8 Mexico: Archivo General 
historical materials from the outside. For example, the Boturini Papers 
were taken thither from the Royal University. 
But during the Spanish régime the collection grew mainly through the 
arrangement of papers removed from the various mesas of the Secretariat 
and, to a small extent, from the secret archive of the same department. For 
a number of years during the revolution indeed no remittances were made 
from the mesas. Thus it is clear that the Archivo General formed by Revilla 
Gigedo was little more than a general archive of the Secretariat of the Vice- 
royalty, and by no means the same as the general national archive which he 
had proposed in 1790. It did, however, become the nucleus of the present 
Archivo General y Publico de la Nacion, though strictly speaking this insti- 
tution is a product of the era of Independence. 
The disorders of the revolution were disastrous to this archive of the Sec- 
retariat of the Viceroyalty, as they were perhaps to others also. At the with- 
drawal of the Spanish government, we are told by a contemporary official, 
multitudes of legajos were hauled in carts to the citadel to be used for gun 
wadding. In this way many documents of fiscal importance, in particular, 
were destroyed.” The sudden change of government led also to the confusion 
of such papers as were not destroyed. The documents on the various mesas 
of the Secretariat of the Viceroyalty, for example, the accumulation of sey- 
eral years, were hurriedly carried in the blankets of the cargadores (carriers) 
employed by the victorious Independents and piled in disorder in the Conta- 
duria de Azogues. 
Such rational work of restoration as was performed by the Regency was 
directed rather to dispersion than to reorganization. Thus, in 1821, Dn. 
Ignacio Maria de Aguirre and Dn. Juan de Dios Uribe, former officials of the 
Secretariat of the Viceroyalty, were appointed, the first to distribute among 
the newly formed ministries of government the documents that had been piled, 
as above described, in the Contaduria de Azogues, and the second to do like- 
wise with those of the general and the secret archives of the suppressed sec- 
retariat.’ In this way, before the close of 1823 a large part of each of these 
collections was dispersed. The greater portion of the papers thus taken from 
the first collection went to the departments of War and Hacienda, while the 
others went more largely to the departments of Justice and Foreign Relations. 
But from Sr. Uribe came the suggestion that led to the revival of Revilla 
Gigedo’s idea of an archivo general and to its actual establishment. He pro- 
posed keeping intact the collections of royal cédulas, the correspondence of 
the viceroys, and the rest of the older matter from the Secretariat of the Vice- 
royalty that had been put in his charge for distribution, and making it the 
nucleus of a general repository. Lamenting the impending fate of this pre- 
cious material, he said: “ Would that it might be established in a general 
archive, so important to the nation in whatever event”. Acting upon this 
suggestion, the Supreme Executive Power, on August 22, 1823, appointed Sr. 
Uribe and Sr. Dn. Ignacio Cubas to “ arrange and form an archivo general y 
publico, which should contain all completed records, documents, and other 
®Cubas, “Informe”, Jan. 10, 1824, MS. in the Archivo General de Relaciones Ex- 
teriores. He enumerates the following losses: “todos los estados de caxa y valores de 
las Tesorerias g’rales y Adm’nes de rentas existentes hta. el afio de [1]810, los de fuerza 
de los cuerpos de tropa, los de revistas, los estados de Hospitales, los méritos literarios 
Eccos., los partes de policia, de Aléndiga, de asistencia de Empleados, y otros, con una 
multitud de sobrantes de Ympresos de no poco mérito”. 
° Cubas, “Informe”, June 10, 1823, MS. in the archive above cited. 
