959 y la corriente revolución bolivariana en Venezuela. Para obtener una idea anticipada de la exposición visiten nuestra galeria en línea.

Need the English version?  Download Independence

[A.A.B.]

Haiti on my mind

from Empire d'Haiti, New York: [1852]

A month or so ago I received notification of a conference on Haiti and it caused me to think about our holdings from the country.  At the American Studies Association annual conference in Albuquerque last year, I had met a Ph.D student who was working on 18th and early 19th century Haiti and I was able to tell her that we had some letters between the widow of Henri Christophe and Mrs Thomas Clarkson. Perhaps not totally surprising since they are included in Thomas Clarkson’s papers, but we’ve got a lot more on Haiti than you might think. And we’ve been finding even more as part of the work that Beth is doing for our Caribbean digitisation project (who knew that we had a 1793 letter from Dessalines!). I had intended to write a blog on the subject but was distracted by having to go off to do jury service for most of December. I never imagined that Haiti would have been brought back to my attention - and the centre of the news, in the way that it has over the past week, as we have watched on TV the dreadful aftermath of the earthquake and its effects on both the people and the land.

Inevitably I’ve been thinking about the history of the country – where more bad things have happened to the people over the years than you can possibly imagine. A piece in yesterday’s Guardian provided some much needed historical context for the disaster, with a good chronology of events. But some might question the omissions (what about the impact of neo-liberal globalisation policies and U.S. led or influenced military coups for example?), and it’s sadly become all too easy to perpetuate the ‘Haiti as tragedy’ narrative. So for a somewhat different perspective, you might want to listen to US policy in Haiti over decades "Lays the foundation for why the impact of natural disaster is so severe", which features Bill Quigley, the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.

And I’m also reminded that at such times of terrible disaster and suffering, there are always those who try to take advantage, so if you’re thinking of donating to any of the disaster funds, make sure you choose carefully to avoid the scammers. The BBC has provided a useful list. 

[C.H.]
 

Unfortunately, Aquiles cannot be with us tonight... the Medal Jose Mindlin for Cultural Achievement

Aquiles, our Latin American curator, writes:

 

As some of you may be aware, I have recently been awarded the Medalha José Mindlin for cultural merit. This prestigious prize is granted every year to a person elected by the Association of Brazilian Bibliophiles who has stood out for representing and disseminating Brazilian culture and literature abroad. I was thrilled and taken completely by surprise when I learned about the prize. 

This medal is in recognition of the work I have done at the British Library and in association with the Brazilian embassy in London which has been very supportive of my curatorial activities, especially in the organisation of Latin American literary events and exhibitions in the UK such as the Semana Machado de Assis and the Spanish American Independence Movements online exhibition. For the organisation of these cultural activities I have used a variety of resources from our Latin American collections such as Machado de Assis’ early poetic works Chrysalidas (1864 - BL shelfmark 1607/4821) and Phalenas (1869 - BL shelfmark 11450.bb.48) published in Rio de Janeiro much before the author became famous as a novelist and considered to be very rare. 

I was represented in the award ceremony by my parents who received the medal on my behalf in Brazil last week. I know there are innumerable other professionals who, like myself, through their work are deeply engaged in the promotion of Latin American culture abroad and I would like to share this prize with them.

Mexico Heads to London

Exhibitions at St Pancras are an important part of the Library’s activities, but we also regularly support exhibitions in other institutions. Down the road at the British Museum, our early map of Tenochtitlan is just one of the items that we have lent to Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler.

A bit further a field, our copy of a 17th century book printed in Mexico featured in the museum of San Ildefonso’s exhibition on the Missions of Northern New Spain 1600-1821 in Mexico City. Aquiles, our Latin American curator, went to retrieve the book recently, and during his brief stay in the city, he came across a complete collection of the Biblioteca del Niño Mexicano (Library of the Mexican Child).

It consists of 110 little pamphlets, arranged in 5 chronological series, which present stories from Mexican history for children. Printed by the Maucci Brothers in Barcelona between 1900-1901, and written by Heriberto Frias, the pamphlets feature striking (and often quite blood thirsty!) colour covers by the great Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada (1851-1913), best known for his calaveras (skeleton figures) and his satirical illustrations of political and social issues. You might have spotted a couple of the covers reproduced in the aforementioned Moctezuma catalogue.

Aquiles’ great find has now arrived safely at the Library and no doubt a few of the pamphlets will feature in the exhibition that we are planning on Spanish American Independence for the Folio Gallery (from late May). If you want to see some of Posada’s work before then, the BM’s Revolution on Paper: Mexican prints 1910-1960 opens next week.

[C. H.]