The Nettie Lee Benson Collection is a library that originated as part of the larger collections of the University of Texas at Austin since the 1890s. The Library began initially as a typical colonial archive, namely, Anglo Hispanists interested in things Iberian in the colonial Southwest (USA). Anglophone lovers of things Iberian focused on the civilizing role of friars and soldiers. Anglo Hispanists like Herbert Bolton at UT, therefore, collected documentation on missions and mestizo settlers consolidating towns against Indian superstitions and raids.[2] Yet at some point in the history of the Benson Library, it became also an anticolonial archive. How can an archive be both colonial and anticolonial?

Archives are collections that reflect the biases and interests of collectors. Rather than “objective,” trustworthy repositories of everyone’s records, archives assemble the voices of those privileged few who had most access to paperwork.[3] Most Anglo Hispanist colonial archives privilege the views of missionaries and silence the perspective of natives and slaves, for example. Yet the archives of the borderlands in the Southwest have a dialectic tension to them. They also give voice to anticolonial Hispanic struggles to end subordination and marginalization at the hands of Anglo-American settlers.[4]

The founders of the UT’s History Department, from George Garrison to Herbert Bolton, collected archival materials in Spain and Mexico in the 1890s and early 1900s as part of a larger Anglo interest in Spanish colonial history. After President Álvaro Obregón invited two UT regents and the historian Charles W. Hackett to his presidential inauguration in 1921, the University purchased directly in Mexico the extraordinary collection of Genaro García, including 18,000 printed volumes and 200,000 manuscript pages. [5]

This acquisition led the general library to hire a curator of “Latin American” materials. We know little about this first curator, Lota Spell, but we do know much more about the second one, Carlos Castañeda. As an alumnus of UT with a bachelor's degree in engineering and a MA in history, Castañeda arrived in Austin in 1927 to get a doctorate on “Texas” history. He earned his way in the program by working for the library on the so-called “Latin American” collection (Genaro García Library and the Icazbalceta collection too). It was only in 1934 that the “Latin American” collection was removed from the general library to become a separate entity.

Historian, archivist, and activist Carlos Castañeda. Source: Carlos E. Castañeda Papers, Benson Latin American Collection

As a librarian and historian, Castañeda and his Mexican American friends at UT transformed the meaning of “Latin America” to define those who otherwise were known as Mexicanos or Tejanos in the Southwest, namely, individuals born in the USA who by and large were treated as foreign nationals without citizenship rights. From the 1920 to the 1950s, the term “Latin American” worked for folks like Castañeda as a moniker for collective Latinx political identity. Castañeda’s Latino-Americanism is very informative because it sheds light on the less known history of the Benson as an anti-colonial archive.

Castañeda became a historian of the Catholic Church in Texas. His sources were mostly from church archives and his politics were Catholic at the time of the Cristero rebellion in Mexico. While pursuing what could be perceived a Hispanist, reactionary agenda that rendered native and African Americans invisible while glorifying friars and missions, Castañeda tied the history of the Church in Texas to the disenfranchisement of the Tejano population. Castañeda fought anti-discrimination campaigns in education and the oil fields of Houston.[6]

His identity politics was radical. He was one of the founders of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, namely the Latinx organization that gave us SCOTUS Hernández v Texas (1954), the first time ever Mexicanos born in Texas were considered legally Mexican Americans. Until Hernández, no Tejano born in the USA had for more than a hundred years been able to participate as jury of his peers. Mexicanos became hyphenated citizens some 90 years after Reconstruction and the 14th amendment.

Attorneys Gus García (left) and Johnny Herrera (right) with client, Pete Hernández, circa 1953. Source: Dr. Hector P. García Papers, Bell Library, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

LULAC, drew on Latin American populist notions of citizenship (mestizaje, a citizenship not attached to racial rights) to make its case before the Supreme Court of the United States. George Sánchez, another “Latin American” Tejano at UT’s School of Education, was the main ideologue of Hernández v Texas .[7]

After Castañeda quit his job of curator of the Latin American collection in protest for being the lowest-paid member of the staff, the collection on Tejanos and Latinx continued to grow as the colonial Southwest was considered part of Latin America. Yet UT’s Latin American collection, by and large, did not make the collection of Latinx materials a priority.

