The Hispanic Foundation 
in 
The Library of Congress The American Experience 
BY 
ARCHIBALD MacLEISH 
LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS 
The Hispanic Foundation 
in 
The Library of Congress 
BY 
ROBERT C. SMITH 
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR 
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1939 Reprinted from the 
Bulletin of the Pan America Union 
November 1939, pp. 621-634 The American Experience 
ARCHIBALD MacLEISH 
Librarian of Congress 
This is an occasion without precedent in 
the history of the Library of Congress. 
But not perhaps for the reason of which 
you think. It is an occasion without 
precedent in the history of the Library of 
Congress because it is the first time in the 
Library’s history when the Librarian has 
opened a new building or a new division 
with a speech. 
speak for it. And there are other times 
when it must attempt to speak, however 
haltingly, for itself. 
This is such a time. Once the value of 
the things of the spirit could be taken for 
granted. Once it could be taken for 
granted anywhere in the civilized world 
that the free inquiry of the free spirit was 
essential to the dignified and noble life of 
man. Once it could be assumed as a 
matter of course that the work of artists, 
the work of poets, the work of scholars, was 
good and should be respected, and would 
be preserved. Now it is no longer possible 
to assume these things. Now—and it is 
still incredible to us that it should be 
true—now such an act of faith in the life 
of the human spirit as we perform here 
today, such an act of respect for the labor 
of poets and scholars and of love for that 
which they have made, cannot be taken 
for granted: cannot be left to speak for 
itself even in a room as beautiful, as 
eloquent as this. It is necessary for us to 
say what it is that we are doing and why 
it is that we are doing it. 
The Library moved across from the 
Capitol to the building in which we stand 
to the accompaniment of an eloquent and 
admired silence. Lorty years later it 
pushed its frontiers across the street to the 
Annex which can be seen from these 
windows without a single word. Today 
it opens its Hispanic Room with a speech 
by the Librarian. 
Unkind critics or unkinder friends will 
suggest that the difference is a difference 
in librarians—that my predecessor being 
truly a librarian knew the golden value 
of that silence to which students in libraries 
are continually admonished whereas I, 
being a versifier, suffer from the itch for 
words which has always characterized my 
calling. It is a plausible explanation for 
it contains much truth. There is indeed 
a difference in Librarians and a difference, 
I fear, for the worse. 
I for one am not proud of this necessity. 
I am not glad that it is necessary to speak. 
What we do is this; we dedicate here a 
room and a division of the Library of Con- 
gress which has been set apart for the 
preservation and the study and the honor 
of the literature and scholarship of those 
other republics which share with ours the 
word American; and which share with ours 
also the memories of human hope and 
human courage which that word evokes— 
But the real explanation is not this. The 
real explanation is that the times change 
as well as the men. There are times when 
a great institution can let stone and mortar 
Remarks on the occasion of the dedication of The 
Hispanic Room in The Library of Congress, October 
12, 1939. 2 
THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
evokes now as never before in the history 
of our hemisphere. 
springs too early or too slow, the birds and 
animals different. 
Why we do it is also obvious. We do it 
because this literature and this scholarship 
are worthy in themselves of the closest 
study and the most meticulous care and the 
greatest veneration; and because they, 
more than any other literature and more 
than any other scholarship, help us in this 
republic to understand the American past 
which is common to us all. 
It is a curious condition but one which, 
by long habit, we have come to take as 
natural. We have looked at America with 
borrowed European eyes so long that we 
should hardly recognize the country if we 
saw it with our own. Doubtless we shall 
continue for many generations to look at 
America with these eyes. Our cultural 
inheritance is European by origin, and 
like other European legatees of other 
legacies we can enjoy it only in the original 
currency. Which means inevitably that 
we employ that original currency to value 
our American lives. But though it is in- 
evitable that the great richness of our 
European past should impose its values 
upon our American present, it is not in- 
evitable, and it is surely not desirable, that 
the great richness of our European past 
should exclude us from the richness of 
our own. 
We are beginning to perceive, as the 
peaceful dream of the Nineteenth Century 
fades away and the economic theories and 
scientific theories, which were to explain 
everything, fade away with it—we are 
beginning to perceive that man never was, 
and never can be, such a philosophic ab- 
straction as the thinkers of that century 
supposed-—that man is a creature living 
on this earth and that the earth he lives on 
qualifies his life. America has shaped and 
qualified and redirected the lives of men 
living on her continents for four hundred 
years. But we who are born in America 
and live our lives here have not very well 
understood our relations to these conti- 
nents, nor our debt to them, nor in what 
way they have altered us and changed our 
bodies and our minds. 
From the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
tury there has been accumulating on 
these continents a body of recorded Ameri- 
can experience of the very greatest im- 
portance to anyone concerned to under- 
stand the American earth and the relation 
of that earth to the men who live upon it. 
