The archival cooperation programme Iberarchivos joins today the celebration of the International Day of Indigenous Women, a date instituted by the Second Meeting of Organisations and Movements of the Americas in Tiahuanaco (Bolivia), in honour of the struggle of Bartolina Sisa, an Aymara warrior who opposed colonial domination and was brutally murdered in 1782 in La Paz, Bolivia.
Iberarchivos wants to highlight the important role of all women belonging to the indigenous peoples of the world, which is why the programme has several lines of action that aim to highlight the role of indigenous women and their contribution to the preservation of the memory of Ibero-America.
Today at Iberarchivos we want to recognise and honour all the indigenous women who have marked the steps of history. That is why we have selected different projects that have a focus or axis that preserves the history, memory, culture and identity of indigenous women and that will be passed on from generation to generation.
- – Project 2010/173 Digitisation and cataloguing of the photographic archive of indigenous culture in the Chiapas Highlands: the gaze of Vicente Kramsky 1950-1970: For the development of this project, a series of images of indigenous peoples in Mexico were selected, the negatives had to be selected, separating those that were in a greater state of deterioration, and an extensive revision of the state of the images was carried out one by one to continue with an individual digitisation according to the organisation left by the author. Each image was scanned and then scanned by TIF to give it a better resolution, and the corresponding cataloguing of each indigenous people was carried out in the IT department. The negatives were placed in protective sleeves and the digital number assigned internally was labelled on the sleeves. With all the images digitised and with high resolution, they were backed up on the hard disk for their preservation, and the final product of this project was a digital catalogue of images for consultation.
- – Project 2010/175 Conservation and cataloguing of the Rosa and Miguel Covarrubias ethnic and indigenous photographic archive owned by Casa Luis Barragán: Miguel Covarrubias is one of Mexico’s most complete artists and art promoters, and his work is of great importance in national and international cultural life. It is also the responsibility of the Casa Luis de Barragán to make known his valuable collection of unpublished photographs, owned by the institution since 1970.This project, financed by Iberarchivos – ADAI Programme, aimed to conserve and disseminate for the first time at national and international level the photographic archive of Miguel and Rosa Covarrubias on ethnic themes, indigenous festivities and typical costumes, with the aim of opening up the collection for consultation by national and foreign institutions dedicated to the study of ethnic groups and specific regions of Mexico and also to enrich regional and ethnic research in the country.An inventory was made of 349 contacts, photographs and negatives of ethnic groups, indigenous festivities and typical costumes for a general control of each document that forms the archive and the photographic documents were protected by means of AFP system conservation material in order to achieve their preservation.
- – Project 2010/090 Sources for the reconstruction of the historical memory of the indigenous communities, Afro-descendants and vulnerable population in Colombia (1st phase) The objective of this project is to provide the young people of the Pastos community with the documentation of the AGN, which serves for the recovery of their historical memory in the framework of the Victims’ Law, making it clear what it is for.
- Explain the basic concepts of the law on victims, memory and archives.
- Make clear the relationship between the law and victims, memory and archives.
- Present the documentation found in the AGN.
- To achieve an appropriation of the documents by the young people of the community. This project consisted of two training sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The first session began with a short presentation of the contents focused on explaining the project and the concepts and relationships between the law on victims, historical memory and archives, in order to provide a framework for the workshops, which will focus on learning to know, relating and inferring. The first part of the workshops will take place simultaneously with the presentation of the contents. This section seeks to take up the concepts that will be addressed in the presentation, by means of specific questions that will make them think about the definition of each one of them. The second part is the most extensive, consisting of two blocks separated by a brief talk between the community leaders telling their version of the situations that will be addressed in the activities. The first block seeks to establish the general state of a current situation and the second to reconstruct a concrete mid-century situation based on AGN documents and oral tradition.
- – Project 2008/162 Rescue of the parish archives of the indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples of the Huasteca (18th-20th centuries): The project for the rescue of the parish archives of the indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples of the Huasteca (Mexico, 18th-20th centuries), carried out by the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social de México in collaboration with ADABI de México, is a project developed in 2008 with the aim of rescuing, cleaning, sorting, classifying, cataloguing and cataloguing the parish archives of the indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples of the Huasteca (Mexico, 18th-20th centuries), cleaning, sorting, classification, cataloguing, conservation, digitalisation and dissemination of the material kept in four parish archives in the Huasteca Region, as well as its incorporation into the National Register of Archives of the General Archive of the Nation of Mexico.This project to rescue the parish archives not only made it possible to conserve and preserve the historical heritage of the municipalities and parishes in the area, but also facilitated the mechanisms for their consultation. The activities carried out focused on making available to scholars, researchers, social scientists and the population of these municipalities, duly ordered, inventoried, catalogued and systematised documentary collections to facilitate historical research, but also to contribute to the recognition of the memory of these towns. The rescue, cataloguing and digitalisation of the ecclesiastical archives and their incorporation into the National Register of the Archives of the General Archive of the Nation of Mexico, allows users to learn more about the history of the indigenous peoples of the Huasteca, a task of utmost importance for the rescue of the memory of the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples of Mexico.
- – Project 2007/043 Creation of the historical archive of the indigenous communities located in the Colombian Amazon (1st phase) The project is based on the collection of written information that make up the cultural traditions of the indigenous communities of the Amazons located in the departments of Casanare, Caquetá and Amazonas.
- The results are:
- Collection of written information on the diverse indigenous cultures of the Colombian Amazon.
- – Restoration of the existing texts within the collected information.
- – Generate a photographic archive of each of the indigenous populations.
- – Train and sensitise the indigenous populations about the importance of cultural and historical archives in the transcendence of culture.
- – Publication of documentary memories related to the cultural tradition of indigenous peoples.
- – Contribute to the consolidation of historical heritage.
- This project rescued the archives of the communities and it is precisely through the diploma course in “Training in archives and documentation applicable to indigenous communities in Colombia” that the search for and application of solutions to the loss of archives is achieved, leading to the construction of the historical memory of the communities and the recovery of information to strengthen the development of social and cultural character, further strengthening the identity of these social groups.
“We must reinforce the self-esteem of women and make them feel valuable for their identity and their culture” Myrna Cunningham
#Iberarchives ✍️ Memory of Ibero-America