40 years of the AGN in Lecumberri

On August 27, 1982, the new headquarters of the General Archive of the Nation (AGN) was officially inaugurated in the extinct Preventive Prison of the Federal District, popularly known as the Lecumberri Palace. On that day, efforts to achieve appropriate conditions for the performance of their work were summarized, starting with their own headquarters, renewed institutional prominence and archival work.

The project promoted by a presidential decree was supported by meetings, frequent visits to the AGN and the recognition of its relevance in archival and historical matters. However, the investment demanded by the efforts aimed at the construction of the underground train (STC Metro) and the damage to the National Palace suffered during these works at the end of 1960 prevented the achievement of the objective.

The AGN emerged battered from this stage of its institutional life, the files ended up stacked in the corners of the National Palace and in the Yellow House, where they were affected by humidity and the entry of birds that nested in the building. All this put the documentary heritage at risk of suffering further deterioration.

Rubio Mañe continued to lament the lack of a suitable place to house the institution. The gravity of the situation required an urgent move. After the planning of spaces in the extinct Palace of Communications (today national Museum of Art), in August 1973 the transfer of the documents housed until then in the National Palace began.

The AGN worked for almost a decade in this headquarters, where the concentration of the funds of the National Palace and the Yellow House was forged, while the rebirth of the institution and its archival protagonism in the public life of our country germinated. The first floor of Tacuba 8, as it was amicably known, was transformed into an elegant headquarters for the archive, but that did not solve the incessant problem of the lack of adequate space.

The transformation of the Lecumberri Palace from penitentiary to General Archive of the Nation began to have legal support from February 1977, when the presidential decree published in the Official Gazette of the Federation on May 27 of the same year was ratified, which stipulated the disincorporation of the former Palace of Lecumberri from the patrimony of the Department of the Federal District to be incorporated into the domain of the Federation and destined it to the service of the AGN.

Following the presidential decree issued, in that same February 1977 communications began between Reyes Heroles and Alejandra Moreno Toscano, then director of the AGN, to share the first ideas on the adaptation of the property intended to properly house the archives.

With an initial budget of 272 million pesos granted for construction, adaptation and equipment of the AGN, cleaning and demolition works began in June 1977. Subsequently, in October 1978, another stimulus was received with which an execution time of two years was estimated to deliver in optimal conditions a space that would house the government building on its main façade and transform the seven arms of the bays into galleries where the classified collections would be located.

The Central Hall that formed the dome also joined the accesses to the intermediate gardens between the galleries where four small buildings with a similar design were located. These, after being restored, gave life to the spaces used for the Graphic Information Center, microfilming laboratory, newspaper library and library. To these buildings were added the north and south towers that were initially intended to be a congress unit and a restaurant-cafeteria, respectively. Finally, the buildings that occupied the space of the old penitentiary hospital were used for the unit dedicated to technical processes.

After concentrating in a single building all the archives scattered under poor conditions and giving them a unification for their control, cataloging and conservation, Dr. Alejandra Moreno Toscano had to focus on the transfer of 1,046.31 cubic meters of documents, a figure counted when all the documents were gathered in the Palace of Communications according to the reports prepared for the moment.

Other tasks carried out were those that emerged during the National Seminar on Correspondence and Administrative and Historical Archives in the Public, State and Municipal Administration, where a National Permanent Committee of Administrative and Historical Archives was created headed by the AGN. The institutions grouped sought to vindicate the professionalization of the archivist, establish a National System of Administrative and Historical Archives, a network system for the administration of archives, issue and implement regulations, promote the protection of private archives and defend the role of archives for the functioning of the Public Administration and historical research.

At the same time that all these processes happened prior and parallel to the transfer, each of the bays of Lecumberri were analyzed in terms of space and size to receive those papers and files that at some point did not keep any relationship and order and that now had a defined space and cataloging, as well as an adequate conservation. The result was the general guide of funds of 1981 that was practically the instrument that guided the accommodation of each fund in the new headquarters and left it ready for its brand new premiere.

For the inauguration, a photographic exhibition was prepared that documented the changes made to the building and a painting exhibition. In the reflection that accompanied the transit, it was rightly pointed out: "There will be those who remember it as the Black Palace of Lecumberri. And this is a real fact that is part of our generational change. But, from now on, all Mexicans will always consider it, and thus use it, as a place of study and research, as a nucleus from where the History of Mexico is recovered."

Such a great event brought together representatives of the three branches, members of the presidential cabinet, governors, representatives of archives, officials of different secretariats of State, the Board of Neighbors of Venustiano Carranza, archivists of the states, rectors, members of the National Archives System and the academic community, among others.

The opening ceremony was followed by an extensive tour of the newly reorganized archives. The delegation was able to know the result of the combined efforts for the rebirth of the institution, feel significant samples of the protected documentary heritage and witnessed its expansion with the formal delivery of the photographic archive of the Mayo Brothers to the Graphic Information Center.

Throughout the decade, the AGN carried out an intense work of dissemination. Through the bulletin, the funds incorporated in the transition were announced, such as those of the IMSS or the Department of Labor, the expropriations in the Lázaro Cárdenas fund, the Mexican Export and Importing Company and the colonial documents of community assets in the process of classification. Recent funds such as that of the Directorate-General for Energy, in the field of mineral and energy resources, incorporated in November 1982 in the process of identification and management, were also announced; as well as the most outstanding material of the newspaper library. Documents of funds in temporary custody were published, as well as documents of electoral campaigns and political parties on the eve of the 1910 revolution. At the end of the decade, the results of the work begun in 1983 were also shared, when 47 files of the Ministry of Commerce related to patents of the nineteenth century were found, which were organized, preserved and disseminated for consultation.

During the first decade of work of the AGN in Lecumberri, the library and the newspaper library were consolidated, which later ended up integrated. The collections passed first to a gallery and then to a place arranged in a special way, where the Francisco Díaz de León fund was incorporated. At the end of the 1980s, the Center for Archival Documentation of Latin America and the Caribbean (CEDALAC) was created and hosted activities for the Official Gazette of the Federation. In the last years of the twentieth century, its funds were reconfigured with the separation of the Documentation Center of Government Management, as well as with the integration into the collection of the newspaper El Nacional, the magazine Tiempo and the formation of the Center for Archival Technical Information (CITA). 

The efforts of decades of archival construction at the national level have been the basis of new conquests that legally and materially support the relevance of the AGN. Since the enactment of federal legislation on transparency, information and accountability, as well as the issuance by the institution of rules to regulate archival work, a stage of new achievements was inaugurated. The experiences of state laws paved the way for the formulation of the Federal Archives Law (2012) and its extension to all levels of government with the General Archives Law, approved in 2018, which laid the legal foundations of the National Archives System and gave the AGN greater agency capacity in the public sphere. The recognition of the centrality of the institution's work has led to the construction of the necessary infrastructure to meet the goals for the twenty-first century, which involved a renovation of the historic headquarters and the construction of new buildings (2012-2018).

In the move from palacio de Comunicaciones to Lecumberri, the gradual transfers of documents to the new buildings were governed by scrupulous planning for the greater care of the heritage. Today, the more than three hundred funds and millions of documents totaling approximately 56 linear kilometers are in special warehouses and specialized archival works are equipped with the best technology to facilitate access and consultation to citizens.