Because this experience has been recorded 
in several languages and because it has 
been deposited in scattered places—places 
as far apart as Santiago de Chile and 
Bogota and Buenos Aires and Mexico 
City and New Orleans and St. Louis and 
Quebec—because, furthermore, it has 
been overlaid with the continuing impor- 
tation of European literature and European 
thought—for all these reasons the recorded 
American experience has not influenced 
the common life of the Americas as it 
should have influenced it. It has not been 
useful to an understanding of the Americas 
as it should have been useful. 
We have not understood this because we 
have turned, for the most part, to the 
literature and the scholarship of Europe for 
instruction, and for the interpretation of 
our world. Those of us who were of Latin 
origin have turned to the literatures of 
latinized Europe, and those of us who were 
of English and Celtic and Scandinavian 
and Teutonic origin to the literatures of 
northern Europe. We have found there 
great treasures, great wisdom, high in- 
struction—but only rarely an interpreta- 
tion of our own lives in terms of the earth 
we know. Even the American child 
reading his European poems feels the 
strangeness: the seasons are wrong, the 
Other men who know these continents THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE 
better than 1 know them—other men who 
know these records of the American exper- 
ience better than I shall ever know them— 
will think of many instances in their own 
lives when the words of men who lived in 
the Americas before them have made 
suddenly clear, and suddenly explicable, 
matters they had long wished to under- 
stand. But even in my shallow knowledge 
of these things there is one such indebted- 
ness. Some twelve years ago in a Paris 
library I came upon a copy of Bernal 
Diaz’ True History of the Conquest of New 
Spain. There in that still living, still human, 
still sharply breathing and believable story 
of Mexico it seemed to me that I under- 
stood for the first time the central Ameri- 
can experience—the experience which is 
American because it can be nothing else— 
the experience of all those who, of what- 
ever tongue, are truly American—the 
experience of the journey westward from 
the sea into the unknown and dangerous 
country beyond which lies the rich and 
lovely city for which men hope. 
Indian boys was opened in Mexico City— 
of which the first American date lies deep 
under the limestone waters of Yucatan 
and the iron earth of Guatemala. Scholars 
will speak of the year 1539 when the first 
book to be printed in the Americas was 
printed in the city of Mexico. Lovers of 
human liberty will remember the name 
of Carlos de Sigiienza y Gongora who, in 
the year 1691, at a time when witches 
were being hung in Salem, successfully 
defended against the ecclesiastics of Mexico 
his opinion that the great eclipse of that 
year was a natural event. They will quote 
against all witch-burners in all centuries 
and countries his noble words: “I stood 
with my quadrant and telescope viewing 
the [blackened] sun, extremely happy and 
repeatedly thanking God for having 
granted that I might behold what so 
rarely happens in a given place and about 
which there are so few observations in the 
books.” 
No man living in the United States can 
truly say he knows the Americas unless he 
has a knowledge of these things—a knowl- 
edge of this other American past, this older 
American past which shares with ours the 
unforgettable experience of the journey 
toward the West and the westward hope. 
I tried at that time to make a poem of 
this understanding. The argument of 
my poem began— 
Of that world’s conquest and the fortunate wars: 
Of the great report and expectation of honor: 
How in their youth they stretched sail; how fared 
they 
Westward under the wind: by wave wandered: 
Shoaled ship at the last at the ends of ocean: 
How they were marching in the lands beyond: 
Of the difficult ways there were and the winter’s 
snow: 
Of the city they found in the good lands: how 
they lay in it: 
How there was always the leaves and the days 
going .... 
What we are doing in this room, then, 
is to dedicate to the uses of the citizens of 
the United States, and to the uses of 
learners and readers everywhere, these 
records of the American experience. In 
this Hispanic Room of the Library, stu- 
dents of the Americas may follow the great 
Iberian tradition which has populated 
with its ideas and its poetry by far the 
greater part of these two continents. Here 
they may read the rich and various works 
written in these continents in the Iberian 
tongues—the two great tongues which, 
with our own, have become the American 
language. Here, if our hopes are realized, 
Americans may some day find the greatest 
Other men will say the same thing in 
other words and many of them better. 
Historians will tell us how their study of 
the documents and monuments of Mexico 
and Peru opened to their minds the true 
perspective of American civilization—a 
civilization of which the first European 
date is the vear 1523 when a school for 4 
THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
collection of Hispanic literature and 
scholarship ever gathered in one place. 
justified. The dedication of this room and 
of this collection of books is a demonstra- 
tion of the fact that these opinions are not 
valid in the Americas; that in the Ameri- 
cas, peopled by so many hopes, so many 
sufferings, so many races, the highest 
brotherhood is still the brotherhood of the 
human spirit and the true study is the 
study of the best. 
There are men in the world today— 
and many rather than few—who say that 
the proper study of mankind is not man 
but a particular kind of man. There are 
those who teach that the only cultural study 
proper to a great people is its own culture. 
