History
The Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies:
A Legacy of Leadership, Learning, and Latin American Engagement at UT Austin
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Read the 2026 LLILAS Commemorative History
The year 2025 marked two significant milestones in the life of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin: eighty-five years since its founding, and twenty-five years since it became an endowed institute through the visionary generosity of Mr. Joe R. Long and Dr. Teresa Lozano Long. This publication brings that commemorative year to a close, offering a moment to reflect on the institute’s enduring legacy and to look ahead toward its future.
Rooted in the College of Liberal Arts, LLILAS stands today as both a leading research and resource center and a degree-granting academic unit, committed to interdisciplinary inquiry, international collaboration, and public engagement. Across decades of intellectual transformation and global change, LLILAS has served as a gathering place for ideas, people, and partnerships. It has supported students and faculty across the humanities, social sciences, natural and information sciences, and creative fields, while expanding conversations about Latin America far beyond campus.
Amid shifts in administration, historical currents, and the changing contours of U.S.–Latin American relations, the institute has remained an enduring presence at the university, a steadfast home for interdisciplinary knowledge that is sustained by faculty across colleges and schools, the dedication and expertise of its staff, and a vibrant community of students whose energy and scholarship continually renew its mission.
What follows is a brief glimpse into how this commitment took shape, how it evolved over time, and how it continues to guide the institute’s work. I am deeply grateful to the staff, students, faculty, and friends of LLILAS whose collaboration helped shape this document. You will find here an account of the institute’s institutional history, traced through successive periods of growth and renewal under the leadership of its directors.
As I spent time in the archives, what struck me most were not only the records of programs and initiatives, but also the photographs of the many students, faculty, staff, visiting scholars, alumni, advisers, benefactors, and friends—the community whose presence has given life to the institute across generations. I feel fortunate to share this reflection as part of our ongoing engagement with LLILAS’s past and with its future.
Adela Pineda Franco, Director
March 2026
More LLILAS History
The history of Latin American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin dates to the late 1890s, followed a few decades later by the beginnings of what would eventually become one of the most important Latin American research libraries in the world—the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.
The first Latin American content course at the university was taught by Herbert E. Bolton, appointed to the Department of History in 1902. Titled European Expansion, by 1904–1905 the course would be confined to Spanish colonization. Spanish professor and librarian Carlos E. Castañeda oversaw the establishment and expansion of the Latin American collection, whose origins can be traced back to the university’s acquisition of the private library of Mexican historian Genaro García in 1921. As of June 1938, historian Charles Hackett and four of his colleagues were recommending that the establishment of an institute of Latin American studies prior to 1950 be a university objective. Their plan was realized in 1940 with the founding of the institute that would be known worldwide by its acronym, ILAS.
Construction of Sid Richardson Hall, which to this day houses LLILAS and the Benson Collection, was completed in 1970.
Sixty years later, in November 2000, President Larry Faulkner announced that UT alumni Mr. Joe R. and the late Dr. Teresa Lozano Long of Austin had pledged an endowment gift of $10 million to support the institute—"one of the crown jewels of this University"—in building toward greater excellence. As one outcome of this gift, the institute is now known as the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, or LLILAS.
In making this gift, the Longs noted that they were drawn to the institute because they wanted to make better something that was already very good. "This is our way of acknowledging the importance of Latin America in the future of this country and, therefore, the critical role that the institute continues to play in forging closer ties to Latin America," said Teresa Lozano Long.
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The Lozano Long endowment is structured so that 60 percent of its resources will benefit students in a variety of ways:
- Undergraduate scholarships for Latin American studies majors
- Scholarships for study and research in Latin America for both undergraduate and graduate students
- Graduate fellowships to recruit the best graduate students both in the United States and Latin America
- Teaching fellowships that will allow LLILAS to place Spanish-speaking discussion sections in courses across the university
The endowment also recognizes that research and teaching are major components of the university's mission. It provides for visiting professorships to bring distinguished scholars from Latin America to teach at UT; professorships to support the hiring of Latin Americanist faculty and thereby maintain the integrity and preeminence of our professorate; and funding for international research teams to produce and gather the best information on important issues like immigration, economic development, and use of resources. In this endeavor, the institute will increasingly serve as a think tank charged with educating policymakers and the public at large on such matters.
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In September 2011, LLILAS joined forces with the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection to create LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, an innovative partnership that pairs the abundant scholarly resources of the collection with the teaching and research focus of the institute. This historic agreement between two venerable units of The University of Texas at Austin has opened new opportunities for collaboration, and holds the promise of becoming a model for the global public university of the twenty-first century.
Through arts and cultural programming, LLILAS Benson seeks to enhance understanding of Latin American and U.S. Latina/o communities among residents of the university and the wider public. Through its digital initiatives, the resources of the library are brought to bear in making rare and special-format materials available to scholars and students. Examples include the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive (AHPN), the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), and Primeros Libros de las Américas, a digitized collection of the earliest books published in the Americas.
The two documents linked here chronicle the development of Latin American studies at UT in rich detail. They are a report titled “From a Shared Border to Western Hemisphere Concerns: The History of Latin American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin,” by former LLILAS staff member Carolyn Palaima, and the audiovisual presentation “Where in the World Is the BLAC” by retired Benson librarian Jane Garner.
(Portions of this story are excerpted from an article by former LLILAS director Nicolas Shumway in Discovery: Research and Scholarship at the University of Texas at Austin, vol. 16, no. 1, special issue, The Latin American Initiative, 2002.)