Nelly Sfeir Gonzalez

Nelly Sfeir de Gonzalez (July 1, 1930 – November 29, 2020) was a Bolivian and American librarian and bibliographer at the University of Illinois. She was a two-time winner of the Jose Toribio Medina International Prize for Latin American bibliographies (for her scholarship about Gabriel Garcia Marquez), a president of Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials, and a founder of the Bolivian Studies Journal. In her country of birth, Bolivia, she was a university student leader, women's suffragist and licensed lawyer.

Early life and education Sfeir-Gonzalez was born on July 1, 1930, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Her parents were Emilio Sfeir Sfeir and Maria Cabero Candia. Accordingly, Sfeir-Gonzalez's maiden name was Nelly Esther Sfeir Cabero. She had four siblings: Jorge, Jose, Blanca and Yolanda.

Her father was an immigrant from the Keserwan District of Mount Lebanon, at the time of his birth part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Portions of the Keserwan District had been granted to the Sfeir family by King Godfrey of Bouillon of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem during the time of the First Crusade. To this day, the Keserwan District is known as "the castle of the Christians" and approximately 90% of its population is Christian, overwhelming Maronite Catholic.

In contrast, the family of Sfeir-Gonzalez's mother had deep roots in Cochabamba. Maria Cabero's grandfather Salvador Cabero Rollano, a medical doctor, was one of the founders of the Hospital Clinico Viedma, the first general hospital in Cochabamba; her grandmother Petronila Zeballos Terrazas owned a large landed estate, comprising several micro climates, each suitable for a specialized agricultural use, in Tiquipaya ("the place where there are many flowers" in the Quechua language) and Petronila's brother, Angel Maria Zeballos, was the bishop of Cochabamba (he is buried in the Cathedral of Cochabamba).

Sfeir-Gonzalez's lived her pre-school years in Jujuy, Argentina and her primary school years in the Bolivian altiplano mining town of Oruro, where her father owned a lamb leather tanning factory. During her time at UMSA, Sfeir-Gonzalez played an active role in the fight for women's suffrage in Bolivia, serving as the president of the Union Femenina Universitaria (Women’s Student Union) and organizing protest marches in 1952 to advocate for women to receive the right to vote in Bolivian national elections, which resulted in Bolivian women obtaining such right. She was also a co-founder of the University Student Theater at UMSA, helping to stage "Nuestra Natacha" by Alejandro Casona as the innaugural production. Her paternal uncle was the Most Reverend Pietro Sfair, Titular Archbishop of Nisibis (Nusaybin) of the Maronite Catholic Church of Antioch. A nephew was entertainer Alejandro Hangano Cassab (el "Gran Sandy", famous for his summertime appearances at the Festival de Vina del Mar in Chile. One of her sons, Mauricio Gonzalez Sfeir served as Secretary of Energy of Bolivia.

Career Sfeir-Gonzalez graduated from the UMSA law school in 1953. From 1955 to 1959, she accompanied her husband to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a graduate student on a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon their return to Bolivia, Sfeir-Gonzalez served as a grade-school Spanish teacher at the American Cooperative School of La Paz starting in 1959. In 1967, Gonzalez and her family moved to Urbana, Illinois, where Sfeir-Gonzalez enrolled in the University of Illinois' Master of Library Science program, graduating with honors and inducted into the Beta Phi Mu honor society in 1973.

In 1994, Sfeir-Gonzalez served as the president of Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials. The instruction was given at the Gonzalez home in Calacoto, a southern residential district of the City of La Paz. Mrs. Gonzalez thought that Miss Gutierrez Bauer was a highly skilled teacher, who had the latest in miniature tape recording equipment. After each teaching session, she would politely request the use of the Gonzalez telephone to make a number of phone calls. So impressed was Sfeir- Gonzalez with Miss Gutierrez Bauer, and fearing that she might lose interest in teaching German to the Gonzalez children because of Miss Gutierrez Bauer's long commute from the city center to the southern district, Sfeir-Gonzalez recommended Miss Gutierrez Bauer to a neighbor who also had school-aged children, Colonel Edward Fox, the US Air Force attache in Bolivia.

Support for the Harvard Catholic Center Nelly Sfeir Gonzalez has supported the Harvard Catholic Center by being one of the principal donors for the beautification of the Chapel of Women Doctor of the Church at St. Paul Church (Cambridge, Massachusetts). In particular, she sponsored the writing of the icon of St. Teresa of Avila, which she gifted to the Chapel in honor of her grandchildren and Harvard College undergraduate students Xavier Gonzalez, class of 2018, and Natasha Gonzalez, class of 2020.

Nelly Sfeir Gonzalez named on plaque in reference to icon of St. Teresa of Avila

Selected publications

Honors and awards Sfeir-Gonzalez has twice received the José Toribio Medina Award from the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials, first in 1987 and a second time in 1995 for her work on Gabriel García Márquez.

Sfeir-Gonzalez also received the following professional recognition:

Special Guest Librarian at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (1994) Award of Merit from the Hispanic American Periodicals Index (2001) Invited U.S. librarian at the Buenos Aires International Book Fair (2003)

In 2009, the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials awarded her with an honorary lifetime membership in recognition of career achievement. The same year, the Hispanic American Periodicals Index gratefully recognized her for 30 years of volunteer service to HAPI.