A chance investigation in Guatemala City in 2005 led to the discovery of millions of administrative police documents dating from 1882 to 1996. The Guatemalan government and police had long denied their existence, particularly during truth commission investigations by both the United Nations and the Catholic Church in the 1990s, during the final years of the country’s nearly four decades of armed civil conflict.
The University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with the Historical Archive of the National Police of Guatemala, or the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (AHPN), recently unveiled a university-hosted digital archive that will serve as an online digital repository for millions of documents from the archive.
Learn more:
- Watch this video in English.
- Visit the Human Rights Documentation Initiative website at the University of Texas Libraries.
- Read a feature story about the Human Rights Documentation Initiative: Preserving human rights: From the Rwandan genocide to the Guatemalan police, UT’s libraries are digitally securing fragile records for research, advocacy around the world.
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