IISH's brand new Latin America and Caribbean Desk - headed by Bolivian Rossana Barragán - has gotten off to an energetic start. Latin America, a region defined by legendary revolutions and social movements, has always been one of IISH's important collection regions. The level of activities there has been considerably scaled up following the decision in 2010 to subsequently place the emphasis of the collection policy outside of Europe. Regional desks for Africa and for Latin America were to join those already established in Asia, the Middle East and Russia. Various social movements are booming and brewing in these regions. It is important to register and document these trends and movements and the IISH can play a part here.
Basic Idea
Rossana Barragán heads the Latin America Desk from a basic idea: "The relationship between people, archives and countries must be equal and symmetrical. The needs of the social movements there must be assessed and recorded. It is only natural that they want to preserve their ideas - and that is where IISH comes into the picture. Digital copies make these ideas accessible to a broad public, and also have a conservational function. If two digital copies are made - one for our collection here and one for the indigenous people there - both parties can benefit. The management of archives must not be allowed to go the same route as museum collections. Museums in the western hemisphere showcase objects from the southern hemisphere - but you won't come across wooden clogs or berets in a Peruvian museum."
Focus
Barragán recollects three important processes in the history of twentieth century South America: "First of all: the persecution and political violence in the period of dictatorships in the '70's and '80's. Second: the rise of social movements particularly strong in the Andean countries, after the neoliberal governments in the '90's. And last but not least, the growing importance of some countries in economic terms (Brazil) or in political terms (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia), although they are still marked by social inequality."
In consequence, the Latin American Desk proposes to prioritize the documents generated by the Truth Commissions and by the Ombudsman institutions, by the social and indigenous movements of the Andean Countries and in Brazil.
Initial contacts have also been made with the Cuban central archive which came into existence thanks to the visionary and persevering work of the revolutionary Celia Sánchez Manduley (1920-1980).
Mobile Brigade and Correspondent
The digital rescue brigade that Barragán envisions for the Andean countries is mobile. "Two practically inclined people who will travel to the material and make scans thereof or duplicate them in some other manner. This is not just about paper archives, but oftentimes about other forms of media such as audio, photographs and video."
"In Brazil, the IISH now has a correspondent: Larissa Rosa Correa. She works at the Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth of the University of Campinas, a documentation center which is in many ways comparable to IISH, and with which IISH has now entered into an agreement."
"In Cuba, work will be with done with the Oficina de Asuntos Históricos del Consejo de Estado de la República de Cuba, lead by his Director, Eugenio Suárez."
Barragán of course also travels to South America, though her headquarters are in Amsterdam. Amongst other projects, she is currently working on a social history of the Potosí silver mine in Bolivia, in particular about the debate on Indian unfree labour.
First Results
The history of Latin America was defined by political violence and human rights violations up until the 1990's. Following this period, many countries established Truth Commissions in order to document the people's stories, from their own mouths. A similar goal was adopted by the 'Defensoria del Pueblo' - acting as a kind of Ombudsman - where on could report complaints about human rights violations. The final reports by these types of organisations are typically published or available via internet - but that does not, however, apply to the documents on which those reports are based.
These kinds of testimonials are Barragán's number-one priority. Some 250,000 digital records regarding the period between 1944 and 2007 have already been acquired from the Ecuadorian Truth Commission. In Ecuador, the Indian population won a case against an oil tycoon. "We will digitize the documents of an NGO who worked on it. We will try also to have a copy of the archive of a woman who founded the Communist Party of Ecuador. In Bolivia, meetings and important assemblies of national peasant-, miner- and worker- organizations have been recorded in audio,and digital copies are now being made of these audio cassettes."