About Us

The Company

Libros Latinos began in Santa Monica, California in 1973 and in 1977 moved to Redlands, 70 miles east of Los Angeles, where it remained until 2008, when it moved most of its operations to San Francisco. Although a smaller office is still maintained in Redlands. The company has focused on building public, university and institutional library collections. Notable clients include the National Library of Medicine, The Getty, U.S. Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. Specialties include the fine arts, history and medicine from all Latin America, with a strong emphasis on the academic and out-of-print. Current owner Alfonso Vijil has run Libros Latinos since 1984. He also owned Libros Centroamericanos from 1986 to 2007. A graduate in Economics at UC Berkeley, Alfonso walked into the acquisitions department of the Bancroft Library as a college freshman and started learning about the Latin American book trade. He sold books from Central America and the Caribbean to put himself through college and graduate school. He worked in banking from 1980-1983 until he took over Libros Latinos. He helped start Mexico Norte with George Elmendorf. Alfonso has traveled most of the western hemisphere looking for books on Latin America. In 2000-2001 he worked with Alibris building up their foreign language division. During the last 30 years Alfonso has built large collections in the history of the book in Latin America, and a collection on Nicaragua that is one of the most important. Alfonso looks forward to being in San Francisco where he has lived since the age of two when he emigrated with his family from Nicaragua.