There are those also who say that the only 
real brotherhood is that blood brotherhood 
for which so many wars have been fought 
and by which so many deaths are still 
This is the belief of the people of this 
Republic expressed by the action of their 
national Library in the dedication of this 
room. 
COMMEMORATIVE TABLET The Hispanic Foundation in the 
Library of Congress 
ROBERT C. SMITH 
Assistant Director 
History 
volumes and pamphlets, 1,400,000 maps 
and views, 1,194,000 pieces and volumes 
of music, 542,000 prints, 97,000 bound 
volumes of newspapers, and so many manu- 
scripts that a numerical estimate is not 
feasible. The Library possesses the largest 
collection of books on aeronautics in the 
world, the largest collection of Chinese 
books outside of China and Japan, and 
probably the largest collection of Russian 
books outside of Russia. In the Division 
of Manuscripts are the papers of nearly 
all the Presidents and of many statesmen. 
In the Rare-Book Collection are about 
83,000 items; among them are many 
first editions, rare bindings, some 25,000 
early American pamphlets, over 1,500 
bound volumes of American eighteenth 
century newspapers. Of the more than 
4,600 fifteenth century books, 3,000— 
including the St. Blasius-St, Paul copy of 
the Gutenberg Bible—were purchased by 
a special act of Congress in 1930. 
The Hispanic Foundation in the Library 
of Congress is the most recently created 
center in the United States for the study 
of Hispanic culture both in the Old and in 
the New Worlds. The Library of Con- 
gress, of which the Foundation is an integral 
part, is the national library of the United 
States. Founded in 1800, it was at first 
located in the Capitol, where it received in 
1815 its first important collection, the pri- 
vate library of Thomas Jefferson, two 
thirds of which was burned in 1851. In 
1897, the Library was transferred to the 
present building, in a special gallery of 
which the Declaration of Independence 
and the Federal Constitution were placed 
on permanent exhibition twenty-seven 
years later (1924). On April 5, 1939, a 
new Annex was opened, giving the Library 
of Congress twice as much book space as 
any other library in this country. 
Its director, the Librarian of Congress, 
Dr. Herbert Putnam, has just completed 
40 years of service and is now retiring to 
the position of Librarian Emeritus after 
having increased the collection of books 
from less than half a million to over five 
million volumes. His successor is Mr. 
Archibald MacLeish, one of our most 
distinguished contemporary poets. Dur- 
ing the course of these forty fruitful years, 
Dr. Putnam has transformed the Library 
of Congress into an institution “universal 
in scope, national in service.” Today the 
collections comprise more than 5,500,000 
Not only has material been collected 
and preserved, but concurrently there has 
been “a development and diversification 
of the service.” The Library has become 
increasingly the resort of scholars. The 
service to Congress has been intensified 
by the creation of a Legislative Reference 
Service. The community at large has 
been benefited by the actual loan of books 
required for serious uses and not locally 
available; by publication of “select (topi- 
cal) lists,” of special catalogues and calen- 
dars in hook form and, in a few cases, of THE HISPANIC ROOM 
Here are seen some of the architectural details that make the room appear to belong to the Siglo de Oro. 
Opening at the side are study rooms, above which are the bookstacks. THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
7 
actual texts of historical manuscripts in 
the possession of the Library; by informa- 
tion furnished through correspondence; 
and by supplying at cost to other libraries, 
societies, and individuals, printed cards, a 
byproduct of the Library’s cataloguing 
operations. 
within the ten years preceding the date of 
purchase. This limitation of the fund, 
stipulated by the donor, has served to 
encourage youthful authors just entering 
upon their careers, for often these purchases 
of their first works have served later to 
make their names known in this country. 
Through the operation of the Huntington 
Fund and the guidance of the Consultant 
in Hispanic Literature, Dr. David Rubio 
of the Catholic University of America, 
and his predecessor, the Library has for 
the last ten years been performing a cul- 
tural undertaking of real importance. 
Many gifts have been made to the 
Library because of Dr. Putnam’s personal 
enterprise and because of the growing 
public recognition of the preeminence of 
the Library as a national center of learn- 
ing. An act of Congress, approved March 
3, 1925, created “The Library of Congress 
Trust Fund Board,” which authorizes the 
Board not only to accept endowments but 
also to receive gifts of money for immediate 
disbursement. 
The Hispanic Room 
To broaden this activity, to provide more 
adequately the elements for the study and 
appreciation of Hispanic culture, both of 
the mother countries, Spain and Portu- 
gal, and of Hispanic America, the His- 
panic Foundation has been created. An 
anonymous friend generously provided 
funds for its suitable housing within the 
building of the Library of Congress. The 
distinguished architect, Paul Philippe Grct, 
designer of such monuments as the Pan 
American Union, the Folger Shakespeare 
Library and the Federal Reserve building 
in Washington, and the Pennsylvania 
Museum of the Fine Arts at Philadelphia, 
was commissioned to create a setting of 
Hispanic origin which should tend to 
withdraw the reader from the present to 
the past ages of Spanish and Portuguese 
culture. 
