The Val De La O Shows, 1976-1985

Background Information:

Val De La O began airing his Spanish language variety/talk show, under various titles and TV affiliates, as early as 1960. At that time recording technology was rudimentary therefore video recordings of the early shows are nonexistent.

As Val started to produce, direct and film his shows, he kept proprietary rights of the original 2-inch tapes he recorded. Val later transferred the original recordings to various formats throughout the years resulting in VHS copies and DVDs which have been deposited at the UNM Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections. Many of the master VHS tapes were not digitized or needed re-digitization. All the recorded shows have been reformatted to MP4 files.

There were well over 200 shows aired during the 70s and 80s but not all were recorded or transferred to modern formats and some recordings were lost or destroyed. This CSWR collection of video recordings contains 159 of the shows that Val numbered 1-177 and logged for the years 1976-1985. There is only one show for 1985. Recordings for shows 1,5,6,8,9,36,48,52,60,76,87,94,97,116,161,165,166,173 are missing or nonexistent.

CSWR Manuscript Collection:

These video files are from the Val De La O collection, 1960-1990, (MSS 1134), Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, Zimmerman Library, University of New Mexico. The collection was acquired, processed, digitized and made accessible to the public by CSWR Senior Archivist, Samuel Sisneros.

See Val De La O biography and collection finding guide at: New Mexico Archives Online

See PBS production about Val de La O: ¡COLORES! (Oct. 2024)

Copyrights:

The videos 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.

Disclaimer:

Some materials reflect the perspectives and biases of the time in which they were created and may be considered inappropriate today. Following best professional practices, UNM preserves data in its original form to retain authenticity and facilitate research, therefore, digital surrogates may include racist, sexist, derogatory, demeaning, stereotypical, insensitive or offensive language and images that we acknowledge is problematic and is not condoned by UNM.

New Mexico Spanish Language Archival Recovery Project:

The "Val De La O Shows" are part of 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