Carnegie Public Library Oral History Project with Spanish Speaking Old Timers (MSS 776), 1973-1978

Project Background Information:

The initial project goal was to "make an oral record of the way of life in rural villages of San Miguel, Mora, Guadalupe, and Colfax counties as it was lived by the Spanish-speaking people from the period of 1890-1930." The Carnegie Public Library received funding, circa 1975, for the project via a Library Services Construction Act grant, administered by the New Mexico State Library. A subsequent grant, circa 1993, from the State of New Mexico enabled translation, transcription and indexing of the tapes from Spanish into English. Original interviews were conducted by Anselmo Arellano, Hilario Garcia, Bernabé Jaramillo, Mary Valdez and others.

Digitization and Public Access:

In the late 1980s UNM’s Center for Southwest Research (CSWR) acquired the English translations on audio cassettes. Even though the English translations have much value - especially the indexes that come with them, many researchers were eager to hear the actual Spanish interviews that retained important dialogue, personal attributes, cultural exchanges and regional language nuances. Recognizing the need to preserve the actual recorded interviews, in 2023 CSWR discovered the cassette tapes of the original Spanish language interviews were stored in a basement room at the Carnegie Library. CSWR borrowed the original tapes from the Carnegie Library and digitized them. With the collaborative efforts of UNM University Libraries CSWR and Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication (DISC) and the Carnegie Public Library, the interviews are now available below for listening.

The list of original interview participants does not fully match the English translation/transcription interviews list because a few were not sent to be translated for unknown reasons and some were recorded in English and therefore originally left out of the “English Translations/Transcriptions” edition. Also, in some of the interviews more than one person is featured in the recordings.See finding guide to the Carnegie Public Library (Las Vegas, N.M.) Oral History Project with Spanish Speaking Old Timers collection (MSS 776), CSWR, University of New Mexico: New Mexico Archives Online.

Indexes (by interviewee names, topics discussed, and locations) were created at the time English audio translations and English transcriptions were produced, but they can also be cross-referenced to the original interviewee names and interview number listing below.

Copyrights:

Carnegie Public Library, City of Las Vegas, New Mexico. The audio interviews are made accessible for purposes of education and research. Reproduction of works protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners.

New Mexico Spanish Language Archival Recovery Project

The Carnegie Public Library Oral History Project with Spanish Speaking Old Timers (MSS 776) is one of the ethnographic oral history collections archived at the Center for Southwest Research (CSWR) that are part of the New Mexico Spanish Language Archival Recovery Project. Initiated in 2025 by archivist Samuel Sisneros and Center for Regional Studies fellow Feliza Monta Jameson with the assistance of UNM Libraries’ Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication department, the objective of the project is to consolidate and coordinate CSWR archival collections containing interviews of New Mexico Spanish speakers. The project involves recovering, regenerating, preserving and extending the ethnographic studies done by earlier investigators, researchers and producers. By using current digital and online technologies, this project intends to bridge the accessibility gap between their work (1960s-1990s) and the present. See all project collections at: New Mexico Spanish Language Archival Recovery Project