Resources for Research and Teaching
Manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and books collected by University of Chicago scholars in Mexico have in turn served as resources for future generations of researchers, and in Special Collections Resource Center classrooms. These have been supplemented by new acquisitions and donations to the Library holdings, ranging from collections of records documenting historic institutions to modern artists' books.
Reflecting on this exhibition and on the University of Chicago's longstanding intellectual links with Mexico, Professor Mauricio Tenorio has written "Clues for An Archive: The University of Chicago, Mexico, the Social Sciences and Language," which the Katz Center is now pleased to publish (full text available here).
Fuentes de Investigación y Enseñanza
Manuscritos, fotografías, recuerdos y libros reunidos por académicos de la Universidad de Chicago en México, han sido utilizados como fuentes para futuras generaciones de investigadores y en salones de clases. Estos han sido complementados con nuevas adquisiciones y donaciones al material de la biblioteca, mismos que comprenden desde colecciones de registros de documentos de instituciones históricas hasta libros de artistas modernos.
Corridos, broadsheets collected in Mexico
circa 1920s
Robert Redfield. Papers
The anthropologist Robert Redfield collected corrido broadsheets in the Yucatan during the 1920s while he conducted his research for Tepoztlán, a Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life (1930). In general, the corrido telegraphs topical problems, but in this text, Redfield characterized the corrido in Tepoztlan, in particular, as more of a historical document than a report on current events:
The corrido is a news organ. It informs what comes to be a public of the events which concern it, and especially of the excitements which nourish its interest. It tends, one would venture, to become a mechanism for conflicting local attitudes. A man sung as a bandit in one community may be sung as a redeemer in another; the circulation of these songs tends to define his position in more generally accepted terms. In this relation of the corrido to a discussion which is more impersonal than the intimate interchange of ideas in a completely self-sufficient folk community, the corrido is related to the rise of nationalistic feeling which begins to give to the changes which are growing in Mexico a special and at the same time a characteristic form....But in Tepoztlán, crime almost does not occur and great accidents are rare; so the subject matter involves almost entirely the episode of the heroes of the last great revolution. (Redfield, 1930.)
Corridos. Impresión de amplio formato recopilada en México.
Alrededor de los años 1920s.
Robert Redfield. Papers
El antropólogo Robert Redfield reunió corridos, en impresión de amplio formato en Yucatán, durante los años 1920s mientras que él conducía su investigación Tepoztlán, a Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life, 1930 ('Tepoztlán, un pueblo mexicano: un estudio de la vida popular'). En general, el corrido relata problemas locales, pero en este texto, Redfield caracteriza al corrido en Tepoztlán, en particular, más como un documento histórico que un reporte de los sucesos actuales:
El corrido es un instrumento de noticias. Informa a quienes llegarán a ser el público de los eventos que le conciernen y especialmente de los que nutren su interés. Tiende, uno se atrevería a decir, a convertirse en un mecanismo para las actitudes conflictivas locales. Un hombre, cantado como a un bandido, en una comunidad, se le podría cantar como a un redentor en otra comunidad; la propagación de estas canciones tendía a definir su posición en los términos más generalmente aceptados. En esta relación del corrido con una discusión que es más impersonal que el intercambio íntimo de ideas en un pueblo, se relaciona al corrido con el desarrollo de un sentimiento nacionalista, el cual empieza a aportar a los cambios que están creciendo en México de una manera característica y especial...Pero en Tepoztlán, el crimen casi no ocurre y los grandes accidentes son raros; por lo tanto, el tema involucra casi por completo el episodio de los héroes de la última gran revolución. (Redfield, 1930).
July 1, 1612
Archicofradía del Santísimo Sacramento y Caridad. Records
Confraternities are associations formed for the purpose of promoting and enriching public worship in the Catholic Church. For laymen they provide an organized structure for the expression of individual piety, devotion, and service. The Confraternity of the Most Blessed Sacrament arose in the sixteenth century for the special purpose of emphasizing and enhancing the Eucharist, particularly as a reaction to and a refutation of Protestant sacramental doctrine and practice. The confraternity movement quickly spread to all parts of the Catholic world, even to the remote parishes in America.
The confraternity founded in Mexico City in 1539 later attained the status of archconfraternity, and, because of its affiliation with a local female orphanage and school, was known in full as the Archicofradía del Santísimo Sacramento y de Santa Maria de la Caridad. The archconfraternity was dissolved and its properties confiscated by the anti-clerical reform laws of 1861.
Antonio Peñafiel (1830-1922)
Berlin: A. Asher & Co. 1890
Rare Book Collection
The Mexican architect Antonio Peñafiel traveled to various archeological sites and archives in Mexico to gather indigenous images and architectural details to incorporate into the façade of the Mexican pavilion that he designed for the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. In this book, he reproduces the images that he sketched for his own reference materials.
Enrique Chagoya (1951-)
2001
Rare Book Collection
In this limited-edition artist's book, painted on amate paper, Enrique Chagoya— a Mexican born artist nationalized in the United States—spoofs scholarship about the history of Mexico. Using what he terms "reverse anthropology," Chagoya "cannibalizes" images from Western culture and reorganizes them in humorous narratives. For example, Chagoya depicts Saint Veronica and the miraculous image of Jesus's face on her veil as chupacabras, a metaphor for dominant cultures that are draining the Mexican economy and its people.