- Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica en Exilio and here
- Disappearance of the Archivo General de la Nación de El Salvador
- Confiscation of Nicaraguan and Central American Historical Institute
- Cortés letters stolen from Archivo General de la Nación de México
- Tira de Sta Catarina Ixtepeji
- “Tratado de la vida y muerte de nuestro señor Jesu Christo”
- Libros de Cabildo of Santiago de Guatemala vols. 2 and 3
- Not Mesoamerica, But Amazing Nonetheless
- Cortés letters in Italy
- A Broken Book of Hours
- Haitian Declaration of Independence
- Códice Chimalpahin a México
- Carta de Jamaica de Bolívar
- #SignedSealedUndelivered
- Aztec tribute books in Cracow
- Lost list of Columbus’s son’s lost books
- A Timucua-Spanish catechism from 1628
Hat tip to Rudy Girón at antiguadailyphoto.com for this picture of the card catalog at the Fundación Cultural Duane Carter Library in Antigua, Guatemala, above. Many of these card catalogs are still in service, including at the Archivo General de Centroamérica (about which more here). I’m quite fond of them.
UPDATE: The Pardo card catalog at the AGCA linked above, the online portal to the AGCA, and the long-time director of the archive, Anna Carla Ericastilla, were all removed by the Guatemalan government of Jimmy Morales in July 2019. The AGCA itself was erased from the list of institutions safeguarding Guatemala’s “Patrimonio Documental” and remains missing from the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes’ website.
For many years, I benefited from the professional standards that Ericastilla and her team applied to the preservation of Central America’s historical records, making them available to scholars and Guatemalan citizens alike under enormously difficult budgetary and political circumstances. Her firing and the removal of the AGCA’s online card catalog were part of an attempt by the Morales administration and other powerful interests to shut down access to the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional. Hidden in an abandoned government property in 1996 (the same year peace accords ended 36 years of internal armed conflict), the police archives were discovered accidentally by the Guatemalan Office of Human Rights in 2005. As director of the AGCA, Ericastilla played an important role in applying professional archival standards to the cataloguing of the AHPN’s records.
In the midst of sensitive trials against high-ranking government and military officials, the Morales government moved against the AHPN. It painted the Guatemalan archivists’ cooperation with international and overseas funding agencies, IT services, and universities as an attack on Guatemala’s sovereignty. The UN-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), long an object of these same arguments, was thrown out of the country two months later.
All this is sad testimony to the ongoing corruption that continues to plague Guatemala. The decisions against the AHPN and AGCA were made with the first Donald Trump administration’s support and complicity, a significant change from the U.S. State Department’s crucial support of anti-corruption efforts in Guatemala in the past and to which it returned under President Joe Biden. In 2025, the Secretary of State under a newly-elected President Trump, Marco Rubio, appeared to reaffirm the United States’s commitment to democratic institutions and the government of Bernardo Arévalo. Meanwhile, there seems to be some movement, albeit slow, in Guatemala to restore access to the AHPN.
Public archives are a cornerstone of both history and democracy. Guatemalan archivists have dedicated their lives to safeguarding historical documents and making them accessible and relevant to their fellow citizens. Their contributions should be elevated and fully funded, not destroyed.
Laura E Matthew 