One of the most interesting accomplish- 
ments of Dr. Putnam’s administration was 
the establishment of a series of consultant- 
ships held by men who are specialists in 
various fields. They have served to guide 
the development of the library within their 
own disciplines and to assist scholars in 
the pursuit of their researches, much as the 
members of a university faculty do. This 
service is still unique among the libraries 
of this country. Another outstanding serv- 
ice of the Library of Congress to the public 
has been the preparation from time to 
time of special bibliographies in a number 
of fields, many of which are of particular 
interest to Hispanic studies. 
The Hispanic Foundation owes its origin 
to the establishment in 1927 of a generous 
fund for the purchase of new books by 
Mr. Archer M. Huntington, the founder 
of the Hispanic Society of America in 
New York City. In the words of the 
donor, “the books purchased shall relate 
to Spanish, Portuguese, and South Ameri- 
can arts, crafts, literature and history 
only.” Since the creation of this fund, the 
Library has acquired each year about 2,000 
books published in the Hispanic world 
Indeed, that is precisely the impression 
that the visitor has on entering the rooms 
of the Hispanic Foundation. In an at- 
mosphere of cloistered quiet and serenity 
he beholds an interior whose details carry 
out faithfully the style of the Siglo de Oro, 
the sixteenth and seventeenth century 
taste of Spain and Portugal. First, one 
enters a vaulted vestibule of ample propor- 
tions lighted by a splendid silver chandelier 
188589—39——2 8 
THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
which is an original example of the 
mudejar style of Toledo. In this room, 
against a background of armorial tapes- 
tries and rich furniture, special exhibitions 
are held. Rare maps, important docu- 
ments and autographs, early printed books 
and pamphlets are arranged there in 
special displays to commemorate the anni- 
versary of some event of great impor- 
tance, such as the present exhibition mark- 
ing the quater-centenary of Hernando de 
Soto’s expedition from Cuba which cul- 
minated in the discovery of the Mississippi 
River. 
American letters such great figures as 
Gongalves Dias, Bello, M. A. Caro, Sar- 
miento, Icazbalceta, Ricardo Palma, Ro- 
do, Medina, Montalvo, Heredia and Dario 
are represented. Immediately adjacent to 
this room are some 100,000 Hispanic vol- 
umes which can be consulted there and in 
the wood-panelled alcoves about it, in an 
atmosphere of beauty such as a seventeenth 
century monastic library might originally 
have presented. About the lower walls 
runs a dado of soft blue tiles from Puebla 
in Mexico; there are curtains of golden 
brocade at the windows and about the 
alcoves and balconies, which are of fine 
wrought iron. Delicately colored leather 
chairs complement the silvery tonality of 
the woodwork. A marble tablet which 
commemorates this splendid gift completes 
the room, standing between two doors of 
Spanish design which lead to the adminis- 
trative offices. 
Later in the year an exhibition will open 
at the Library of Congress under the 
auspices of the Hispanic Foundation which 
will commemorate the four hundredth an- 
niversary of the printing of the first book in 
the Americas, an event which occurred in 
Mexico in 1539. This exhibition will 
trace the history of Mexican printing down 
to the present day, showing the earliest 
examples that the Library possesses and 
the most significant books from the stand- 
point of beautiful type and binding, and first 
and rare editions of works of outstanding 
social, historical, and literary value in the 
four j subsequent centuries. Newspapers, 
literary periodicals, and journals of all sorts 
will be represented, as well as political 
broadsides and caricatures. Following 
this exhibition another devoted to Portu- 
guese printing in Portugal and its colonies 
will coincide with the international cele- 
bration of the 800th anniversary of Portu- 
guese independence. 
Adjacent to the Hispanic Foundation, a 
reference room is being arranged, where 
general works of reference, dictionaries, 
and current Hispanic periodicals and news- 
papers will be available for consultation by 
the general public. Individual studies are 
here available for mature scholars pursuing 
special researches. Already the Founda- 
tion has been host to three specialists from 
Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, respectively, 
and we hope that such visits will, in the 
future, be made with increasing frequency. 
On July 1, the Foundation was opened 
to readers and a modest staff was organized 
for administrative purposes. Dr. David 
Rubio, who has been the Consultant in 
Hispanic Literature since 1931, was ap- 
pointed Curator of the Hispanic Collec- 
tion. Dr. Lewis Hanke of Harvard Uni- 
versity was designated as Director of the 
Hispanic Foundation. Dr. Robert C. 
Smith of the School of Fine Arts of the 
University of Illinois subsequently joined 
the staff as Assistant Director. 
From the vestibule the visitor enters the 
main reading room, a gallery some 130 
feet in length. A lofty frieze around both 
rooms records the names of great historic 
and literary figures of the different Hispanic 
countries. There Cervantes stands be- 
side Camoes, Magellan beside Columbus. 
