part 1 of Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations from Brill in 2017. Now, we are having a trial of part 2 of the same database- Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations, 1959 that deals with the writers. The trial will go through November 15th, 2018.
The trial can be accessed here: https://primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/cuban-culture-and-cultural-relations-part-2
Please use the VPN or Library Proxy if you are accessing it from an off-campus location.
Please see the description of the resource below:
More than 63,800 digital files
Records on 1,046 writers and artists
Full-text search functionality
Including MARC21 catalog records
Background and Resource Description
Founded in Havana in 1959, only a few months after the Revolution, Casa de las Américas quickly developed into one of the most prestigious cultural centers in Latin America and the Caribbean. To a large extent its success and survival are the result of its capacity to establish a remarkable intellectual network around a common vision. When during the early years of the Revolution many foreign embassies closed their doors, Casa de las Américas offered a space for progressive minds to exchange information and discuss new ideas. Here, writers and artists from Latin America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world met and gave lectures, organized concerts and exhibitions, staged theater shows, conducted research, and found a place to publish their writings. The record of their activities, which continue to this day, are preserved in Casa de las Américas’ archive, presented here in digital format for the first time.
The Vertical Archive
Casa de las Américas is home to a large library specializing in Latin American and Caribbean humanities and social sciences. Throughout its almost six decades of existence, this library has amassed and preserved an unparalleled archival collection known as “the Vertical Archive.” Organized in five parts, the present part, Writers, offers a unique insight into the activities of the more than a thousand writers and artists who visited La Casa. The archive consists of unpublished manuscripts, letters as well as authorial notes and redactions.
Writers
Famous writers from the twentieth century form the core of the collection. Here one encounters such luminaries as Jorge Amado, Mario Benedetti, Roberto Bolaño, María Luisa Bombal, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, Julio Cortázar, Roque Dalton and Gabriel García Márquez, to name but a few. Some of the leading writers from the nineteenth century are also represented, including José Martí and the pioneer Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis. These world-renowned figures are accompanied by hundreds of their arguably less illustrious peers, who are nevertheless equally essential to illustrate the cultural climate and history of the era.
Artists
In addition to writers, the archive includes files on painters, such as Roberto Matta and David Alfaro Siqueiros, filmmakers, such as Santiago Álvarez and Glauber Rocha, and musicians, such as Chilean singer-songwriter and political activist Víctor Jara.
Files means simply documentation: it could be an article from a local newspaper or magazine or a cable. The Casa de las Américas collected all sorts of documents over the past 60 years. Sometimes material they produced themselves, but also a lot of press clippings that were sent to them by other institutions across Latin America and the Caribbean. They did this partly to keep the Casa informed about how the Revolution and its culture was perceived abroad. This was especially important because a host of countries cut diplomatic ties with Cuba, turning the Casa de las Américas effectively in some sort of embassy.
The UC Berkeley Library had purchased the part 1 of Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations from Brill in 2017. Now, we are having a trial of part 2 of the same database- Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations, 1959 that deals with the writers. The trial will go through November 15th, 2018.