Hidalgo del Parral,
Chihuahua – The Archivo Históricos Municipal de Hidalgo del Parral (Parral
Archive) announced today that its collection of Spanish colonial documents,
known as the “Fondo Colonial,” is now accessible for free online to the public
at: hh-p.org, then Fondo Colonial.
The Fondo Colonial collection,
spanning a period between 1611 and 1821, contains the civil colonial records of
the Province of Nueva Viscaya, which today consists of the states of Chihuahua,
Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa and part of Coahuila as. Hidalgo del Parral was the unofficial capital
for Nueva Viscaya for over 100 years, from the 1632s to the 1738s, and has the
largest collection of Spanish colonial documents in northern Mexico.
The Parral Archive staff
reorganized the Fondo Colonial documents following the UNESCO guidelines, which
is by subject than by chronological order and created a new catalog. They identified the content of the majority
of the documents and assigned each document a number that will allow a researcher
to easily locate and cite to the digital image.
Presently, all of the sections of the collection have been imaged and
are now online, with the exception of the Justicia
section. The Justicia section, which comprises two-thirds of the collection, will
be imaged by the end of this month and gradually added to the online collection.
The Fondo Colonial is one
of the most important archive collections in North America. It contains records pertaining to the history
of the people of Spain, Mexico and the southwestern United States, and the many
indigenous nations of the region. The
documents provide significant insight into the political, economic, social and
cultural environments of a vast region, from Durango to Nuevo Mexico, and from
Coahuila to Sonora.
The documents in the Gobierno y Administración section
reflect the inner workings of the Spanish colonial system, and include a wide-range
of documents on the governance of several communities of the north of Nueva
España. The Gobierno y Administración section includes documents on mines and
the granting of mines, petitions and disputes, labor and slavery, censuses and
inventories, and the issuance and implementation of royal orders. The Milicia
y Guerra section contains an array of documents pertaining to the military
defense of several Nueva Viscaya communities,
the respective struggles of the indigenous and non-indigenous in war and peace,
and the diverse groups of people who lived and worked in or near the many presidial
communities of Nueva Viscaya. The Hacienda and Tesorería section includes many
types of transactional and accounting records that reflect various economic
activities and the economic relations between and amongst people.
The Fondo Colonial
reflects a paper and archival culture -- one that valued the making and keeping
of correspondence, reports, summaries, indices and the details. The imaging of this collection captures
stories and drama, as well as the beauty of handwriting, creases, spots and
stains. It is truly a precious gift to
historians, independent scholars and to the descendants of those represented in
the records.
This project is the result
of the efforts of many people, including Dr. Cruz Lopez, historian and Parral
journalist José G. Rocha and Guillermo Gallardo. Rocha and Gallardo compiled the first index in
the late 1930s. In 1959, Dr. Charles Di
Peso began microfilming the collection and a newer guide was created. In 1984, after additional documents were
found, Hector Arras, the Archivo General de la Nación, the Tinker Foundation of
New York, the University of Minnesota, and Dr. Cheryl Martin of the University
of Texas El Paso supported the creation of the “Nueva Guía” by Dr. Robert
McCaa, Carolyn Roy, and Rosamaría Arroyo Duarte. It was then that the Hispanic Heritage
Project, which was then a part of the Friends of the Escondido Public Library,
provided the final financial assistance to complete the Nueva Guía.
In 2007, under the
guidance of Instituro Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Blanca Jennyra
Figueroa completed the present catalog of the collection. Now under the leadership of Roberto Baca, the
current director of the Parral Archive, and with the support of the Hispanic
Heritage Project and RootsPoint, the Fondo Colonial collection is now available
online. We will forever be grateful for
the contributions of many dedicated individuals over a long period of time that
has made it possible for many of us to enjoy this collection for years to come.
For more information contact:
Archivo Historico Municipal de Hidalgo del Parral
Roberto Baca Ornelas, Director
