Preserving and Teaching History, One Page at a Time
Posted on September 14, 2021, by Collin Yoxall
Alex Hidalgo, Ph.D., is preserving and teaching history using centuries-old documents
from colonial Latin America.
Ask Alex Hidalgo, Ph.D., about what he does for a living and you will be immediately greeted by a stack of
centuries-old books so delicate looking most people might be afraid to touch them.
Hidalgo, an associate professor of history and director of undergraduate studies,
is passionate about preserving texts and manuscripts from colonial-era Latin America.
The documents, which form part of a teaching collection Hidalgo has helped assemble in collaboration
with curators at the Mary Couts Burnett Library’s Special Collections, serve not only as living documents for research but as teaching tools for Hidalgo.
“You can almost see it in their eyes when they view the documents for the first time,”
Hidalgo said, adding, “There is this realization of how old something is, and what
that entails.”
For Hispanic Heritage Month, Hidalgo assembled some of his favorite pieces held by
Special Collections.
All photo credits to Alex Hidalgo, Ph.D.
One of the most fascinating aspects of working with old books is finding doodles,
drawings, and other forms of annotation and markings across their pages. Pedro de
Contreras, Manual to Administer the Holy Sacraments (Mexico City, 1638).Bookplate from the library of the convent of St Francis, one of the most influential
religious precincts in the New World. Established in Mexico City in 1525, the library
held over 16,000 volumes in the eighteenth century. In Juan Bautista, Admonitions
for Confessors (Mexico City, 1601).
The Guidonian hand, a mnemonic device used by Guido de Arezzo to teach music in the
11th c., formed part of the toolkit of Franciscan missionaries in the Americas. Manuel
Sánchez included this example to teach plainsong in his Rule of St Francis (Mexico
City, 1725).An eighteenth-century reader added a bit of flair to a copy of Francisco de Florencia’s
Zodiaco mariano (Mexico City, 1755) by inserting an engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe
to enhance the book’s subject matter: to help identify miraculous images of Mary in
New Spain.
Detail of a mermaid holding a violin and a fish, in Marcelo de Ayala M. Benavides
y Arce’s title of nobility, Lima, 1696. Titles of nobility served to petition the
Crown for special privileges and they often included coats of arms, genealogical trees,
and decorations such as mythical creatures.Manuscripts made during Latin America’s colonial period have caught the attention
of modern collectors, including pop artist Andy Warhol, who acquired this bill of
sale for a bacon factory in Puebla (1806), because of its aesthetic appeal.
