Life & Letters Magazine

Archive staff at the Archivo Historico de la Policia Nacional review some of the 80 million pages of documents found in Guatemala in July 2005.
Archive staff at the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (AHPN) review some of the 80 million pages of documents found in Guatemala in July 2005. The collection represents the largest single repository of documents ever made available to human rights investigators. To date, more than 15 million documents have been digitized and can be accessed through The University of Texas at Austin's Digital Archive of the Guatemalan National Police Historic Archive. Feature image courtesy of Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional, Guatemala.

Archiving the Central American Revolutions

By

The 2014 Lozano Long Conference in February focused on the “revolutionary decades” in Central America (1970 through 1990), bringing together scholars from the United States and Central America. Several speakers and panelists offered first-hand perspectives on revolutions in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Pablo Ceto, vice provost of Universidad Ixil, Guatemala, speaks during the Feb. 19 keynote panel titled "Historicizing the Central American Revolutions."
Pablo Ceto, vice provost of Universidad Ixil, Guatemala, speaks during the Feb. 19 keynote panel titled Historicizing the Central American Revolutions. Photo by Mari Correa.

One objective of the conference was the acquisition of documentary materials—personal papers, political broadsides, photos, clippings, music—related to a number of crises in Central America.

It is the hope of LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections that future contributors will recognize the richness of the collection and its potential to become the world’s foremost repository for materials related to Central America in the late 20th century.