Loyola, El Cid, Lope de Vega, Calderon 
and Bolivar are also there. In Latin THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
9 
THE HISPANIC ROOM 
At the right is the vestibule, ornamented by a rich velvet hanging. The handsome silver chandelier 
is an original example of the mudejar style of Toledo. Around the walls runs a dado of tiles from Puebla in 
Mexico. 
The resources of the collections 
real importance. There is a copy of one 
of the earliest books known to have been 
printed in Mexico City by Juan Pablos, a 
Christian Doctrine for the first bishop, 
Fray Juan de Zumarraga, printed in 
1544, and some fifteen other sixteenth 
century Mexican items, including the 
rare book on navigation, the first of its 
kind in the New World, written by Diego 
Garcia de Palacio and published by Pedro 
Ocharte in Mexico in 1587. A copy of 
what is probably the first book printed in 
South America, a catechism published in 
Spanish and in two Indian dialects by An- 
tonio Ricardo in Lima in 1585, is also kept 
here. Among its notable collection of pam- 
Located in Washington, which has 
become the diplomatic center for the 
Spanish-speaking world, the Hispanic 
Foundation is constantly in touch with the 
leading personalities in the scholarly and 
political worlds of Latin America, Spain 
and Portugal, both in their own countries 
and when they visit the capital of the 
United States. The Foundation possesses 
already a goodly working collection for 
Hispanic studies which is supplemented 
by certain rarities within the field which 
are housed in the various special divisions of 
ihc Library. For example, the Rare Book 
Room possesses many Flispanic items of 10 
THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
phlets relating to (he Dutch West Indies 
Company in the New World, there is a 
mysterious Brasilsche gell-sack of 1647 which 
may be the first printing in Brazil. There 
is also the extensive Henry Harrisse bequest 
containing the interleaved and profusely 
annotated copies of the writings of that 
eminent American bibliophile on the 
Columbus period. Finally, the John Boyd 
Thacher Collection of autographs con- 
tains signed letters of Ferdinand and 
Isabella, Charles V, the Empress Isabella, 
and other Spanish sovereigns. It also 
includes nine Spanish incunabula and an 
incunabulum from Portugal, as well as 
the second book printed in Spain, a Latin 
Sallust published in Valencia in 1475, a 
Spanish edition of Seneca’s Proverbs, which 
came from the press of Antonio de Cente- 
nera at Zamora in 1482, a folio volume 
of the Cura de la piedra . . . y colica rrenal, 
by Julian Gutierrez, a rare work on the 
diseases of the bladder, printed by Peter 
Hagcmbach of Toledo in 1498, and Los 
doge trabajos de ercules by Enrique de 
Villcna de Aragon, from the first press of 
Juan de Burgos, 1499. 
In 1929 a valuable collection of Hispanic 
materials, comprising a mass of early manu- 
scripts relating to the first two centuries of 
Spanish American history, was presented 
to the Library by Mr. Edward S. Harkness 
of New York. The distinguished historian 
J. Franklin Jameson has described the 
collection in the following terms; 
The Mexican papers, the earliest of which is 
dated in 1525, only five years after Mexico was 
won for Spain on the plain of Otumba, have a 
certain degree of unity in that most of them are 
connected to some extent with the house of Cortes, 
many of the documents having arisen from the 
state trial of Martin Cortes, son of the conquis- 
tador. The Peruvian documents are more mis- 
cellaneous; in fact, extraordinarily varied in 
character. There are few aspects of the early 
history and life of Spanish Peru which are not 
illuminated in one or another of these thousand 
and odd documents, extending in date from 1531 
to 1651 (with one additional document of 1740). 
Aside from a certain number of cedillas of Charles 
V and Philip II, they originated in Peru. Most 
of them are originals, preserved by notaries, while 
notarial copies were sent to Spain. They come 
from persons of all sorts, from the Pizarros and 
Almagros, the viceroys and bishops, down to 
secretaries and merchants, pilots and sailors, 
schoolmasters and widows. They include decrees 
and proclamations of viceroys, orders and instruc- 
tions of officers to subordinates, contracts and 
agreements, commercial accounts and letters, 
minutes of municipalities, manumissions, and 
many other varieties of documents. . . . 
The Division of Manuscripts contains its 
own Hispanic treasures. Outstanding are 
two early sixteenth century manuscripts— 
the Columbus Codex, a book of privileges 
granted to him, written down at Sevilla 
with an authentic and contemporary 
transcript sent to Ferdinand and Isabella 
of the celebrated Bull Dudum Quidem of 
Alexander VI (26 Sept., 1493), and the 
so-called Sneyd Codex, a part of the John 
Boyd Thacher Collection, which is the 
first Venetian report on the discoveries of 
Columbus and the Portuguese navigations 
to India. There is a 1547 Mexican treatise 
on the native languages, besides a Cortes 
letter of five years previous, written to 
Charles V, advising that the Indians of 
Mexico be put under the protection of the 
Crown. 
