UT Collections
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From 1983 to 1999 the Central America Resource Center (CARC) compiled a collection of news articles on the current events in the U.S. and Central America. A similar project was undertaken for Mexico, the Mexico Newspak, from 1993-1999. The articles documented human rights violations in Central America that immigration attorneys used in political asylum petitions on their clients’ behalf. In 1992, CARC changed its name to the Human Rights Documentation Exchange (HRDE) and expanded its mission to collect documentation for asylum cases worldwide.
1985-1999 -
Dr. Ramiro R. Casso was a civil rights activist that fought for school desegregation and equal educational opportunities for Mexican American children. As a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Casso also advocated on behalf of Texas farm workers and promoted public health issues along the Texas-Mexico border. Active also in politics, Casso ran for mayor of McAllen, Texas, in 1981, campaigning for increased vigilance on issues of police brutality directed at Mexican Americanss and immigrants. Casso also served on the Texas Board of Health and the Texas Human Rights Commission. Materials in the collection include print documents such as speeches, testimonies and correspondence from each of Casso's endeavors, with a particular focus on health and education issues along the border.
1960-2007 -
Eduardo Idar was a Mexican American lawyer and legal rights activist. The materials document Idar's career as an attorney in Texas with the Attorney General's office, his involvement with organizations such as the American G.I. Forum, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Political Association of Spanish Speaking People, and his activism for Mexican American rights in schools and in the political and legal process. A large part of the collection documents the case of Ruiz v. Estelle, which found widespread abuses of prisoners in the Texas state prison system and placed it in federal receivership.
1941-2002, (bulk: 1941-1981) -
Both Erasmo and Sally Andrade were activists who advocated for the fulfillment of the rights of Mexican Americans to education, social services, economic justice and political participation. With these purposes in mind, Erasmo founded three organizations during the 1960s - Bishop's Committee for the Spanish Speaking, the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASSO), and the Federation for the Advancement of Mexican Americans (FAMA). Erasmo's portion of the collection includes documents and correspondence from each of these initiatives and materials related to various political campaigns and partnerships with other civil rights organizations. Sally's papers focus on the Governor's Task Force on Inhalant Abuse and also include collected writings on the changing roles of women in Latino families.
Civil Rights, Segregation, and Apartheid, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Gender and Sexuality1931-1994 -
Eustasio Cepeda was a community activist in the Austin, Texas area. Active in Mexican American mutual aid societies and in organizations of Mexican nationals in Texas, Cepeda helped organize celebrations of Mexican holidays in Austin and was instrumental in having a Mexican consul assigned to Austin. The collection contains documents from various organizations Cepeda aided in organizing, as well as correspondence relating to Cepeda's activism against discrimination, aid to Mexican nationals and Mexican consular activities and presence in Texas. The collection also includes news clippings, photographs, programs, patriotic pamphlets, poems, songs and speech notes.
1907-1987 -
The collection of writer, educator, and civil rights advocate George I. Sánchez, contains correspondence, written works, speeches and interviews, photographs, and reference materials document Sánchez's career as an educator in New Mexico and Texas, his involvement with organizations such as the American Council of Spanish-speaking People, the University of Texas and the League of United Latin American Citizens, and his activism against the segregation of Mexican American schoolchildren in the southwestern United States.
1919-1986 -
George Lister was a career foreign service officer who held State Department posts in Moscow, Warsaw, Rome, and Bogota, and worked in the State Department's Bureau of Latin American Affairs. In the 1970s, he played a leadership role in the creation of the Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor, and in 1974 Lister became the first Human Rights Officer in the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. Because of his important behind-the-scenes work in making human rights an important consideration in diplomacy, he was labeled "Mr. Human Rights" by historian Arthur Schlesinger. The Lister Papers include Lister's writings, correspondence, audio-visual materials and his collected materials on a variety of his professional and personal interests.
1887-2004, (bulk: 1936-2003) -
Internationally recognized cultural theorist, creative writer, and independent scholar Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, one of the first openly lesbian Chicana writers, played a major role in redefining Chicana/o, queer, feminist and female identities, and in developing inclusionary movements for social justice. Her theories of mestizaje, the borderlands, and the new mestiza, as well as her code-switching, have had an impact far beyond the field of Chicano/a studies. Her insistence on community and coalition-building united feminist concerns with issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, health, and spirituality. Anzaldúa also played a formative role in the development of Queer Theory.
1942-2004 -
The discovery of the National Police Historical Archive in 2005 opened an extensive and timely resource for the study of Guatemalan history and human rights in the region, spanning a broad array of topics from Guatemala's armed conflict between 1960 and 1996 to the sexually transmitted disease experiments performed at the behest of the United States government in the 1940s. This site currently includes over 10 million scanned images of documents from the National Police Historical Archive. This digital archive mirrors and extends the physical archive that remains preserved in Guatemala as an important historical patrimony of the Guatemalan people. To make best use of this resource, we suggest taking some time to read the tutorial and examples found on the About this Site page, learning the organizational structure of the National Police, and then patiently exploring the archive. This is not a full text search engine like Google, but rather the digital iteration of what you would encounter working in the massive paper archive in Guatemala. When you go to an archive, you will seldom find the exact document you are looking for right away. It will often take many hours of investigation to find relevant documents, if they exist at all. This Archive is arranged in accordance with the professional archival principles of provenance and original order to reflect the Guatemalan National Police administrative structure, and understanding that structure is a valuable way to start.
1870-1997 -
Gustavo C. García was an attorney who advocated on behalf of Chicano rights to education and adequate workplace conditions. García is most known for his arguments against jury segregation in the Hernandez v. The State of Texas case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. The García collection is small and includes photocopies of correspondence, legal documents and newspaper clippings reflecting his career-long involvement with Chicano rights.
1936-1977
