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Pillage in the Archives: The Whereabouts of Guatemalan Documentary Treasures
Abstract
Like many Guatemalan documents referred to by scholars in the past, the Libros Segundo y Tercero del Cabildo de Guatemala (Books Two and Three of the City Council of Santiago de Guatemala) have long been thought to be missing, thereby removing from consultation key sources concerning the events and circumstances of the early colonial period. It turns out that these two tomes, which span the years between 1530 and 1553, are not missing and have been part of the holdings of the Hispanic Society of America for the past century. We discuss how other documentary treasures were taken from Guatemala or disappeared from circulation altogether, identifying the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the period during which national patrimony was most under threat from both internal and external forces.
Resumen:
Al igual que muchos documentos guatemaltecos a los que los estudiosos han hecho referencia en el pasado, desde hace tiempo se pensaba que los “Libros Segundo y Tercero del Cabildo de Guatemala” se habían perdido, quedando fuera de toda posibilidad de consulta estas fuentes claves para iluminar los eventos y circunstancias del periodo colonial temprano. Resulta que estos dos registros, que cubren los años 1530 a 1553, no están perdidos, sino han formado parte de la colección de la biblioteca de la Hispanic Society of America por un siglo. Nuestra nota de investigación discute cómo otros tesoros documentales pudieron, de hecho, haber sido sustraídos de Guatemala o completamente retirados de circulación, identificando el siglo XIX y principios del XX como el periodo durante el cual el patrimonio nacional estuvo bajo mayor amenaza por parte de fuerzas tanto internas como externas.
... Fortuitous finds among the library holdings of the Hispanic Society of America, a venerable New York institution better known for its paintings by Spanish masters El Greco, Goya, Murillo, Sorolla, and Zurbarán, have taken two colleagues and me on a research trail that seeks to trace how so much Latin American patrimony has ended up in foreign repositories, for the most part in Europe and the United States (Kramer, Lovell, and Lutz 2013). The protagonist of The Manuscript Hunter, Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, is someone whose forays bear directly on our inquiries, his life and times, acquisitions, and adventures brought wonderfully alive in this captivating, page-turner of a book. ...
Broadcasting archives have been being digitized in West Africa since the 2000s. Their digital transfer, presented as both a solution to their decay and a necessary step to take them into the new century, presents considerable challenges. This article, while emphasizing the historiographical value of the archives as sources and traces, argues that the processes they undergo, which also participate in these technical objects’ afterlife, are connected to a long and circulatory history of cooperation in broadcasting. Located at the interface of past, present, and future, they also provide an opportunity to question certain geopolitical fracture lines, especially those of knowledge and memory.
The greatest thrill that any researcher can experience is coming across, quite unforeseen, priceless documents long given up as lost. In the case of myself and two close colleagues, Wendy Kramer and Christopher H. Lutz, the documents that have come to light and that have so delighted us include Libros de Cabildo numbers two and three of the city of Santiago de Guatemala, the capital of Spanish Central America. Libro Segundo is a register of events that took place between 1530 and 1541; Libro Tercero is a log spanning the years 1541 to 1553. Our incredulity at learning the whereabouts of these two volumes was matched, if not surpassed, by the anticipation of verifying their existence and thereafter consulting them, something that has not occurred (as best we can determine) in over a century. Far more than the minutes of mundane municipal affairs, these two Libros de Cabildo contain valuable information about Spanish conquest and colonization, and indigenous resistance to it, that will enhance considerably our understanding of the early colonial period, not only in Guatemala but throughout Central America. Furthermore, the Libros de Cabildo have proven to be the proverbial tip of the iceberg, for the cache of which they form part contains other treasures perhaps not quite so unique but nonetheless of significant historical worth.
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