My trip to Archivo General de la Nacion

Wow............Arturo, I could feel the excitement at having the opportunity to go to Mexico City to handle documents that are several hundred years old, rich with meaning, with content and with history.

Hmmm, maybe someday I can make it, even if every time I visit Mexico City I get very ill, with the altitude and the smog rather than enjoying the city I spend my time vomiting and trying to breathe. I take two steps and stop to catch my breath etc. On second thought I don't think I can do it again.

I'm happy for you Arturo!!

----- Original Message ----
From: arturoramos
To: research@lists.nuestrosranchos.org
Sent: Monday, May 7, 2007 12:08:54 PM
Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] My trip to Archivo General de la Nacion

I just got back from Mexico City this morning and wanted to report a bit on my trip, or at least the part of it related to my research...

The Archivo General de la Nacion is located just behind the Legislative Palace in the Ampliacion Penitenciaria. The name comes from the fact that the Archive building used to be a jail. The architecture is impressive and the layout quite amenable to an archive as each wing of the star-shaped building holds a different collection and the documents are placed in "cells" so that they are isolated in case of fire, etc.

I have been told, however, that the building, due to its age and the construction materials is very humid, which is detrimental to the documents and the government has been for some time now considering moving the archive to a new purpose-built building.

To register as a researcher, I merely wrote a letter outlining my research interests and the purpose of my research that included my full name, address, phone number and email address. This is a basic requirement in order to obtain a researcher card. Presenting the letter and an official identification document, the registration process took about 20 minutes.

In order to handle any document, researchers are required to wear gloves and a face mask. I bought some latex gloves and a face mask at a pharmacy, but I would recommend you find some nice, well-fitting cotton gloves instead of the latex ones, which are very uncomfortable to work in and difficult to take on and off as is needed to switch back and forth between computer and document.

You are allowed only loose leaf paper, a pencil and a computer. I did not take a computer, but would recommend it as for me it is faster to type than handwrite transcriptions.

The archive has digitized versions of many colonial document collections including Tierras and Inquisicion (probably not coincidentally, from the LDS fimiling of these collections). Unfortunately, the films include multiple volumes and expedientes with no markers to differentiate where one starts and the other ends. The image search engine leads one to the correct digitized film but not to the correct place on the film where the document resides so it is quite difficult to use this service.

The Archive has a photocopy service that will do up to 30 copies in a same day service or larger copy jobs in a two-day turnaround at 1 peso per copy (about 10 cents). Unfortunately all orders have to go in before 2:30 pm which makes the day short since the archive opens only at 8:30 am. I meant to inquire whether one could take a digital camera and photograph documents but forgot. Does anyone know?

It was an amazing experience to handle documents from the 1500s and 1600s in my hands. The documents I saw were in pristine shape and very legible. The paper is very high quality--thus their long life.

Unfortunately, due to the time constraints, I was unable to look up all of the documents that I would have liked to see. I did get a number of very important documents related to the Tlaxcaltec colony in Colotlan. One is from a visit by a a Capitan Urdinola in 1617 and another set is a collection of the documents related to the rights and privileges granted by the Crown to the families that was compiled in 1712 in order to defend these rights and privileges from the local government that was trying to take them away.