A few specific instances may illustrate the rich- 
ness of this collection. For example, besides the 
long series of documents of the Pizarros and Alma- 
gros which show the processes of the conquest of 
Peru from 1531 on, there is the claim put forward 
by Diego Almagro the younger on account of the 
killing of his father. There is the imposing 
tailor’s bill of Hernando de Soto. There is the 
long protest (1554) of some sixty of the chief 
notables among the conquerors against the new 
ordinance restricting personal services from the 
Indians which had been promulgated by Charles 
V, under the influence of Bishop Las Casas. 
There are the record books of two Andean frontier 
communities, begun in 1538 and 1539 respec- 
tively. There are provisions regarding protection 
against the “Lutheran corsairs” of Francis Drake 
and the services of Indian runners to give warn- ANNOUNCEMENT BY VICEROY FRANCISCO DE TOLEDO THAT THE 
KING HAS ENDOWED THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN MARCOS WITH AN 
ANNUAL INCOME OF 13,000 PESOS TO PAY THE SALARIES OF 
SEVENTEEN PROFESSORS. DATED APRIL 15, 1577. CONTRACT BETWEEN FRANCISCO PIZARRO AND HERNAN SANCHEZ 
DE PINEDA UNDER WHICH THE LATTER WAS TO ACT AS MAYORDOMO 
IN THE MINES OF CALLAO, DATED JULY 17, 1535. THE FLOURISH IS 
THE RUBRIC OF PIZARRO, WHO IS SAID TO HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO 
WRITE HIS NAME. THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
13 
ings of his approach. There are announcements 
of royal endowments of the University of San 
Marcos at Lima and of provision for a chair of 
Indian languages, with injunction that priests and 
missionaries must learn the language of their 
flocks. In short, all the round of human life in 
old Peru finds illustration in this collection. 
exceptionally rich field for research in 
various aspects of Hispanic culture. 
Finally, there is a special collection of 
Portuguese manuscripts. It is notable for 
the richness of its material on the Military 
Orders and on Sebastianism, that mystic 
cult that obstinately denied the death of 
Dom Sebastiao on the battle field of A1 
Kasr al Kebir, maintaining that he still 
lived and would eventually return to 
restore the past greatness of his country. 
In 1914 the Library of Congress began 
a program of copying manuscripts in 
Spanish archives and libraries relating 
to the history of the United States, and 
more particularly to the former Spanish 
possessions within our borders. Five years 
later similar work was undertaken in 
Mexico. Under a substantial Rockefeller 
grant the work was considerably broad- 
ened, and the practice of making tran- 
scripts was abandoned, in favor of photo- 
stats or photofilm enlargements. As a 
result, the Division of Manuscripts now 
possesses a collection of hundreds of thou- 
sands of pages copied from the papers in 
the Archivo General de Indias, at Seville, the 
Archivo General de Simancas, the Archivo 
Historico Nacional, and the Ministerio de 
Estado, at Madrid. From the Archivo 
General y Publico de la Nacion and the 
Archivo General de la Secretaria de Relaciones 
Exteriores of Mexico City have come many 
thousands more. In this present year 
another collection of material containing 
the correspondence of the Argentine For- 
eign Office with that nation’s diplomatic 
missions in this country, coming from the 
Archivo General de la Nacion, in Buenos 
Aires, has been added, in addition to a 
gift from the Carnegie Institution of Wash- 
ington of manuscripts in Mexican and 
Spanish archives and libraries relating to 
the Yucatan region in the sixteenth cen- 
tury. Finally copies are now being made 
of a private collection of photographs of 
papers in the old Archivo General del Hospital 
de Jesus, in Mexico City, dealing with 
Indian labor in Mexico in the sixteenth, 
seventeenth, and early eighteenth cen- 
turies. The total deposit constitutes an 
In the Division of Maps is preserved one 
of the monuments of Hispanic cartog- 
raphy—the manuscript Atlas of the World, 
completed by the royal Portuguese map- 
maker, Joao Teixeira, in 1630. It con- 
tains secret maps of the Americas and the 
Indies. There are also rare portulan 
charts of the coasts of Central and South 
America, cartographic manuscripts from 
the Royal School of Navigation at Cadiz 
(375 manuscript maps and charts, 1712— 
1824), depicting various portions of His- 
panic America and the former Spanish 
possessions in this country, Vopel’s manu- 
script 4-inch globe published in 1688, and 
one of the so-called buccaneer’s atlases, 
made about 1690, showing the coast of 
western South America. Another impor- 
tant nucleus for Hispanic studies is the 
Woodbury Lowery Collection of over 300 
maps relating to the former Spanish pos- 
sessions in this country. 
