Iconic Latin American songs that are Public Domain -[Work Project]

Horus

I need help for a project at my new job.

First Component
[ceres edit - not doing this]

Second Component
The hardest part that I need H/A to give me pointers or resources is the songs I have searched, they need to be public domain in order to use them for a project. I have no clue how to go about this or where I can find if the songs I am looking fits this. I checked out wiki article about this but I am unable to find how to determine legal rights of a foreign song in USA.

TL;DR
I need to know how the songs I am researching that are iconic to each Latin American country are public domain in USA.

ceres

This is a project for your job and we aren't going to do the first part for you because you are getting paid to do it and we aren't.

We can help with the second, though.

Anome

I came across a list of public domain tangos here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_domain_tangos which may or may not fit your purposes. If you have specific songs in mind, you can google "(name of song) public domain" and it should come up. Do you have a genre more specific than "Latin American"?

TheScruple

If the musical work was originally published before 1923, it is public domain in the US. People are free to create, publish, and copyright arrangements of the work, though, so make sure you're working with the original version of a song and not a copyrighted arrangement.

Horus

Hello,
@ceres yes the second part I need help understanding how public domain music works since I have the songs I found but need to vet them if I can use them.
@Anome Here is my google doc of my songs I have collected with example youtube videos. Linky

@TheScruple I read that on wiki but I am struggling to see when the songs I have added to my goodl doc were trademark in US. I looked for folklore songs since those are older than 1923. Just need a good source I can vet my songs.

Thx everyone for the information and resources.

FANTOMAS

Spoilered because it is not even tangent to the OP, but I realice that too late.

All I can add is that checking your link, you are missing Uruguay, wich should be incredibly easy since they also claim to be the creators of tango, with Argentina. Also, for a foreigner, tango and bossa can be iconic for places like Uruguay, argentina, Brazil, but they dont particularly think of those genres as their folklore, or what they really relate to, "La cumparsita" is a good example, but to go to the real roots you should search for folklore songs, and not tango wich is an urban and 50% (or more) foreign genre. (google Horacio Guarani for an example of folk songs that may fit Argentina, Chile and Uruguay).

Other places like Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, wich have a far larger aborigin population, and that have much deeper cultural roots are probably identified with songs that arent necesarily sung in spanish. (example: people in paraguay still speak guaraní as their only lenguaje.)

Regarding copyright... I have no idea about copyright laws in USA.

Joe Camacho MKII

If you are going to use music from latinamerican states, it might be a good idea to check out "Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works" which is a convention from WIPO (World International Property Organization) and see if the country from where the music is a signing country/party or if it has any reserves regarding the convention.

Read Articles 7 and 18, which I think are the ones that apply to your situation.

http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html