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Ventana al pasado brings together Latino-related records located in ten New York State archival repositories. Together these materials tell the story of communities previously underrepresented in the historical record. 

Here you will find information on 94 collections and over 3,100 digital images that document the social, political, and cultural lives of New York’s Hispanic and Latino communities. The records document the diverse experiences of Latino/Hispanic populations in New York State.

Through Ventana you will meet Hispanic/Latino community leaders and organizations, union members, politicians, artists as well as governmental records. You will find records that shed light on issues such as affirmative action, immigration, and bilingual education, civic and cultural pride, family and community life, labor, and culture.

The Browse, Search, and Advanced Search options allow you to search and browse collections, browse for specific topics and repositories, and search across repositories for materials.
These options will take you to images and collection finding aids. The finding aids provide:

• Detailed descriptions of primary source materials, enabling you to discover what historical materials are available for study and where those collections are located.
• Locations, biographies/histories, contents lists, and detailed descriptions of the type of material in the collection.
• Full searchability using the keyword and advanced search function.

The images include:

• Photographs, documents, pamphlets, and other primary source documents.
• Expanded descriptive information of images.
• An enhanced web-interface enabling users to magnify images to discover greater detail within the image.