Papers of José A. Villegas, a scholar and lecturer specializing in technological development in Latin America. The collection includes Villegas's research materials on 18th and 19th century mining technologies; original and reproduced mine illustrations, sections, and maps; and original documents, primarily correspondence, related to the Mexican mining complexes Real del Monte, Bolaños, Fresnillo, and the Spanish mines of Almadén.

José Alberto Villegas Mendoza (1924 - ) has held various academic and government positions during a career spanning more than 50 years of international teaching, research, consulting, and service. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Villegas moved to Argentina while still young and graduated from the Universidad del Salvador (Buenos Aires) in 1952. He soon published several articles in Estudios Centroamericanos and Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, moved to New York, and attended Columbia University and Fordham University. Villegas then worked on urban, housing, and environmental issues for the New York City Planning Commission, the LaGuardia Community Project, the Office of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the United Nations (international housing consultant in Mogadishu, Somalia), the Agency for International Development (Ciudad Techo project in Bogotá, Columbia), and Cornell University (holding a faculty position in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis during the late 1960s). His teaching work with urban simulation games at Cornell was profiled in Alvin Toffler's Future Shock (1970), and Toffler later acknowledged Villegas for help in the preparation of the Spanish edition of the same book. During this period Villegas served as a Ford Foundation consultant in Brazil, teaching a seminar course on "Science and Technological Development in Latin America and World Politics" at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, a class that he later hosted at Columbia University.

6.6 Linear feet (9 archives boxes, 2 flat boxes, and 1 map case folder)