The Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago works in a consortium with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This page is meant to facilitate access to Illinois’s Library collections and services, especially those that support Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Collection at Illinois is considered to be one of the strongest in the nation. With more than 980,000 volumes from and about Latin America and the Caribbean in Spanish, Portuguese, and English the collection ranks in the top five collections nationwide and is the largest in the Midwest.
Our collection’s rich history goes back to the founding of the university in 1867 and is comprehensive regionally and thematically. Nonetheless, our traditional strengths include the Andes, Brazil, and the Southern Cone. Some featured items includes rare sixteenth-century Mexican legal imprints, a unique collection of some 280 letters from the Conde de Montemar between Lima and Madrid from 1761-1799, Brazil miscellaneous collection, 1751-1888, a collection of Bolivian pamphlets (1761-1938), a notebook from Gabriela Mistral, and a growing Sport Collection with complete runs of magazines such as Argentina’s Mundo Deportivo (1949-1959) and Brazil’s Placar (1970-2015).
The collection is supported by the University of Illinois Archives that contain the papers of Dr. Julian H. Steward (1942-1976), Oscar and Ruth Lewis papers (1944-1976), and Avery Brundage (1908-1982), among others. Many other items are located in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library including a rare collection of Mexican pamphlets (1813-1908). For more information contact Prof. Antonio Sotomayor (PhD UChicago, History), Librarian for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.