Projects 2006/292, 2008/200 and 2011/156. PUERTO RICO
Political carpets not awarded
(Phase 1, 2 and 3)
This project, carried out by the Archivo General de Puerto Rico in three phases between 2006 and 2011, aimed to process the documentation transferred by court order from what was once the Centre for the Disposal of Confidential Documents of the Judicial Branch.
The documentation consists of thousands of letters and files illegally taken from people for belonging, presumably or de facto, to political parties that campaigned for Puerto Rican independence.
These applications have been organised with the aim of allowing access to the carpets and their countersigns.
The government of the Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico in October 2009 recognised the violation of constitutional rights such as the right to freedom of association, expression and equal protection under the law suffered by the Partido Independista Puertorriqueño (PIP) in the face of the so-called “carpetbagging”.
The first phase began with the removal of all materials harmful to the documents and preventive conservation work. The documents were then identified and four series of documents were identified:
- Individuals’ cards – Requested – Not removed
- Individuals’ cards – Not collected
- Special Investigations Negotiation (NIE) files from individuals and organisations – Not received
- NIE files from organisations – Not received
The second phase consisted of inventorying the audiovisual collection, specifically the photographic supports, as well as continuing with the inventory of political files that were not requested.
The third phase was aimed at finalising the preventive conservation work, sorting and identifying the collection made up of personal files that had never been requested. In the end, around 1600 carpets were intervened.
Consult the Census Guide to Archives in Spain and Ibero-America: Census Guide
You can consult the project’s technical report and the rest of the information here: