One of the greatest aids to my research in Argentina has been the remarkable set of digital repositories devoted to the history of the Argentine Left. Allow me to share three particularly exciting sites, in the hope that they may be of use to other researchers:
Ruinas Digitales: A project of a group of political science students from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ruinas Digitales is the online home of all things left-Peronist, plus a bunch of other stuff, too. In addition to collections of Mundo Peronista and Evita Montonera, you’ll find manuals and communiques from the last dictatorship, human rights reports from the late 1970s, and copies of the 1968-73 magazine, Antropolgía del Tercer Mundo, among many other finds. Any student of 20th-century Argentina will want to check it out.
El Topo Blindado: An online archive devoted to the armed Left, this site goes beyond the well-known Montoneros and Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo to cover lesser-known groups including the Ejército Guerrillero del Pueblo and the Guerrilla del Ejército Libertador. Particularly interesting are the collections of documents from right-wing insurgent groups (it’s hard not to appreciate the directness of the Liga por los Derechos del Hombre No Judío) and from organizations working in exile. With dozens of groups represented, it’s a spectacular source for political history across the spectrum.
Fundación Pluma: More specialized than the previous two sites, Fundación Pluma collects and diffuses the documentary history of the Trotskyist groups centered on the figure of Nahuel Moreno. What Pluma may lose in breadth it more than makes up for in depth, with nearly 10,000 documents from the mid-20th century through the present. (A quick glance at the 2000+ subjects covered gives a sense of the collection’s remarkable extent.) Viewing and downloading documents requires registration, but this is free and easy to do.
If you’ve come across other digital repositories that have proven useful, drop a comment and let us know!