Among the more isolated and relatively 
unknown special collections of the Library 
of Congress are the Ladino books in the 
Division of Semitic and Oriental Litera- 
ture. This material, written in the Judaeo- 
Spanish vernacular of the Sephardic Jews 
who were expelled from Spain in the 
fifteenth century and printed in the Rashi 
or Rabbinic Hebrew characters, is partly 
composed of Bible translations and liturgi- 
cal and rabbinical works, among which are 
some early editions. For the most part, 
however, the collection consists of modern 14 
THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
belles-lettres. The Library is eager to add 
to its books in this field, and is already 
receiving a current weekly periodical, La 
Vara, published in New York City. 
piled by a Spanish official engaged in ad- 
ministering Spain’s vast empire: the famous 
Cedulario of Vasco de Puga, which appeared 
in Mexico in 1563 as one more of the 
notable products of the typographical skill 
of Pedro Ocharte. 
The Division of Orientalia, the largest 
deposit of Sino-Japanese material outside 
the Orient, is rich in books printed in 
Chinese by Portuguese missionaries at 
Macao and other cities of the Orient. The 
Library consultants in Islamic and Indie 
studies stand ready to assist the researches 
of scholars in the Oriental aspects of 
Hispanic culture. 
Many editions of the fundamental 
Spanish law code, the Side Partidas, are 
also found in the Law Library, including 
the first 1555 edition of the gloss of Gre- 
gorio Lopez. 
A collection of notable materials usually 
leads to publication and in the past the 
Law Library has issued guides to Spanish 
law as well as to the law of Argentina, 
Brazil, and Chile. The Law Librarian 
has recently published a solid volume on 
The Background of Hispanic American Law 
and has now in preparation a guide 
to Mexican Law. It is expected that 
other legal publications will result as 
scholars continue to tap this rich source 
for the study of Hispanic law. 
The Division of Documents maintains a 
system of exchange of government publica- 
tions with all the Hispanic nations. An 
attempt has been made to obtain complete 
sets of all recent government gazettes, 
debates of parliamentary bodies, memorias, 
bulletins, and special publications of 
government departments and academies 
and deliberations of provincial assemblies 
from the nations of Latin America. The 
resulting collection is probably unrivalled 
in this country, as are also the files of early 
government gazettes from Mexico, Colom- 
bia, Venezuela, and elsewhere in Latin 
America. 
Finally, the Division of Music possesses 
a notable corpus of early printed material 
on Spanish and Portuguese music, original 
scores by the Latin American composers 
Jacopo Fischer and Francisco Casa Bona, 
and manuscript transcriptions of Manuel 
de Falla’s music by Miguel Llobet. The 
Division has also a rapidly growing col- 
lection of phonograph records of Latin 
American folk music and a fine audito- 
rium in which, through the Elizabeth 
Sprague Coolidge and Gertrude Clarke 
Whittall Foundations, concerts are held 
regularly. In certain of these concerts the 
Library’s Stradivari instruments are used. 
Special attention is often paid in these 
concerts to the masterpieces of Hispanic 
music. 
The Law Library, another of the sepa- 
rate divisions of the Library of Congress, 
has made a special effort to secure a com- 
plete collection of outstanding books and 
legal journals pertaining to Hispanic cul- 
ture. Inasmuch as Hispanic scholars have 
earnestly devoted themselves to the law 
since the time of Saint Isidore, in the eighth 
century, this task is a considerable one. 
The Law Librarian, however, is particu- 
larly interested in this field and, with the 
aid of a special fund available for the pur- 
chase of legal materials, has already been 
able to make the Law Library one of the 
significant centers for the study of Hispanic 
law. 
The aims of the Foundation 
The Hispanic Foundation has as its 
principal function the creation of an un- 
surpassed collection of published material 
Among the outstanding items is the first 
law book published in the Americas, com- THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
15 
pertaining to Spain, Portugal and the 
countries of Latin America. In this task 
we shall call for the advice of specialists 
within the Library and in the learned 
societies, libraries and universities through- 
out this country and the Hispanic lands. 
The Foundation, in spite of its constant 
purchases of books and periodicals from 
Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, can- 
not hope, however, to have a complete 
record of all contemporary publications, 
without the active assistance of the authors 
themselves. Many important articles and 
monographs are submerged in magazines 
and newspapers little known to us, or are 
published in widely dispersed centers. The 
Foundation has, therefore, adopted the 
policy of requesting writers to send copies 
of their works to the Library of Congress, 
where they become integral parts of the 
Hispanic Foundation. A box will be pro- 
vided for each author wherein his separate 
articles in newspapers and periodicals will 
be kept. With the friendly aid of all 
authors who concern themselves with 
Hispanic studies, it is expected that this 
collection of scattered contributions will 
provide a unique and increasingly valuable 
corpus of material. 
developed. In 1927 a notable group of 
Portuguese books, numbering over 1,500 
volumes, was purchased from a private 
collector. The collection is particularly 
rich in the Portuguese chronicles of the 
Kings and the Religious Orders. There 
is a complete set of pamphlets relating to 
the expulsion of the Jesuits under the 
Marquez de Pombal. There is also im- 
portant and rare material on Portuguese 
law, the administration of towns and prov- 
inces, the constitution, diplomatic relations, 
and art and archaeology. 
