The National Archive of Mexico

I have been spending a fair amount of time at the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), or the General National Archive.  The AGN is housed in what used to be the Lecumberri prision, pretty much the most notorious prison in Mexico City.  I first heard of the Lecumberri when taking a course at the University of Chicago about human rights in Mexico and we spent a couple weeks reviewing the events of the 1968 student movement.  The movement culminated in what is widely considered a massacre of student and community protesters by the government of President Díaz Ordaz and Vice President Echeverría Alvarez.  After the massacre, hundreds of students were arrested or otherwise sequestered to the Lecumberri prison where they were held for months or even years as political prisoners.  Many were tortured and some never reappeared.

Needless to say, working inside a place where student activists were incarcerated and tortured is more than a little unsettling.  But while the history of the place is disturbing, the physical structure itself is beautiful.  (Though the surrounding neighborhood is a little sketchy, so I dread the three block walk to and from the metro station.) Recently refurbished, the AGN is a beautiful place to spend the day pawing through photos and documents.  Each of the corridors constitutes a different galería, housing a different collection of documents.  I have been working in galería 1, which houses the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), or the Federal Security Directorate.

An aerial view of the Lecumberri prison, now the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City. (Google Maps)

The AGN logo mimics the structure of the building.