The rescue and preservation of journalistic representations of documented historical events are important elements for the true characterization and portrayal of the diverse communities whose historical heritage is linked to the oral and written use of the Spanish language in the United States. The process of research, compilation, documentation, editing, illustration, and publication of Latinx authors is to bring to life often ignored and forgotten discourses for the purpose of reconfiguring identities, which have been affected and disrupted by power, and imposition of the dominant culture. For this reason, it is vitally important to recover these texts and gather them as part of several collections that provide coherence and meaning to the oral and written traditions of the Latinx community in the United States from the middle of the XIX Century to the mid-1950’s.

Therefore, the Latinx Library undertakes and promotes the dissemination of essential materials to contribute to strengthen the identity and values of the younger generations. This series of publications is planned as a combined effort by collaborators who are experts in historical, ethnic, cultural, and social groups whose legacy is linked to the preservation and continuation of the Spanish language including its Spanish-English variants. This should provide tools and knowledge that will empower the community to claim their rightful place at the table of cultural diversity. Furthermore, we hope that this project will contribute to children’s and young adult’s emotional and social development at home and in school programs by increasing awareness and the creation and proliferation of new attitudes that strengthen pride in belonging to a social, ethnic, and cultural group that, equally as others, has contributed to the development of the nation. Another essential goal of this project is to create awareness that our community’s discourse is not of “The Other,” as we have been led to believe, but that we are an integral and essential part of the country’s foundational identities and a claim to space within contemporary discourses of diversity and rights in the United States.

The term Library connotes an important body of historical, social, and literary production that responds to a critical need to recognize our ancestors’ reflections and creativity and the place they rightfully deserve, which has been systematically silenced. Detractors often say that the Latinx community has no social nor literary history because, according to them, there has not been any significant historical documentation nor literary production, other than that interpreted and written, in many cases, with a slanted point of view by Anglo-American historians. We will use the medium of the Latinx Library to publish crucial texts to fill the void in the historical, social, and literary heritage of this community. We will prove that the numerous Spanish speaking communities in the United States enjoy some of the most relevant oral and written traditions in the world, or at least as valid as any other national and/or regional, social, and literary tradition. This fact has been ignored, consciously marginalized, and devalued within the canon of social, historical, and academic communities in United States’ history.