Mention should also be made of the 
Handbook of Latin American Studies, which is 
edited at the Hispanic Foundation. It 
is an annual publication listing, with criti- 
cal and informative notes, the outstanding 
books and articles relating to Latin Amer- 
ica which have appeared throughout the 
world in the course of each year. The 
Handbook, of which the fourth yearly 
number is about to be published, enjoys 
the active collaboration of outstanding 
specialists who prepare sections on the 
various aspects of Latin American culture 
in both the humanities and the social 
sciences, such as anthropology, art, eco- 
nomics, history, literature and law. 
Already the response has been generous 
and the Foundation is daily receiving many 
important publications which otherwise 
might not have been available. Relations 
are being established with the lesser known 
societies and institutions of research within 
Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. 
Especially eager is the Foundation to 
interest writers and academicians in Portu- 
gal and throughout the Portuguese colonies 
and to have them send their works, not 
only because the Hispanic Foundation is 
determined that the Lusitanian world shall 
be equal in importance with the Spanish, 
within its sphere of activity, but also 
because the Portuguese collections of the 
Library of Congress are already well 
Two special aims that the Foundation 
cherishes are the creation of a compre- 
hensive Hispanic catalogue and the build- 
ing up of an extensive photographic archive 
of Hispanic culture. The first of these, the 
catalogue, will require many years to 
prepare, but when completed will con- 
stitute an essential tool for scholarly work 
in this field. It will analyze the whole 
Hispanic collection of the Library of 
Congress. The catalogue will consist of 
two sections separately installed. The 
first will be an author index catalogue, 
listing all the works of a given author 
followed by the biographical and critical 
works pertaining to him. The problem of 
analyticals will be attacked and when 16 
THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
completed, the catalogue will furnish a 
record of all articles by or pertaining to a 
given writer which may have appeared in 
commemorative volumes, literary and his- 
torical reviews and other types of composite 
publications. The second unit will be a 
complete subject index catalogue in which 
all that has been written on a given sub- 
ject, including analytical, will be grouped 
together, as for example, the arts in Minas 
Gerais, Gaucho literature, or silver pro- 
duction in Peru. The value of this His- 
panic catalogue to scholars who come to 
visit the Library can scarcely be over- 
estimated. It will show at a glance what 
the Foundation possesses in relation to the 
rest of the Library of Congress. It will 
facilitate immeasurably the work of His- 
panic scholars and should serve, together 
with the completeness of the collections, 
to attract them to the Foundation. It is 
hoped that the other institutions will avail 
themselves as time goes on of this thorough 
catalogue by means of the purchase of 
duplicate cards. 
The scope of the undertaking would be so 
inclusive as to embrace all periods, from 
the earliest productions through the 
Baroque or colonial epochs down to the 
present day. In the case of Latin Amer- 
ica, special attention would be paid to the 
artistic connections with the mother 
countries and an effort would be made 
to establish the indigenous influence in 
architecture, sculpture and painting. 
As its work develops the Foundation 
hopes to build up its collection so as to 
draw here specialists in many fields of His- 
panic research. This is particularly true 
of sociology, economics and political 
science. We are not merely a linguistic, 
literary, or even historical foundation, but 
rather an active center for the study of 
every branch of the culture of Spain, 
Portugal and Latin America. The Foun- 
dation welcomes the visits and queries of 
mature scholars bent on serious and worth- 
while investigations, and its resources are 
always at their disposal. It will seek to 
put them in touch with other workers else- 
where in the same or related fields. If 
their stay at the Library is limited, special 
arrangements can be made in advance to 
have the necessary books awaiting their 
arrival. It is hoped that visitors from His- 
panic lands will come with increasing fre- 
quency, for only by such contacts can the 
Foundation continue to fulfill its mission. 
The second long range objective of the 
Foundation, the photographic archive, will 
be expanded to include all such aspects of 
Hispanic culture as folk art, furniture, cos- 
tume, religious customs and, in the case of 
Cuba and Brazil, the diversified crafts of 
the negro. But principally it would com- 
prehend the fine arts in Spain, Portugal 
and Latin America. Special emphasis 
would be placed on the gathering of photo- 
graphs from the two latter regions, for 
little attention has as yet been paid to them 
by art historians. The archive of Hispanic 
photographs would serve as a basic source 
of reference for scholarly investigation and 
research in a field in which at the present 
they are lamentably wanting, but which is 
among the richest of artistic provinces. 
The Hispanic Foundation in the Library 
of Congress is still a very youthful organiza- 
tion. Its purpose is just beginning to be 
known throughout the Americas. With the 
proper support from the people of this 
country and those of the Hispanic world, 
with their sympathy and participation in 
its work, it should come to be one of the 
principal forces for the preservation and 
dissemination of Hispanic culture. 
188189—1939