Creation and Consolidation of the Archive at the National Museum of Interventions, in Mexico City

Academic report Intervención ISSN 2448-5934 ENERO-JUNIO 2025 JANUARY-JUNE 2025 OJS Índice / Contents Creation and Consolidation of the Archive at the National Museum of Interventions, in Mexico City Ir a la versión en español DOI: 10.30763/Intervencion.313.v1n31.92.2025 • YEAR 16, ISSUE NO. 31: 235-252 Submitted: 06.18.2024 • Accepted: 25.03.2025 • Published: Tania Arroyo Ramírez National Museum of Interventions (nmi), Mexico | orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-8885-3777 Translated by Lucienne Marmasse ABSTRACT Following a long and critical path which began in 2018, the Archive at the National Museum of Interventions (mni) was inaugurated in 2020. This report aims to illustrate the process implemented to achieve this and, at the same time, highlight how important it is for institutions to be involved in the safeguarding their own history. It is believed that this experience, taken as a success story, may serve as an example and push more work centers belonging to the National Institute of Anthropology and History (inah) or other institutions that wish to put in order their processes to manage and preserve their documentation. KEYWORDS document management, conservation, documentary collections, National Museum of Interventions INTRODUCTION he archive at the National Museum of Interventions (mni, for its Spanish acronym) opened in 2020 following efforts on the part of various areas belonging to the Museum as well as the National Institute of Anthropology and History (inah, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia). Initially the project was only intended to fulfill the requirements set out in the General T Creation and Consolidation of the Archive at the National Museum of Interventions, in Mexico City CONVOCATORIA 2025 CALL FOR PAPERS 2025 235 Academic report Intervención Law on Archives, which had been published a couple of years earlier. This law mandated institutions to administer, organize and conserve their documentary archive in a homogenous manner, thus compelling them to design an institutional system to manage documentation. However, as will be demonstrated herein, the creation of the Archive not only helped coordinate the process of document management in the mni, it also fulfilled the Institute’s duty to preserve, in this specific case, that related to the site’s history. Currently, the Archive fulfills the three obligations that comprise an institutional documentary archive, from the short-term of the procedure archive and the medium-term of the concentration archive, to the permanent of the historical archive.1 It also develops activities that support the conservation and dissemination of the Churubusco Convent Fund (fcch, Fondo Conventual Churubusco) as well as a couple of consignments that were put together after having recovered documentation which was haphazardly scattered throughout the Museum, as can be seen in Figure 1. ISSN 2448-5934 ENERO-JUNIO 2025 JANUARY-JUNE 2025 OJS Índice / Contents Figure 1. Boxes located in the Museum’s parcel area. (Photograph: Tania Arroyo Ramírez, 2021; courtesy of the author). We use the term “Procedure archive: for that composed of everyday archival documents that are needed to exercise the attributions and functions of the obligated subjects”; “Concentration archive: for that composed of documents transferred from the producing areas or units [of archival information] whose use and consultation are sporadic and remain therein until disposal”, and “Historical archive: for that of public documents for permanent conservation which are relevant for national, regional or local memory” (Ramírez Deleón, 2019, p. 42). 1 Creation and Consolidation of the Archive at the National Museum of Interventions, in Mexico City CONVOCATORIA 2025 CALL FOR PAPERS 2025 236 Academic report Intervención ISSN 2448-5934 ENERO-JUNIO 2025 JANUARY-JUNE 2025 OJS Índice / Contents Although several steps to consolidate the area are still pending, it was deemed useful to share this mni experience as a starting point for other work centers belonging to the inah or other institutions interested in beginning work on their own documentary management processes. Therefore, this report firstly provides the context of the activities that were carried out in the mni before and after its documentation was denominated Archive, in order to highlight the way in which documentary testimonies have been generated in the complex; secondly, it explains the technical criteria used as baseline for the structure of the archive project. Finally, it describes how a specific space was adapted to house it, applying the above-mentioned criteria to organize, classify, and catalog the information, managing to operate, while always respecting the vital cycle of documentation, the archives and generating areas. THE MNI AND THE NEED TO SAFEGUARD ITS HISTORY Although the mni has a rich history that dates back to prehispanic times, it is the youngest of the inah national museums. Founded in the former Churubusco convent on September 13, 1981, by the Institute’s Director at the time, Gastón García Cantú, it recounts the interventionist episodes in Mexico throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries and, at the same time, the country’s process of consolidation as an independent nation. The site it occupies used to be the “house of Huitzilopochtli”, later on and for almost four centuries, Franciscan monks devoted the location to religious callings (Arroyo, 2020). Then, in June 1847, during the United States intervention, it was used as a jail, a barracks and a fortress (Escorza, 2009, pp. 70-71); subsequently, on August 20 of that year, it witnessed the battle in which the National Guard and some Mexican Army pickets faced the American forces (Arroyo, 2020, p. 26). Due to the significance of what occurred there, it would later become the Museum of Foreign Interventions. President Benito Juárez nationalized the convent complex in 1869 (Diario Oficial, 1869, p. 2); later on, still with friars present, the building served as a military hospital for people suffering infectious diseases. It was abandoned during the Revolution until, on August 20, 1919, Jorge Enciso, inspector general of Historical Monuments, inaugurated the Churubusco Museum. At the time, the site also housed the “Héroes de Churubusco” elementary School and the Open-Air Painting School, an institution for middle class “young Creation and Consolidation of the Archive at the National Museum of Interventions, in Mexico City CONVOCATORIA 2025 CALL FOR PAPERS 2025 237 Academic report Intervención ISSN 2448-5934 ENERO-JUNIO 2025 JANUARY-JUNE 2025 OJS Índice / Contents ladies” and children from poor families who received Federal Government grants (Escorza, 2009, p. 107). On February 18, 1935, the building was officially named the Museo Histórico de Churubusco (Churubusco Historical Museum) (Archivo Histórico del Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones [ahmni], Folder. 01.10 (...truncated)