It took the political mobilization of the Chicanxs for the Latin American collection (later named Nettie Lee Benson, to honor its most influential curator who remained in charge until 1975 due to hearing loss) to expand holdings past 1831.

Nettie Lee Benson. Image courtesy of Humanities Texas

As part of the Civil Rights movement, Chicanos (no longer League of United Latin American Citizens) on campus began to demand a specialized library. The Mexican American Library Program (MALP) emerged in 1974 as institutional response of UT to Chicano student demands. No separate library emerged and MALP became part of the Benson. Ever since, MALP has assembled the entire collection of the “Chicano” movement in Texas since the early 1900s, including the papers of the League of United Latin American Citizens as and the personal papers of most of its leadership, including Castañeda’s and Sánchez’s. There are countless other important collections like the papers of Gloria Anzaldúa.[8]

All these investments notwithstanding, the Benson remains an anticolonial archive. Its anticolonial dimension resides in the marginal position of the history of Latinx and Latin Americans in the broader spectrum of the USA.

Take for example the parallel histories of Whites and Latinos in the state of Texas as revealed in two libraries on campus. The Latin American collection was born about the same time as the Eugene C. Barker Library (a.k.a. Briscoe Center). The Barker library collected exclusively the history of White, Anglo Americans in Texas. The boundaries separating these two collections seemingly began to go away in the 1970s, with the building of the LBJ Library and the mobilization for Civil Rights on campus. The Barker began to collect Latinx things at the same time the Benson set out to put together MALP .

But for all the approximations, for all the student and faculty mobilization since the 1970s, both libraries remained distinct. The Barker Library collected, for example, the papers of Congressman Henrique González.

Henrique B. González (Wikipedia. Public Domain)

González was a leading Hispanic politician given to echoing the views of Anglos on Chicanos. For many Anglo Texans, the members of “Raza Unida” organization were communists, followers of Fidel Casto and Zavala County was “Little Cuba.” González kept all the counterintelligence on Chicanos. They can be found at the former Barker Library (the Briscoe Center) today. The papers of Raza Unida are at the Benson.[9]

The moral of the story is clear: the Benson and the Barker-Briscoe Libraries continue to represent very different visions of the nation to this day because the archives were built by very different communities with vastly different resources. This holds true for the past and for today. From the perspective of the Latinx population of the USA and given the background I have explored, the Benson Library represents the anticolonial struggles of a deeply colonized (silenced, marginalized, impoverished) sector of the population. The Barker-Briscoe Library, on the other hand, stands for a history of collecting that has long privileged the narratives of a racially dominantly White nation. This is reflected in their budgets and autonomy.

The Barker-Briscoe is an autonomous library whose budget is tenfold that of the Benson’s (private endowments included, of which the Briscoe holds a disproportionate amount). The disproportion is not unlike that between the ratio of Latinx and White students and professors at UT more generally.

White students represent ca. 37 % of total student population, whereas White professors represent ca. 70% of the total faculty population. The opposite is the case for Latinx. 26% of the total student population on campus are Hispanics, but only 7 % of the total University faculty are Hispanics. There is no other ethnic-racial group on campus that is more underrepresented both in terms of the absolute numbers of the State of Texas general population (53 % of all high school’s students in the state of Texas are Hispanics) and in terms of faculty representation.

To honor the Benson’s Centennial, it is not enough to just to have well-financed conferences. That is all good but is not enough. It is also necessary to think deep and long about the widespread and secular nature of Hispanic marginalization and lack of political power in the State of Texas and particularly at UT-Austin. A place for readers to begin is by perusing the Hispanic Equity Report for faculty UT-Austin, that documents the marginalization of Latinx professional population in every quantifying category available: salaries, leadership, endowments, teaching awards, merit.[10]