Descriptive Summary
Preferred Citation
Acquisition Note
Biography
Scope and Content of Collection
Digital Content
Descriptive Summary
Languages:
Spanish; Castilian
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla 92093-0175
Title: José Villegas Collection on Mining
Creator:
Villegas, José A.
Identifier/Call Number: MSS 0758
Physical Description:
6.6 Linear feet
(9 archives boxes, 2 flat boxes, and 1 map case folder)
Date (inclusive): ca. 1825 - 1983
Abstract: 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.
Preferred Citation
José Villegas Collection on Mining, MSS 758. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.
Acquisition Note
Acquired 2013.
Biography
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.
Villegas worked during the early 1970s at the UNESCO Department of Social Sciences in Paris, and while in Europe the seeds
of his 10-year research project on national competition, industrial innovation, technology transfer, and the Mexican mining
industry were planted. He began in earnest with a one-year research residency in Spain, primarily at the Archives of the Indies
(AGI) in Seville, acquiring copies of original texts and drawings relating to colonial-era mining in Spain, Mexico, and Peru.
Villegas then enrolled in the graduate history program at the University of Pittsburgh and continued collecting original and
published materials at archives and libraries in Mexico, England, Germany, France, and the United States for a proposed dissertation
on "The technological transfer of the steam engine in the Mexican mining industry, 1750-1850" (under the direction of Robert
Colodny). In the 1980s he moved to San Diego and was a frequent guest scholar on Latin American studies at UC San Diego.
Scope and Content of Collection
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. Many of the reproductions are photographic copies of archival documents
from the Archivos General de Indias (AGI), in Seville, Spain. The bulk of the collection is in Spanish, with some documents
in English.
Arranged in six series: 1) RESEARCH MATERIALS, 2) MINING ILLUSTRATIONS, 3) REAL DEL MONTE MINING COMPLEX, 4) BOLAÑOS MINING
COMPLEX, 5) FRESNILLO MINE, and 6) ALMADÉN MINE.
Digital Content
A selection of manuscripts and images from this collection have been digitized. Content may be viewed by clicking on links
in the container list, or on the Library's Digital Collections website.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Mining engineering
Mines and mineral resources -- Spain -- History
Silver mines and mining -- Mexico
Mineral industries -- Mexico -- History
Mines and mineral resources -- Mexico -- History
Mineral industries -- Spain -- History
Compañía Real del Monte y Pachuca
Company of Adventurers in the Mines of Real del Monte